Good morning,
This is the story of a news item that is not happening in Colombia. A non-news story of the so-called culture war that began to grow this week with the appearance of the Argentine Agustín Laje in Colombian affairs.
For weeks, congressmen supporting the new government of Abelardo de La Espriella have been talking about the so-called “gender ideology” and claiming, without evidence, that sex change surgeries are performed on minors in the country or promoted in schools. The “pro-life” caucus, made up of senators and representatives from the National Salvation Chamber, the Conservative Party, the Democratic Center, among other groups, have submitted initiatives to block the right to abortion in the country and also to prohibit gender-affirming medical treatments.
On social media, where according to right-wing ideologues, the “culture wars” take place, phrases like “not with my children” or “children are not experiments” have begun to appear, following statements like those of the president of the Conservative Party, Efraín Cepeda. Several days ago, the politician said before a group of reporters that in many schools—generally speaking, without specifying anything—teachers asked children if they were “sure of their gender as boys.” Cepeda never provided information about how many schools, which teachers, or the purpose of the supposed investigations. The septuagenarian only left the impression that it was true.
Later it became known that Samuel Adrian, a right-wing Mexican influencer, had been detained by the police at Bogotá’s El Dorado airport. He had warned about this before arriving. He knew he had a contempt order from a Cali court that ordered him to remove audiovisual material and other content related to an endocrinologist doctor whom Adrián recorded without authorization and recklessly for a documentary suggesting that Colombia is a “factory” of trans children. The Mexican did not comply, and as a result, the judge ordered his arrest for 10 days. Laje repeated and expanded that narrative on the radio and said, without specifying where he got the data, that between 2019 and 2023, 1,200 minors had their sex changed. And President Abelardo de La Espriella joined the campaign and called for the issue to become a national debate. “The time has come to legislate on the limits and prohibitions of these procedures in minors,” said the president.
The curious thing is that the news that such gender surgeries on minors do not exist comes from the same government. The Ministry of Health responded to a right of petition from Congressman Mauricio Toro. In response to the question about the number of gender-affirming procedures since 2015, the entity replied that “irreversible genital affirmation surgeries are reserved exclusively for people over 18 years old.” Toro also inquired about hormone blockers and hormone therapies in minors under 18, and regarding these, the Ministry stated that the Individual Health Services Registry “does not have variables” that allow establishing how many people have been prescribed or authorized any type of such treatments.
So, at least according to the written words of the Ministry of Health, there is no such factory of trans children. There is no such news.
Other stories
This is a selection of news, reports, or interviews published in EL PAÍS América Colombia:
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