Demanding Justice When Justice Fails: Coccinelle’s Activism as Transfeminist Praxis in Ecuador

Abstract∞ In this article, we develop a transfeminist, queer/cuir, decolonial approach to reimagine transitional justice by centering the experiences of trans and travesti sex workers not merely as ‘victims’ but as architects of alternative justice paradigms. Focusing on the activism of Coccinelle, a collective of trans and travesti sex workers in Quito, Ecuador, we examine how their decades-long struggle, including their pivotal role in decriminalizing homosexuality in 1997 and their more recent demands for reparations, challenges the limitations of state-centered justice mechanisms. We argue that Coccinelle’s practices – ranging from public protest and legal advocacy to memory making, mutual care, and kinship – collectively refuse erasure and assimilation into liberal legal frameworks and offer radical alternatives. We push the so-called critical turn in transitional justice scholarship further by demonstrating how a transfeminist praxis reveals the cisheteronormative foundations of these frameworks, thus demanding a paradigm shift in how justice, harm and repair are conceptualized and enacted.