Shane Cienfuegos, the first user in Chile to obtain a non-binary national identity document last week after nine years of legal struggle, reports the Washington Post.
Cienfuegos, 29, leads the social intervention activities of the Chilean Organization for Trans Diversity. The organization reportedly called it a “collective victory” for the LGBTQ community.
And while Cienfuegos said the network is satisfied with this step, the fight is not over.
“Today an X appears on my card [for access to sex], but social rights and public policies are for men and women, so no PC formula will recognize me. It will drive me away. That is why I am at a disadvantage of the entire health formula that the Chilean State has,” Cienfuegos told the Chilean publication The Clinic.
It’s been just over a year since Argentina, the first country in Latin America to recognize same-sex marriages, began identifying other non-binary people in legal documents.
The legal process in Cienfuegos was supported through the Legal Clinic of the Faculty of Law of the University of Chile, which more than a decade ago committed to advising other trans and non-binary people so that they can legally recognize their identity.
Mexico and Colombia followed suit a few months later, but in Chile the legal war became more difficult, requiring individual court decisions for plaintiffs to download documents that reflect their gender identity.
Lorena Lorca, a lawyer for Cinefuegos, told the Post that there were 60 cases in Chile. Only seven of them have won favorable decisions so far.
Chile plans to authenticate other people in its national virtual identification formula with facial biometrics and other modalities, but questions remain about the accuracy of facial popularity algorithms when it comes to gender-fluid situations.
Chile | Matrimonial | Digital identification| Government Services | | Identity card
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