Tolerant Uruguay a place for some trans citizens to ‘glow’

Sebastian, who at 18 sports the shadow of a beard, holds up one photo of himself as a baby in a white dress, and laughs loudly at something his girlfriend says.

Montevideo: On a recent Sunday in the Salaverry household in Montevideo, various members of Uruguayan transgender teenager Sebastian’s family gathered for a traditional “asado,” or barbecue. The family sat around the large kitchen table, looking at photos of a young Sebastian and his older brother Ignacio.

Sebastian, who at 18 sports the shadow of a beard, holds up one photo of himself as a baby in a white dress, and laughs loudly at something his girlfriend says. “Emotionally, he is happy, he is glowing,” his mother Carla Mijares, 43, said. “I see him glowing, happy, and I share in his happiness.”

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Salaverry just celebrated his one-year “T-anniversary” — the day he started taking testosterone hormones to medically transition to his true gender as a man, though he had already been known as Sebastian for two years. “The thing is that I had been asking myself different things about what it’s like to be a transgender person ever since I was a kid,” he said. “In fact, when I was 11, 12, I looked for people on the internet who were going through the same thing, because I felt weird. All around me, or in Uruguay, you didn’t see many trans people.”

There is no current data on how many people identify as transgender in the tiny South American country, let alone how many of them are minors, said Rodrigo Falcon, founder and director of Trans Boys Uruguay. The organisation is the first association of its kind geared to helping trans children and young adults navigate the world.