What Hate Brings, Daily Brief 15 May, 2024

Pamela Fabiana Cobas. Mercedes Roxana Figueroa. Andrea Amarante.

These three women died horrific deaths, after a man threw a Molotov cocktail into their boarding house room in Buenos Aires last week. They were all lesbian women.

Cobas was severely burned and died almost immediately. Figueroa, her partner, suffered burns covering 90 percent of her body and died of organ failure two days after the attack. Amarante died in hospital on Sunday. A fourth woman, Sofía Castro Riglos, remains in critical condition.

In the wake of the appalling attack, people have rightly been demanding justice and taking to the streets of Argentina’s capital.

Police have arrested a 62-year-old male suspect. They have not yet announced a motive for the deadly crime, but hatred against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people has been rising in Argentina lately. Prominent politicians, including some who hold high office, have been promoting such hatred.

A 2023 report highlighted anti-LGBT speech by members of President Javier Milei’s political party, as well as on social media and in the streets, during last year’s presidential election campaign. As a candidate, Milei himself railed against gender and sexuality education in apocalyptic terms. The current foreign minister, Diana Mondino, compared marriage equality to head lice.

The report found that rising hate speech in Argentina, “built a climate of segregation, rejection and discrimination; the most fertile ground for violence toward historically vulnerable groups.”

The atmosphere, poisoned by politicians, has been contributing to already high levels of violence against queer communities, well before last week’s attack.

Public demands for justice in the case of this horrific crime are spot on. Authorities should conduct a thorough and transparent investigation into the killings and ensure proper medical care and housing for the surviving woman.

Politicians’ promotion of hatred and their politics of scapegoating vulnerable minorities needs to be comprehensively and repeatedly called out, too.

Government officials and others with large audiences have a particular responsibility here. They should speak out against rhetoric that stigmatizes queer women and contributes to a climate in which they are seen as deserving of violence.

Any reasonably intelligent person knows what hate brings. Any reasonably responsible person knows they must condemn it.