CARTAGENA — Prejudice "is an everyday thing," says Tania Duarte, a gay community leader in Cartagena, the historic port and resort on Colombia's Caribbean coast.

Her gait is firm and determined, as she steps on the hot pavement in Barranquilla, a nearby city where we spoke. She takes short steps as if preparing to march in protest, and live. It is Gay Pride day here, and she ditched her fears a long while back. This transgender woman studied philosophy at the University of Cartagena.

She's no victim, and is clear on things. She understands that belonging to the LGBT (gay, lesbian and transsexual) community in Cartagena where she was born 25 years ago, is "all screwed up... though my family doesn't understand much about all this, when they see news and find out they discriminated against or killed someone from the community, they worry because they know perfectly well it could have been me." In 2017, 109 members of the LGBT community were murdered.

The first Meeting of Afro-Caribbean and Indigenous LGBT leaders from the regions of La Guajira, Cartagena and Tumaco, organized by the NGO Caribe Afirmativo, identified 10 "invisible barriers" to this community's advancement. The most prevalent were racism and low educational levels.

Tania adjusts her dress and fixes her turban to avoid hair curls dangling over her face. Paradoxically, she says, "the Palenqueros and Raizals are the most racist ethnic groups," referring to local Afro-Caribbean communities. "We treat each other really badly, but that too is because of a lack of effective education models and of rigor in recognizing ourselves ethnically."

David Rodríguez is a gay man born in Uribia, called the indigenous capital of Colombia. Many of the Wayuu, the native people of the Guajira peninsula and kinsmen of Rodríguez, live in this district, and it was not easy for him to live out his sexual orientation. He says "for indigenous people the homosexual or LGBT person generally does not exist. He is considered an aberration." Read more via World Crunch