The thesis found an identity still taking shape
AfroTrans was not created by simply adding another word to “trans.” It emerged from a gap that had already been researched.
In 2022, Diane Marie Rodríguez Zambrano’s master’s thesis at FLACSO Ecuador concluded that an AfroTrans identity was still under construction: experiences of racism and transphobia intersected in everyday life, but race had not yet consistently become a collective political claim. AfroTrans takes that tension as its starting point—moving from individual recognition toward articulation, memory, and collective action.
The intersection that can disappear from view
When everything is explained through trans identity, racism can vanish from the agenda.
The FLACSO research found that in many narratives, gender was the first lens used to explain discrimination and exclusion. That does not mean race was absent; it means racism could become normalized, displaced, or left without a political language of its own.
Within trans-rights agendas
Race can become secondary
Urgent struggles around identity, violence, health, or documentation can dominate the conversation and leave racism unnamed—even when it also shapes opportunity, beauty standards, institutional treatment, and everyday life.
Within Afro-descendant agendas
Trans experience cannot be assumed to be cisgender
Afro-descendant movements offer historical memory and powerful organizing tools, but AfroTrans does not seek to copy those processes through a cisgender lens. It seeks an approach grounded in the specific experiences of Black and Afro-descendant trans people.
In everyday life
Two forms of inequality do not automatically create a shared politics
Experiencing racism and transphobia at the same time does not automatically produce an articulated political identity. AfroTrans works precisely on that transition: recognizing, naming, connecting, building memory, and turning lived experience into collective capacity.
Transition · mainstreaming
We do not want to place “the Afro dimension” at the end of a trans agenda. We want it to run through the entire agenda.
The thesis proposes thinking about Blackness and trans experience as movement and transversal connection—not as two rigid blocks that are simply added together. AfroTrans turns that idea into program design.
Race + gender
Always ask about both
Every assessment, training, violence record, life story, and public-policy proposal should be able to see gender identity, racialization, territory, class, and other relevant inequalities at the same time.
Black feminisms
Building a locally grounded Black transfeminism
Not to reproduce an imported model, but to discuss economic, cultural, social, and political needs from the lived realities of Black and Afro-descendant trans people in Ecuador.
From the individual to the collective
Self-recognition that can become power
Identity is not imposed. AfroTrans creates safer spaces where memory, discrimination, pride, aesthetics, territory, and leadership can become collective action—when and if participants choose that path.
From research to public urgency
AfroTrans is no longer only an academic question.
Recent records show that the intersection of Blackness and trans experience now appears in community representation, violence monitoring, and public demands for justice.
2020 · fieldwork
Listening to lives before designing responses
The research gathered narratives and trajectories of Afro-descendant trans women across different territories to understand how race, gender, discrimination, work, embodiment, ancestry, and politics were experienced—or left unnamed.
2022 · FLACSO Ecuador
A political identity under construction
The thesis concludes that AfroTrans political articulation was still emerging and calls for a more intersectional political identity and collective reclamation of ancestry within the trans movement.
2025 · Kendra
Violence requires both a racial and a trans lens
Silueta X and the Federation denounced the violent death of Kendra, an Afro-descendant trans woman from Guayaquil, and called for investigators to examine possible transphobic and racist dimensions without presenting an unproven motive as established fact.
View the institutional record →2026 · AfroTrans representation
The intersection now has a public voice
In a national statement for Trans Day of Visibility, Cattleya Ávila spoke as the AfroTrans Representative of the National Trans Platform – CoaliTrans and publicly highlighted how race and gender identity intersect in the risks faced by some trans women.
View the 2026 statement →
AfroTrans · program architecture
Eight pathways for turning intersectionality into intervention.
This is not a collection of isolated activities under a label. Each pathway responds to an identifiable barrier and can be funded as a standalone component or integrated into a multi-year program.
01 · Memory
AfroTrans archive and oral history
Life histories, consent-based photography, community genealogies, territories, cultural practices, leadership stories, and memories that preserve AfroTrans experiences before they become scattered or disappear.
02 · Leadership
School of Black transfeminism
Locally grounded training in racial justice, trans rights, Black feminisms, advocacy, communications, public policy, safety, negotiation, community organizing, and coalition-building.
03 · Body and aesthetics
Bodily sovereignty without whitening
Labs on beauty, hair, skin, embodiment, health, media, and consumption to examine racialized standards and broaden the possibilities for gender affirmation without imposing a single Afro aesthetic.
04 · Economic autonomy
Work, income, and survival with dignity
Employment pathways, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, labor rights, and support for community economic strategies—while recognizing, without stigma, the sex-work trajectories present in part of the population.
05 · Care and health
Trans-competent, anti-racist care
Advocacy and training so physical health, mental health, gender-affirming care, and responses to violence recognize racial bias and do not reproduce exoticization, hypersexualization, or discriminatory treatment.
