Marbella Caporr is from El Salvador and spent 10 months in the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma before receiving asylum in January 2019. Members of Seattle synagogue Kadima have been sponsoring her as she transitions into life as a legal permanent resident. Gregory Scruggs is a journalist and Kadima member who has helped her with translation and navigating local bureaucracy. He also pays for her ORCA card and occasional meals and basic living expenses. She agreed to share her story, which is drawn from a sworn affidavit prepared for her asylum hearing and also from a sit-down interview Scruggs conducted, both translated from the original Spanish. All names, including Caporr’s, have been changed or removed for safety. Three of Caporr’s relatives are living in the United States with pending asylum cases. —Eds.
Ever since I can remember, I have wanted to be a girl. I was born in a male body, but I identify as a woman. While my mother and sisters accepted me, my father did not. My dad hit me with a machete case just for asking for a kiss from my mother. He said I brought shame on the family and needed to be punished. He said I was a curse and it would be better if I died.
When I was 12, my dad made me take more than 200 pills that supposedly were to produce masculine hormones. He made me take two a day. The only thing the pills did was make me gain and then lose a lot of weight, giving me stretch marks.
Around the same time, men in my town in El Salvador started harassing me on the street. They could see that I carried myself more like a girl. Many of the men in our neighborhood would mock me when I walked down the street. They would shout that they were going to fuck me. Sometimes they would call me marica or faggot or things that meant that my anus was big from having anal sex.
At 13, tired of the humiliations, mistreatment, beatings, and curses, I decided to leave the house.
When I was about 17 or 18 years old, I began to sell perfumes out of catalogs, and as a result, I spent more time in the town center. On those trips, I met other gay or transgender people. Some of us decided to rent an apartment together.