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Andrea Cortés Guarín, 26, is the first trans woman to be part of the Police Force in Colombia. She is a police patrol officer and is studying Social Communication. Her goal is through her work to become a champion of women’s rights and the LGBTI community.
Andrea was born in Bucaramanga. She is the oldest of three sisters and she proudly states that it was her mother, Jackeline Cortés Guarín, who she saw for them and brought them up.
“My mother is a very hard-working, honest woman who taught us to fight for our dreams, but always on the basis of respect for others,” Andrea told EL TIEMPO.
In fact, the support and affection of her mother were what led her to recognize herself from a very young age. “Although it sounds like a box phrase, I was trapped in the body of Fabio Cortés, the name with which I was baptized when I was born, because he was a man, although I identified myself and felt like a woman,” she said with a certain nostalgia.
Andrea lived and grew up at the Vicente Azuero school in Bucaramanga, where her mother worked. There she, along with her sisters, studied primary and secondary school and graduated in 2012. And precisely at school, Andrea began to notice, as she herself says, that “it was different”. “At that time they ‘used it’ for me. They did what they call bullying or bullying today. That I did suffer. They made fun of the way he ran, in short, a whole nightmare, ”she assured through tears. It is not for less. She was 8 or 9 years old, she was a girl.
“They said to my mother: ‘Jackeline, be careful, that boy is very mannered.’ My mother, deep in her heart, knew who I was, “says Andrea, who emphasizes that she never reproached her or asked her to” behave like a man. ” She admits that she was never a good student, but she was very wise, and she liked to stay at home. Among her childhood memories are her games with her sisters. Today one of them works in the Police and the other is in university. “It was very everyday between us to play beauty reigns, to put on makeup with my mother’s things. That amused us a lot, ”she says with a wide smile.
Andrea pointed out that during high school she suffered a lot because of what she describes as her “condition”, and because of the ridicule to which she was subjected, although she assured that, fortunately, she managed to establish a great friendship with another young man (now a trans woman), with who shared their sadness, but at the same time, with whom they united to confront those who mistreated them. As an anecdote, Andrea remembers that as a teenager she was “very afraid of trans people”, but that she never discriminated against them.
Today she concludes that that fear she felt was actually that she wanted to be just like them. “Being a trans woman,” she pointed out.
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