Compass Gender: Trans Woman Arrested For Violating Panama’s Gender-Based Quarantine
Panama has instituted quarantine regulations based on gender. (Wikimedia Commons)
Panamanian authorities arrested Bárbara Delgado, a transgender woman, for breaking gender-based quarantine regulations on April 1. Police detained and fined her after she went out to do community service on a day designated for women to leave the house.
Panama became the second of three Latin American countries to institute gender-based lockdown measures on April 1. Under Panama’s regulation, women are allowed to go out on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, while men are permitted Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
On the first day of the lockdown, a Wednesday, police stopped Delgado, along with two men and another woman. The other three were let off with a warning, but Delgado was detained for three hours at the police station and made to pay a fine equivalent to $50. During her detention, a justice of the peace accused Delgado of not being a woman.
Delgado’s documentation contradicted her gender, since trans people can’t legally change their sex unless they have undergone surgery in Panama. Panama has yet to officially determine when trans or non-binary people will be able to leave their homes under the gender-based quarantine rules.
While Delgado left on a day of the gender that she identified with, Human Rights Watch documented three other cases of trans discrimination where the opposite was true.
"They all left [their homes] on the day dictated by the gender marker on their ID, but when they tried to go to the supermarket in two of the cases and the bank in one case, they were met with discrimination by either police officers or security agents," said Cristian González Cabrera, an LGBTQ researcher at Human Rights Watch. “So you're damned if you do, damned if you don't in this context.”
The same concerns about gender discrimination arose in Peru and Colombia.
In Peru, where the first gender-based quarantine rules were implemented on April 3, the controversial measures have already been revoked by the government after being criticized by transgender activists. Starting April 11, the rules dictate that only one person per household may leave the home, regardless of gender.
According to El País, Peruvian Health Minister Victor Zamora justified the gender-based quarantine rules as being meant to slow down the flow of patients admitted to intensive care units. It is unclear why President Martín Vizcarra decided to implement regulations based on gender instead of another factor.
Economist Farid Matuk, member of the Perspectiva Group, which advises the Peruvian government on measures against the pandemic, admits that the gender-based regulations were a mistake.
"I personally criticize myself. I participated in the decision, considered that it was appropriate, considered that in the fight against patriarchy a balance had to be struck between men and women…. I think it was more practical, for example, to have given women four days and men two days,” he told Peru21. He went on to say that the struggle against the patriarchy should have waited until after the crisis.
In Colombia, gender-based quarantine rules have only been instituted in select cities, including Bogotá, the capital.