The National Trans Visibility March in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Oct. 17. (Photo courtesy of Samy Nemir Olivares)
The annual National Trans Visibility March took place in Puerto Rico on Saturday.
The march ended at the Puerto Rican Capitol in San Juan, the U.S. commonwealth’s capital and largest city. Samy Nemir Olivares, a member of the Puerto Rico LGBTQ+ Federation’s board of directors who also works for Lambda Legal, is among those who spoke.
The march took place at the end of a three-day conference that took place in San Juan. Participants included:
• Ana Irma Rivera-Lassen, the first openly LGBTQ person elected to the Puerto Rican Senate
• Mila Hellfyre, a trans Puerto Rican activist
• Maru Rosa Hernández, a nonbinary plaintiff in Lambda Legal’s lawsuit that challenges the Puerto Rican government’s refusal to issue birth certificates with an “X” gender marker
• Peter Manuel Shepard Rivas, a Puerto Rican HIV/AIDS activist
• Lambda Legal Senior Counsel and Health Care Strategist Omar González-Pagán
Waves Ahead, Puerto Rico’s largest LGBTQ organization, is among the groups that sponsored the National Trans Visibility March and conference. Other sponsors included the TransLatin@ Coalition, the True Self Foundation, the Transgender Law Center, Advocates for Trans Equality, Human Rights Campaign, Gilead, the Georgetown University Law Center’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, GLAAD, and the Hispanic Federation.
“Now it’s more important than ever to unite as an LGBTQ+ movement alongside our allies to protect the progress we have made in achieving trans and queer rights as both the federal and local governments attempt to erase and criminalize our identities,” said Olivares. “The president insists that trans identities don’t exist, yet they continue to attack our rights and existence through the laws.”
“But we are here, we are not going to be silenced or erased,” added Olivares. “As (with) any other Americans, trans and queer people deserve equal access to healthcare, housing, and nondiscrimination at the workplace and government services.”
Olivares in their comments noted the Puerto Rican government “has betrayed and undermined the LGBTQ community by signing into law more than” half a dozen anti-LGBTQ laws.
True Self Foundation Executive Director Miguel Vázquez-Rivera during a Congressional Hispanic Caucus briefing earlier this year noted these include a ban on gender-affirming healthcare for anyone under 21. Vázquez-Rivera also highlighted Law 26-2026, which prohibits the University of Puerto Rico and other “government facilities” from installing “mixed or gender-neutral multi-occupancy restrooms.”
Puerto Rico Gov. Jenniffer González, a Republican who is a member of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, signed these laws after she took office in January 2025. González, who supports President Donald Trump, was Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner in the U.S. House of Representatives before she became governor.
Olivares told the Washington Blade that National Trans Visibility March organizers decided to hold the annual event in Puerto Rico as a way to highlight the fact the commonwealth has “the most severe anti-trans legislation in the U.S.” and to stand in solidarity with local activists.
The first National Trans Visibility March took place in D.C. in 2019. Next year’s National Trans Visibility March is scheduled to take place in Atlanta.
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