Earlier this year, Spains trailblazing activist and legislator Carla Antonelli issued a sobering reminder that while many in the Global North congratulate themselves on legal progress, trans women across Latin America, especially in countries like Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, continue to die in staggering numbers. She named what too many still refuse to say aloud: that there exists a machinery designed to destroy us, to erase trans women from the world and from memory.Every November on the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), the names of our siblings echo across vigils in the United States. In candle-lit circles, in church basements, in city parks, and in community centers, we gather to speak them into the night, promising not to forget the lives lost to hate. But as each name trembles through the air, another question haunts the silence: How many names are missing? How many lives have slipped quietly through the cracks of language and geography, unrecorded, unspoken, unloved by a world still unwilling to see us? Related Happiness looks fantastic on her: Heres what parents wish folks knew about their trans kids In Brazil, local activists with the Associao Nacional de Travestis e Transexuais (ANTRA) document hundreds of murders each year. The organization reports that Brazil remains the country with the highest number of trans people killed worldwide, a pattern reaffirmed by the Pulitzer Center. Many of these victims are Black, many are sex workers, and nearly all are treated as disposable; marginalized twice, first by society and then by the systems that deny even their deaths the dignity of recognition.In Mexico, grassroots networks such as Casa de las Muecas Tiresias (founded by trans activist Kenya Cuevas) maintain their own lists of the dead because the state refuses to recognize anti-trans violence as a distinct category. Mexico is consistently ranked the second deadliest country in the world for trans people, behind only Brazil, according to global monitoring data compiled by Transgender Europe. Dive deeper every day Join our newsletter for thought-provoking commentary that goes beyond the surface of LGBTQ+ issues Subscribe to our Newsletter today In the Philippines, trans women face violence rooted in the enduring power of colonial Catholic morality. A study from the University of Washington shows that religion and colonization have deeply shaped the health and social inequities faced by trans Filipinas. Research on pre-colonial gender roles reveals that Indigenous gender-fluid identities such as the babayln were erased by Spanish conquest and Catholic moral frameworks, leaving a legacy of stigma that persists today.In Kenya, and across much of sub-Saharan Africa, violence against trans people is compounded by criminalization. A baseline study by Kenyan researchers documents how trans people face widespread exclusion, harassment, and discrimination; many disowned by families and denied housing, employment, and even the right to bury their dead in peace. Another report from Human Rights Watch details how LGBTQ+ individuals, especially trans women, are forced into hiding as police harassment and legal threats persist.According to the global Trans Murder Monitoring Project of Transgender Europe (TGEU), at least 350 trans and gender-diverse people were reported murdered between October 2023 and September 2024, the highest total since records began. Ninety-four percent of victims were trans women or transfeminine people, and ninety-three percent were Black or Brown. Nearly three-quarters of all reported murders occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean, with Brazil alone accounting for nearly one-third of the global total. This imbalance is not coincidence. It is the consequence of colonial power; of whose deaths are counted, whose grief becomes visible, and whose suffering is translated into global empathy. The candles burn brightly in New York and Los Angeles, but their light too often stops at the border. The silence that follows is not neutral; it is a form of colonial violence in death that mirrors the erasure trans people endure in life. When we examine how these lists are assembled, we begin to see the problem. In many countries, identifying a victim as trans can endanger surviving friends or family. Police reports often misgender victims. Journalists lack the vocabulary (or the courage) to call transphobia by its name. English-language media rarely translate stories published in Spanish, Portuguese, Tagalog, or Swahili. The result is that when TDOR arrives, we recite only a fraction of the truth.To remember fully, we must understand how remembrance itself can reproduce harm. Reporting gaps, linguistic barriers, and media bias all contribute to a deadly cycle of invisibility. Remembrance without reflection risks becoming a performance of empathy rather than an act of solidarity.Mexico City, Mexico; June 25 2022: pride march, person protesting the murders against lgbtq+ people in mexico city. | Shutterstock Across the Global South, remembrance has always been resistance. In So Paulo, activists with ANTRA release annual reports naming every trans person killed in Brazil, refusing to let the state erase them. In Manila, the Philippines Capital, local groups combine queer resilience with Indigenous ritual, insisting that mourning itself is sacred rebellion. In Nairobi, small collectives gather quietly to honor the dead, even when public vigils are too dangerous to hold. These acts of memory say: We were here, we mattered, we still do. The trans movement in the Global North owes these organizers not only admiration but solidarity. Their courage sustains the global record of our struggle. Their persistence ensures that the dead are not erased by imperial neglect. If TDOR is to mean anything at all, it must transcend borders, languages, and colonial frameworks. It must become a global act of communion that acknowledges the interconnectedness of our survival. That means listening differently, not only to English-speaking advocates but to those fighting in Portuguese, Spanish, Tagalog, and Swahili. It means amplifying grassroots documentation rather than just repeating Western narratives. It means funding translation, data collection, and memorial efforts that make local stories visible. It means recognizing that trans liberation is bound up with struggles against racism, poverty, imperialism, and the enduring scars of colonial religion and state violence. We must also confront the structural violence that persists beyond murder: incarceration, forced displacement, police brutality, exclusion from employment, and the criminalization of gender variance. Studies, such as one from the International Drug Policy Consortium, show that trans women (especially those of color) are disproportionately criminalized and imprisoned across multiple regions. These laws, often remnants of colonial penal codes, make gender nonconformity itself a crime. The result is a global system that deems trans life expendable.As Carla Antonelli reminds us, the violence inflicted upon trans women in the Global South cannot be separated from the systems that profit from our marginalization. Whether through the criminalization of sex work, denial of healthcare, or silencing of trans voices, every institution that benefits from our invisibility participates in this cycle. Remembering our dead without confronting these systems turns mourning into moral theater. | Shutterstock When we light candles this November 20, we must remember that the flame is not a metaphor for grief alone but it is also a call to action. From candle-lit streets in Mexico City to quiet homes in Nairobi, from Manila to Medelln, from So Paulo to San Francisco, trans people are remembering, resisting, and rebuilding. Each name we speak aloud becomes an indictment of global indifference. Each vigil becomes a manifesto for a world where trans people live, not merely remembered but free. To honor the dead is to fight for the living. We must build an international network of care that refuses to let borders define whose lives matter. We must insist that remembrance be translated and multiplied so that no life (and no death) depends on the language a person spoke, the passport they held, or the government that failed to see them.The future of TDOR depends on our ability to transform grief into global solidarity. The movement that began as a vigil on a cold November night must now become a worldwide uprising of memory, one that rejects colonial limits and imagines a liberated future where every trans person is honored in life, not only in loss. Because solidarity that stops at borders is not solidarity at all.As Carla Antonelli says: No nos van a volver a los mrgenes. And we wont.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.