06 · Data and justice
Runa Sipiy through a racial-justice lens
Strengthen violence monitoring so that, where self-identification or responsibly documented evidence exists, ethnic-racial identity can be recorded alongside gender identity, territory, and other risk factors.
07 · Culture and media
AfroTrans self-representation
Photography, video, journalism, campaigns, art, research, and spokesperson training so AfroTrans stories are not visible only when there is violence or death.
08 · Movement building
Afro + trans bridges
Dialogue and cooperation among Afro-descendant, trans, feminist, women’s, youth, academic, and territorial organizations so no movement has to speak about the other without sitting at the same table.
Theory of change
We cannot fund inclusion and measure only how many people attended.
AfroTrans proposes measuring the transition from intersectional invisibility toward self-recognition, organizing, representation, and institutional change.
Measurement for funders and partners
Indicators a donor can track without reducing identity to a number.
Numeric targets should be defined according to territory, duration, and funding. This page does not invent results that have not yet been established through a baseline.
Changes in self-recognition, ability to name discrimination, and sense of belonging within AfroTrans networks.
People trained, active spokespersons, decision-making roles, and proposals produced by participants.
Oral histories, archives, cultural works, and educational materials preserved with consent.
Access to employment, supported ventures, income outcomes, and use of labor-protection pathways.
Cases with stronger intersectional documentation, legal referrals, and public-policy recommendations.
Media coverage, content produced by AfroTrans voices, journalists reached or trained, and the quality of media representation.
Why it matters internationally · 2025–2034
AfroTrans arrives at a moment when the global agenda is demanding deeper intersectionality and greater power for people of African descent.
The United Nations Second International Decade for People of African Descent runs from 2025 to 2034 under the pillars of recognition, justice, and development. At the same time, the UN human-rights system has increasingly reinforced intersectionality as essential to addressing systemic racism.
AfroTrans can engage funders working on racial justice, Black feminisms, LGBTQI+ rights, cultural rights, economic autonomy, violence prevention, health, youth, movement building, research, data, memory, and leadership. The advantage is not forcing AfroTrans into multiple agendas; AfroTrans lives are already shaped by all of them.
Case for support
Funding AfroTrans is not about adding diversity to a trans project. It is an investment in a gap that research has already identified.
Pathway 1 · Evidence
Mapping, baseline, and data
Update the 2022 research, map leaders and territories, create self-identification tools, and strengthen intersectional records on violence, employment, health, and participation.
Pathway 2 · Collective power
Leadership and movement building
Training, territorial gatherings, mentoring, networks, safety, and small community actions designed by AfroTrans participants.
Pathway 3 · Memory and narrative
Archive, culture, and media
Oral history, audiovisual production, journalistic research, exhibitions, and self-representation campaigns that change who is seen—and how.
Pathway 4 · Autonomy
Income, care, and protection
Employment and entrepreneurship, access to health care, support in cases of discrimination, and protection pathways for contexts of violence.
Each pathway can become a standalone project or be integrated into a 12–24 month intervention. Objectives, territories, targets, budget, safeguards, and monitoring framework should be developed with the funding partner—without presenting proposed activities as outcomes already achieved.
Research · fund · amplify · participate
The next stage of AfroTrans can be built with partners.
The program is designed to combine community knowledge, research, communications, and place-based action. Partnerships can be academic, journalistic, technical, cultural, or financial.
International cooperation and funders
Fund a phase of AfroTrans
Request a concept note adapted to your institution’s geography, duration, thematic focus, and funding mechanism.
Discuss funding →Academia and research
Update the evidence base
Partnerships for baseline studies, participatory research, publications, internships, observatories, convenings, and regional comparison.
Propose an academic partnership →AfroTrans people and collectives
Help shape the program from within
If you identify as a Black or Afro-descendant trans person—or use another Afro identity—you can propose themes, territories, memories, or ways to participate.
Contact the team →Evidence, archives, and references
A campaign gains authority when its history can be audited.
Rigor and intellectual-property note
The thesis is a knowledge base—not a repository of testimony to be reused without limits.
This page summarizes and contextualizes research findings without extensively reproducing personal interviews. Academic use, direct quotations, or reproduction of materials should rely on the original thesis and the license stated in FLACSO’s repository.
Images: the DianeRodriguez.org gallery identifies its photographs as available for open use. The thesis cover is linked from the FLACSO Repository and remains subject to the conditions stated by that institution.
Evidence distinction: 2022 findings are presented as historical research; 2025–2026 events are attributed to institutional archives; the eight intervention pathways, indicators, and funding routes are AfroTrans’s contemporary program formulation.
Asociación Silueta X en Guayaquil y Quito Ecuador 