The woman attacked in a hotel in Buenos Aires died and groups denounce lesboodio

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A 58-year-old woman died from burns caused by the attack of a man who sprayed her and her partner, a woman who is in serious condition with 90% of her body burned.

The victim was identified as Pamela Cobas, 52 years old, and on Monday morning she was sleeping in the room of a boarding house on 1600 Olavarría Street in the Buenos Aires town of Barracas.

The attacker was identified as Justo Fernando Barrientos (68) and the attack occurred during one of the many fights that had become customary in the area, according to the neighbors’ story. Although they agreed that they had never seen “something like that,” like what happened this Monday morning, according to Clarín.

The four women lived in room 14 on the first floor. The women were identified as Mercedes Roxana Figueroa (52), Pamela Fabiana Cobas (52), Sofía Castro Riglos (49) and Andrea Amarante (42). Two of them, who were also a couple, had been renting in this building for more than two years. The other two joined later. The last one is in an advanced pregnancy and they would also take her other children to visit.

Although some neighbors referred to a conflictive relationship between the women and neighbors of the rest of the building and others linked it to a hate attack due to their sexual orientation.

“We were surprised, we don’t know what caught him, but he had an attack, hit their door and threw fuel. He set them on fire. “It’s crazy,” the neighbors told Clarín on Monday.

Lesboodio

LGBTIQ+ organizations denounced that the case was a lesbicide, that is, a crime of hate against the sexual orientation of women.

The LGBTIQ+ League of the Provinces issued a statement in which they indicated: “Hate kills. It was lesbofemicide” and they added: “It is not free to enable the circulation of hate speech, nor to legitimize it from the State in the name of freedom. “These expressions actually hide the cowardly violence of those who are not willing to live in a truly free and equal society.”

They also pointed directly to the President’s speech: “Gestures such as those of President Milei declaring the LGBT community as a kind of “internal enemies” in his first speech in Davos, or closing the Ministry of MGyD and INADI and celebrating it, as if That would have improved someone’s life, as if there were no need for policies from the State to combat and eradicate discrimination and violence, they only increase the feeling of impunity of haters and reinforce and institutionalize the progressive climate of hate in which we live.

For its part, the organization 100% Diversity and Rights issued a statement in which they demand justice for the lesbophobic attack carried out at dawn on May 6 and demand that the Criminal and Correctional Court No. 14, headed by Edmundo Rabbione , which is carrying out the investigation, approaches the case “from a gender perspective and as motivated by hatred towards lesbian identity.”

The organization highlights the fact that the attack and murder occur in a context of “abandonment and lack of protection of LGBTIQ+ people”, where national organizations and policies for protection against sexist and lesbophobic violence have been dismantled, such as Inadi and the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity and its care and prevention programs against gender violence, gender identity and sexual orientation.