The Red Zone: A place where butch lesbians live in fear.

Pedro_P

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▼ Three mysterious deaths and dozens of violent attacks on butch lesbians, orcamionas, have put lesbians in Chile's Fifth region on red alert.
Nicole Saavedra Bahamondes' family knew she was not a morning person.
Especially at weekends, the 23-year-old did not leave her bedroom early - and she knew her mother wouldn't disturb her in her cosy bed, still laden with the cuddly toys from her childhood.
At about 11:00 on a Saturday, Nicole would usually emerge and walk slowly to the kitchen in search of coffee.
She would blearily exchange words with her mother, Olga Bahamondes, giving monosyllabic answers to any questions about the night before.
Around 11:30, Nicole would WhatsApp her cousin, María Bahamondes, who lived five minutes away with her husband and two young daughters. Often they would agree to meet at the farmers' market in their sleepy mining town - El Melón, in Chile's mountainous Fifth region - then go back to María's house for lunch with her two young children.
But this Saturday morning, 18 June 2016, was different.
Nicole had messaged her mother the evening before to say she would be staying overnight at a party with friends in Quillota, a town some 30 minutes by bus from their home. Then at 07:00 she sent a voice-note to say she was on her way back.
When Olga woke and listened to the voice-note she assumed Nicole was already home and resting in bed. But when she hadn't emerged by midday, Olga popped her head into her daughter's room.
It was empty, and the bed had not been slept in.
Olga called Nicole immediately, but there was no ringing tone. This was unusual. Nicole's phone was rarely off.
Olga began to worry.
Nicole's Instagram showed that she and her friends had been in high spirits just hours earlier.
She'd uploaded five videos of the group laughing, sitting on mattresses on the floor, surrounded by cushions, empty Coca-Cola bottles and cigarette lighters.
In the last 15-second Instagram video posted just after midnight, a young woman with long dark hair and her hoodie up is seen scrolling through her smartphone. The camera then pans to a man in his early 20s, who sings an off-key version of Lana Del Ray's Video Games.
Nicole, who is out of shot and filming the video, can be heard giggling.
Then there is social media silence.
María and Nicole had been especially close. Growing up, the cousins and their mothers had lived together in one house.
"Nicole and I always had a special bond. We were raised by single mothers who were sisters. We were more sisters than cousins," says María. "We saw each other every day, and after I got married and moved out, every few days."
María was protective of her younger cousin.
"I have always said that she lived in another world," says María. "Because she didn't see the bad side in people. I think that is what played against her."
Nicole was vulnerable, María felt, because she openly identified as a lesbian - and not just as a lesbian, but as a camiona, Chilean slang for a butch lesbian.
Nicole was proud to be a camiona, it was the core of her identity. But this made her visible in their small, conservative community, and she had been beaten up because of it.
"She was always being insulted. She was 14 years old when she had her first girlfriend. Men sometimes chased her and said they were going to correct her, to 'make her a woman'," María says.
In 2015, a neo-Nazi gang member brutally attacked her, yelling lesbophobic abuse.
"If her friend hadn't arrived, Nicole probably would have died. He had put his boot on her neck and was beating her and beating and beating her."
After that, María felt uneasy whenever Nicole left the house alone. So that Saturday morning, when Nicole couldn't be reached, she had a deep sense of foreboding.
When there had still been no word from Nicole 24 hours later, the family notified the police and María organised relatives into search parties, to retrace Nicole's last known movements. The first point of call was the house in Quillota where Nicole had spent the night with friends.
The friends had already explained that Nicole had set off for the bus stop at 07:00 and that they had heard nothing from her after that.
On Sunday they still had no news. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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