participant
Purita Pelayo
last update
30-05-2025
Purita Pelayo (Esmeraldas, Ecuador) is a trans activist and key figure in the history of the LGBTIQ+ movement in Ecuador, one of the last countries in Latin America to overturn the criminalisation of same-sex relationships. In the years since, she has remained firmly committed to the struggle for the social and civil rights of the LGBTIQ+ community. She is the founder of the Coccinelle Transgender Association, the first LGBTIQ+ collective in Ecuador to be legally recognised by the State, in 1998. She was the organisation's founding president for nine years, consolidating her leadership in the movement. In 1997, she organised a group of trans women engaged in sex work in the “La Mariscal” and “El Guambra” neighbourhoods of Quito, with the aim of gaining legal recognition by the Ecuadorian state and contributing to the struggle for the decriminalisation of homosexuality. In 2017, she published the book “Los fantasmas se cabrearon”, a series of chronicles on the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Ecuador. In 2022-2023 she founded the Círculo de la Memoria LGBTIQ+ del Ecuador, also called Los Enchaquirados. In 2024, she published the photobook "Relámpagos bajo el puente", expanding her contribution to the visual and documentary memory of the movement. She was responsible for Ecuador’s first LGBTIQ+ historical, photographic and audiovisual archive, entitled “Los Enchaquirados”, which gathers material from the 1980s and 1990s.
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