Everyone deserves to feel and be seen. The importance of this simple act can echo indeterminately throughout time. One moment of feeling heard can change the course of a life. It can save a life. It can help someone grab a hold of their reality and bloom. Everyone has a right to exist, especially the trans, gender expansive, and intersex individuals.
Bamby Salcedo has spent a lifetime fighting for her community. The transgender activist wants the community that has been through so much and given her so much to feel seen. This is why the work of The TransLatin@ Coalition, which she is the CEO and President of, is so important.
It’s why their GARRAS Fashion Show is needed for their community. Salcedo chatted with Latinidad Collective about the significance of the work that she and the coalition do for the trans, gender expansive, and intersex individuals. She also highlighted how pivotal the public nature of the GARRAS Fashion Show is for those communities.
Credit: Paolo Riveros
The GARRAS Fashion Show, now in its tenth year, was born from the need to celebrate members of the trans, gender expansive, and intersex communities while they were alive
CBS cites how Everytown for Gun Safety’s Transgender Homicide Tracker found a 93% uptick in “tracked homicides of trans and gender-nonconforming people” between 2017 and 2021.
In the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s win, The Rainbow Youth Project has also noticed an increase in calls. Before the election, the national LGBTQIA2S+ advocacy group fielded around 800 calls per month. Since the 2024 election, that number has escalated to 5,460, per ABC News.
Salcedo told LC, “When we started GARRAS, really [it] was with this idea of how do we contrast Trans Remembrance Day — which Trans Remembrance Day is globally celebrated to remember members of the trans community who have been murdered due to the ignorance and violence that we experienced.”
“And so we said, why don’t we celebrate our people while we’re still here,” the Mexican-born activist asserted.
She continued, “And so we thought of doing this amazing and incredible fashion show in which, you know, members of the trans, gender nonconforming, and intersex people are showcased as high fashion models.”
According to Salcedo, the word garras has two meanings. The first interpretation of the word refers to a Spanish slang word referencing “raggedy clothes.” The second interpretation references to the “claws of an eagle or a tiger.”
“But for us, [it] is an acronym and it [stands for] Groundbreaking Activism, Redirecting and Reforming All Systems,” she explains.
Salcedo affirms, “We believe that through our visibility, we are able to change minds and hearts and through our visibility we’re [also] able to hopefully change the way society sees us.”
Through their work with the GARRAS Fashion Show and beyond, The TransLatin@ Coalition has been providing safety and unity for 15 years
To sum up all the work The TransLatin@ Coalition has done in one neat sentence would be an impossible feat, according to Salcedo. For her, there are so many things to be proud of.
“I wouldn’t be able to tell you one thing that I am proud of, right? I think there’s many different things that I can say that I am proud of,” the activist asserts.
Salcedo continues, “You know, one is the fact that […] since we received our very first grant in January of 2016 for us to start building the Center for Violence Prevention and Transgender Wellness in Los Angeles to today — you know, in eight to nine years — we have become the biggest transgender organization in the United States.”
She notes that the critical work they do daily is on behalf of the trans, gender expansive, and intersex communities.
She adds, “We are an organization that believes in uplifting the livelihood of our community through service provision, right? Because you can’t really organize and you can’t really mobilize people and get them to be engaged if people are struggling with the basic things that they need […] like food or housing, employment, healthcare, like all of those things, right?”
This work also includes influencing policy work within the U.S. as well.
“We also believe in influencing change and the institutions that might generalize us, while at the same time we hold responsible those institutions to invest in our lives. And so we as an organization are contributing to the broader infrastructure development that needs to happen in our community through our policy work,” the proud Latina added.
Salcedo begins, “I feel like I think we collectively are building a better future for all of our community, right? And, you know, the truth is that we as an organization, and what makes me so proud also is that, you know, we are the reflection of the possibilities of our people, right?”
“That we are able to create and realize and demonstrate to our society who has always [wanted] us to fail — we are showing the world that we also can be successful, that we also can create what we need for us,” she concludes.
