A QUARTER of a century ago the town of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of Chiapas state in Mexico’s deep south, was the setting of a spate of horrific killings of transgender prostitutes. Nine of them were murdered in two years, shot execution-style with up to a dozen bullets from high-calibre revolvers. Police claimed that in two cases they were murdered after having had sex with their killers.

The deaths caused a stir in Mexico, not least because of speculation that a police death squad was involved and because the authorities framed clearly innocent people. The Mexican interior minister at the time, Patrocinio González, when previously governor of Chiapas, had closed down discos frequented by the sex workers, forcing them onto the street. (Mr González is the nephew of the priest-baiting governor of a neighbouring state who was the model for a character in Graham Greene’s novel “The Power and the Glory”.) “We are all scared now, but it’s what we live from,” said one prostitute, called Jessica. Six months later the Zapatista rising elsewhere in Chiapas grabbed global headlines. The country stopped paying attention to dead transgender people.

Bello was reminded of his reporting trip to cover that long-ago outrage by “A Fantastic Woman”, a Chilean film which has just won an Oscar. Its protagonist is Marina, a trans woman (someone who has transitioned from male to female) who has a conventional life as a waitress and aspiring classical singer. It tells the story of what happens when her lover, an older businessman with whom she lives, dies suddenly. The film is remarkable for Marina’s dignity in the face of psychological violence. This derives from the fear her transgressive identity provokes. “What are you?” spits the dead man’s son.