Community Leaders Christina Herrera and Khloe Rios-Wyatt Look out for TransLatinx

Trans people don’t always cross national borders, but they certainly cross social ones. Community leaders Christina Herrera and Khloe Rios-Wyatt, featured on the latest episode of LATV’s RoyalT, have crossed both. 

“Trans people are social migrants,” host Queen Victoria says on the show. “We may not cross borders, but we affirm our gender, right? And people give us the same thing: discrimination, stigma, and obstacles.”

These overlapping immigrant and trans identities inform how Herrera and Rios-Wyatt show up for their community. 

Originally from México, Rios-Wyatt arrived in Southern California at eleven-years-old alongside her mother, seeking better opportunities. As a resident of Orange County, where politics point conservative and demographics lean white, she has experienced anti-Latino prejudice firsthand.

“There’s still a lot of stigma towards Brown people, and not being able to communicate in English makes it really hard,” Rios-Wyatt says. “In Orange County, especially as you move toward the coast, there’s a lot of hate against people who look like us, who are Brown, who speak Spanish, who are not necessarily representative of the community who lives there.”

Herrera’s story mirrors Rios-Wyatt’s. Originally from El Salvador, she moved to the New York City area at ten-years-old. When it comes to her trans identity, she refuses to be made invisible, despite anti-trans efforts to keep her story and stories like hers out of the textbooks.

“Historically, we haven’t been taken care of,” Herrera says, “[so] it’s good that our community is there to look out for us.”

As CEO and founder of TransLatinx Network, Herrera cultivates space and offers services that empower and organize the transgender immigrant community in New York. Since its launch in 2007, the organization has been recognized by the NYC Council, the Department of Health, and the AIDS institute.

Rios-Wyatt is committed to similar work on the West Coast.

“As a community, as you know, we’re very resilient,” Rios-Wyatt says, “and we always look for ways to live and survive in a place where, even though there’s tons of hate, we still find a way to love each other and embrace each other.”

Rios-Wyatt launched Alianza Translatinx as a tool to turn that love into education services, social justice work, and community empowerment. As CEO and co-founder, she’s helped build up the organization from scratch, and serves as a voice for the trans and immigrant communities in her county. 

When it comes to funding, Herrera and her team consistently seek out individuals and corporations interested in uplifting the social work TransLatinx Network brings to the New York queer community and beyond.

“I try to do my homework,” Herrera says. “I find possible historical information about their commitments to different social causes. I focus on the strengths of the individual, the company, the institution, and then I go from there.”

In Southern California, Rios-Wyatt utilizes community data to drive the need for investment.

“That’s really important when we’re looking for funding,” Rios-Wyatt adds, “to show that there’s a need, and I think that’s what we’re doing in Orange County. We’re really focusing on creating data and collecting information from our community so that we can continue to find these pockets of funding [so that we can] continue to create programs and services.”

Despite barriers standing in their way of success, both Christina Herrera and Khloe Rios-Wyatt cleared a path for themselves in this country—and did it successfully.

For Herrera, it’s been a dream come true.

“I’m not just creating a safety net for myself, [making a] safe haven for my future, but also for [the] community,” Herrera says.

For Rios-Wyatt, it’s given her journey purpose.

“As an immigrant person, as a DACA recipient, I hadn’t been back to Mexico in over 22 years,” Rios-Wyatt says. “I felt like I was encaged. Because of that trauma of not seeing my family, not being able to get out even though I was contributing to this country, is really what made me want to start an organization … not just for trans people, but for immigrant community members who are still battling and facing immigration processes.”

From Queen Victoria’s view, we must explore the duality that exists when you are a member of two (or more) minority communities.

You should not have to “simplify” who we are. You should never have to choose which part of your identity you’re fighting for. These intersections of culture within individuals create nuanced perspectives, break stereotypes, and harness the power to unify peoples. 

“It’s propagated that immigrants come here to take resources, yet here we have two trans immigrant women [who] are giving back to their community and creating resources,” Queen Victoria says.

For the full conversation with Queen Victoria, Christina Herrera, and Khloe Rios-Wyatt, check out the full episode of RoyalT on the LATV+ app.