By Nikita Shepard
When you meet Lea Córdova, MA, MS, you don’t know what is more astonishing: the action-packed life she has lived as a Latina trans health advocate, or the fact that this irrepressible dynamo is in fact 76 years old.
Lea and I have seen each other at LGBTQ and activist events around North Carolina for many years, and I’ve come to admire her as one of my elders. I caught up with her on a sunny September afternoon, shortly after she’d returned from a two-week trip to the Philadelphia Trans Health Conference and the GLMA Annual Conference on LGBT Health. “They were fantastic!” she reports with infectious energy.
She claims to have retired years ago, but as far as I can tell, she has more jobs, organizations, and involvements than someone half her age could reasonably maintain. Her determined advocacy has immeasurably impacted the landscape of trans healthcare, on the local level and far beyond. From educating future providers to consulting with clinics to connecting newly out community members to services to designing better policies, no aspect of promoting LGBTQ community wellness escapes her.
Yet beyond being a powerhouse activist and mentor to many younger people in trans and Latina communities today, her story offers an inspiring example of how heartbreak and exile can grow into resistance and transformation.
Her journey began many years ago in Chile, during years of political change and tension. During pregnancy, her mother took a medicine intended to prevent miscarriages called DES; research has since linked pre-natal exposure to this synthetic estrogen with transgender, transsexual, and intersex identity. Since she was nine or 10 years old, she knew that she identified as a woman, but didn’t know where to turn for support. At 17, she reached out to a professor, who arranged for a psychological assessment. “You have to keep it under wraps,” the psychologist told her. “In this Catholic country, there’s no place for you.”
That was in 1958. Apart from the woman who would become her wife and a few girlfriends, she never disclosed her gender identity; she felt she had to keep things “hush-hush” to continue with her education and career.
And in that respect, her life developed impressively. By 1968, she was serving as the president of the student body at her school during a year of educational reforms. In the early 1970s, under the newly elected leftist regime of Salvador Allende, the Chilean government funded an exciting marine biology project, researching the life cycles of sea creatures that formed an integral part of the coastal ecology and the diet of the nation. Splitting her time between labs in Valparaiso and Santiago, Córdova—not yet Lea—was studying in a lively scientific community, raising a daughter, and making plans for the future.
Until everything changed. On September 11, 1973, a right-wing military coup installed General Augusto Pinochet as dictator, which he would remain for 17 bloody years. Activists and dissidents were targeted, and over 3,000 would disappear into the hands of security forces, never to return. The head of her lab was arrested, tortured, and detained in a concentration camp for six months before managing to obtain a visa to Sweden and fleeing the country. The marine biology project, which had included many politically active professors, was totally decimated. Within months, less than half of the teachers remained at the Faculty of Sciences in Santiago. At great risk, the few surviving professors organized a clandestine meeting, where they told the students, “You have to go. We can’t teach you anymore.”
As a student with a history of political activism, Córdova was terrified. Her wife wrote to a former professor in the United States, who then headed the program in cell biology at Duke University. Miraculously, they managed to secure temporary positions in an academic lab at Duke, and in April 1974, they fled Chile for good, arriving in Durham with a single suitcase to rebuild their lives.
But Córdova’s journey was only just beginning. Since she had not finished her studies in Chile, she applied to UNC-Chapel Hill and was accepted into graduate school, where from 1975 to 1984 she managed to earn two master’s degrees in physics and physical oceanography. Upon arriving in the country, her first step was to visit the medical library and read everything she could get her hands on about sex, gender, and trans identities. In the late 1980s, she tentatively reached out to a group of lesbian women at Duke, who offered support. “They were my natural allies,” she recalls. “I was woman-identified, and I like women!” After 20 years of living and working in the United States, she decided that she could no longer deny who she was, and separated from her former wife to begin transitioning in 1995. When she first saw a doctor to discuss transgender health, she was 53 years old.
And so Lea was reborn. As she sought support in the university where she worked and in the broader community, she began to identify problems and gaps in services. Before retiring, she joined Duke’s LGBT Task Force, working with students and faculty to develop affirming policies for the university. This year, the group finally won a 10-year battle to compel the board of trustees to include “gender presentation” in their anti-discrimination policy; they had been willing to include “gender identity, because it’s in the DSM, so it’s respectable. But presentation is something they don’t have control over!”
While working as an IT manager at the School of Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill, Lea became interested in health disparities, auditing classes and attending seminars to learn more. Four years ago, she was invited to join the School of Medicine’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion, leading her to take part in the Sex and Gender Advisory Council and the Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council. Soon, she’ll be part of the team teaching the school’s first course in LGBT health to first-year medical students—a class originally requested by the gay and lesbian medical student group.
Her experience as a Latina immigrant also informs her advocacy work. She facilitated a support group for Latina trans women at El Centro Hispano in Durham, and has translated critical materials into Spanish to make the trans clinic programs where she volunteers more widely accessible. In addition, she has facilitated the Durham Gender Alliance, a community-based trans support group, since 2008.
For trans communities in the South today, Lea believes that, “Respect and education are the main problem.” According to the 2015 trans health survey conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality, she points out, 40 percent of trans-identified respondents had attempted suicide. “And in North Carolina,” she argues, “it’s even worse, because of the HB2 law,” which dehumanizes trans people further and forces us to fight for gender-free bathrooms. She’s encouraged by the efforts she sees by the LGBTQ student group at Duke, which has compiled and circulated lists of all the gender-neutral bathrooms on campus while advocating for shifts in policies.
Still, serious problems persist. In Durham alone, she estimates that there are at least 40 to 80 homeless trans youth who’ve faced rejection by their families of origin after coming out. “People are rejected for jobs, have trouble finding doctors. The trans community has high rates of poverty, STDs, HIV/AIDS…So there’s a lot to do.”
Some of the most encouraging changes are taking place in the realm of healthcare, a critical first step for a community to flourish. Particularly exciting is a fully-staffed clinic specifically for young trans-identified children that now exists at Duke, which, over the past two years, has expanded from once a month to twice weekly—and is booked solid weeks ahead. Volunteering there as a patient navigator, she gushes, “is the most wonderful thing that I could ever think I was going to do.” She mostly ends up talking to the parents, “because the kids already know everything…Well, almost everything!”
While young kids with supportive families are having an easier time, she worries about early adolescents, kids in middle school who need a place to explore their identities at a critical time in their development. “We need QSAs [Queer-Straight Alliances] not just in high school, but in middle schools, too. This is an urgent need,” she says.
To young trans folks in the South, she advises, “First, find your family. It’s essential to have support. And hang in there, ’cause it’s going to happen. It does get better.”
Things are definitely changing. While she transitioned relatively late in life, she appreciates the young people she works with on the cutting edge of LGBTQ community health advocacy. “I go to the Philly Trans Health Conference every year,” she remarks wryly, “and I’m always surprised at the new species that appear.”
Over the course of her long life, Lea has seen the number of resources available to trans people grow exponentially, both benefiting from them and taking an active role in expanding them. “I’m really grateful that I’ve been able to do all this at this time in my life,” she reflects. “I feel that I have arrived.”
“I plan to continue doing it until I die.” She pauses, and smiles. “And I’m in good health. I have many years ahead of me.”
