Chile: Metro stations to help foster acceptance of LGBT people

Posters featuring same-sex couples to go up in Santiago stations

Chilean advocacy group Movimiento de Integración y Liberación Homosexual (Movilh) has joined forces with Metro Santiago in an anti-discrimination campaign that features LGBT people on posters placed in the capital city’s subway stations.

The campaign, launched April 29 at the Universidad Católica station, also aims to raise awareness and acceptance of people with disabilities, seniors, pregnant women and others. The Universidad Católica station was declared a space of respect and diversity in memory of 24-year-old Daniel Zamudio, a gay man who died in March 2012 after he was attacked in a park, Movilh says on its website.

Months after Zamudio’s murder, the Chilean Congress passed hate-crime legislation that had been bogged down for years. People refer to the new legislation as the Zamudio law, which allows people to file anti-discrimination lawsuits and makes provision for hate-crime sentences for violent crimes.

Natasha Barsotti is originally from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. She had high aspirations of representing her country in Olympic Games sprint events, but after a while the firing of the starting gun proved too much for her nerves. So she went off to university instead. Her first professional love has always been journalism. After pursuing a Master of Journalism at UBC , she began freelancing at Xtra West — now Xtra Vancouver — in 2006, becoming a full-time reporter there in 2008.

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