Mocha Celis
18 Aug 1995
Buenos Aires (Argentina)
Shot
TDoR list ref: tdor.info/18 Aug 1995/Mocha Celis
Mocha was shot twice in the groin and abandoned in the street.
Who was Mocha Celis? A Tucuman transvestite who worked in the area of Flores. An old acquaintance of mine; I remember the time when democracy returned and we believed that things were going to change. So we worked in Flores and we each had our strategy to survive police abuse.
Mocha, for example, had confronted Sergeant Alvarez at the 50th Flores police station, which had a particular viciousness to her. One day there was Mocha in the street, she was a traffic light: divine, brunette, with red dress and golden wallet, and we hid under a car because we wanted to see what the guy said and how Mocha defended herself. The guy that day did not stop, but shouted before leaving: "You're going to see, fucking shit, you're going to finish with three shots!". And then we heard several.
One day other transvestites call me and they tell me that Mocha had disappeared. "But fags, look for her! Go to the hospital guards, find out to put a habeas corpus right now. "And nothing, did not appear; I speak with Serpaj's lawyer, who calls me a few hours later and tells me that she looks like she would be in Penna Hospital. Well, we all left running to Penna Hospital. What the lawyer had not clarified to me is that the girl was dead. There was Nadia Echazú and a group of compañeras, I recognized her, I said "yes, it was her", and well, we watched her. When we asked them to do the autopsy, it was another mess, because we did not have legal status, we were not family, we could not report. The sister seems to have received money from the commissioner and then it was deleted. So we insisted that the autopsy be done, so that at least they tell us what Mocha died of. He had died of three shots. We could not confirm that Alvarez was the one who executed it because the cause never prospered.
We send all the girls to buy candles and we meet in front of the police station at that time all with their little package. Suddenly we fell: prostitutes, transvestites, all at once and we began to assemble a silhouette with candles in the door of the police station. There we said a few words, neighbors came and some of them began to tell us "yes, that night I felt something strange happened ...". Finally, after a while we had to go because we saw that they were starting to turn around some tremendous trucks and patrol cars. We said good, ok, we're leaving.
The Mocha Celis School in Buenos Aires is named in her memory.
https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/soy/subnotas/2201-206-2011-11-18.html
https://www.facebook.com/mochacelis/photos/a.318473954942384/726362174153558/?type=3&theater
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10_JeZ7LEIRhvewTCoL5mVkH6MQJzf7fSXl4-P6QJ0v0/edit#gid=0
