Local residents rally to support trans woman who fled violence in Cuba
A year ago, Karla Zaldivar Ivirico was in Mexico, nearing the end of a slow and difficult journey from her home in Havana, Cuba, to the U.S. border.
Now, Zaldivar lives on Olympia’s west side, works at Equal Latin restaurant downtown, and is working toward becoming a permanent resident — all with the help of a group of politically active locals.
“I was so grateful to find this community,” Zaldivar told The Olympian through translator Emily Calhoun Petrie, who’s hosting Zaldivar in her home at Woodard Lane Cohousing. “I feel like I’ve found a loving family. … I didn’t know that such people existed.”
Immigration attorney Steffani Powell of Olympia is helping Zaldivar with the lengthy process of becoming a permanent resident. The next hearing is coming up in February.
Zaldivar, 24, left her homeland March 24 because of the danger she faced there as a trans woman — a “chica trans,” as she says.
One night, she was raped by a group of men leaving a nightclub. “They knew, as I did, that the police wouldn’t do anything if I reported the assault,” she said.
Discrimination, abuse, harassment and violence against women like her is widespread there, she said. “In Cuba, trans women are treated as the lowest people in the world. There is a lot of suffering for all of us. … The police torture and murder us.”
She left Cuba for Guyana, then spent nine months journeying north through South and Central America, sleeping in the streets and trying to find work along the way.
“I left my country with the hope that I could be free,” she said. “It was always my dream to come to the United States.”
On Jan. 6, she arrived at the border near El Paso, Texas.
“She has told me how happy she was that day,” Petrie said. “There were tears in her eyes to have finally reached the United States.”
Zaldivar didn’t know then that her suffering was not at an end. The Border Patrol took her to a detention center where she was held overnight in a cold metal room that immigrants refer to as the icebox.
The next day, she was transferred to the Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan, New Mexico, where trans women are held.
“The immigrants are treated like dogs,” she said. “The immigration police give us spoiled food, and they put us in a cold box. They don’t give us medical care.”
In both centers, conditions were so bad that Zaldivar feared she would die if she stayed there.
She got out of Cibola — and came to Olympia — with the help of the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, which finds sponsors for women in Cibola so they can be released on parole while awaiting immigration hearings.
The Rabble Rousers, a small group of activist women in Olympia, had heard about the project and decided that they could support a trans refugee with help from the larger community. In December 2018, they sent out emails to everyone they knew asking for donations, volunteers and a family to host.
“We knew that a lot of the Olympia community would probably want to support this, and we were right,” said Lynn Grotsky, one of the Rabble Rousers. “We had probably about 50 or 60 responses.”
The biggest need was to find a family to host a refugee. When Rabble Rouser Harriet Strasberg asked her about it, Petrie said, “I said ‘yes’ immediately, then said, ‘I should check with my family, but yes, we’ll do it.’ ”
Petrie and her husband, Seamus Petrie, had previously hosted a Nicaraguan man visiting as part of the Thurston Santo Tomás Sister County Association.
“We knew that we had the space,” Emily Petrie said. “We knew that we had the Spanish. Our kids really liked learning Spanish and interacting with a housemate, so we went forward.”
The Petries were accepted to host, and Zaldivar arrived at the end of February.
It’s clear that she and Emily Petrie have become great friends, and the Petries’ sons, Callum, 5, and Rustin, 2, are big fans of their new housemate, too, Petrie said.
“The first month, they were very shy,” Petrie said. “Now they play with her, and they beg for her for fried eggs and toast.
“Sometimes they say, ‘Mama, I don’t want your food. I want Karla’s food,’ ” she added.
How to help
To help Cuban refugee Karla Zaldivar Ivirico in her quest to become a permanent resident, you can donate at gofundme.com/f/it-takes-a-village-olympia or get information about volunteering by emailing Lynn Grotsky at lynngrotsky@gmail.com.
This story was originally published December 28, 2019 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Local residents rally to support trans woman who fled violence in Cuba."