In the last few hours, the LGBTIQ+ community and activism in Chile have been plunged into sadness following the news of the death of Luis Larraín, a prominent activist and founder of the Iguales Foundation.
Larraín lost his life due to aggressive cancer, an illness that he had publicly announced in January after undergoing various medical checkups.
Luis Larraín, a civil engineer by profession, was a fundamental pillar in the fight for equal rights and non-discrimination of sexual and gender diversity in Chile. More than a decade ago, together with the writer Pablo Simonetti and the lawyer Antonio Bascuñán, Larraín conceived the idea of creating the Iguales Foundation, an organization that has become one of the main defenders and articulators of the LGBTI+ community in the country.
The Iguales Foundation issued a statement expressing its regret for the loss of its founder. In the statement, they highlighted “in the case of Luis, his activism and the health problems that he had to face throughout his life are closely related. While he created Fundación Iguales, he was recovering from his first kidney transplanta product of polycystic kidney disease, diagnosed in 2005″, they maintained.
They reported that “two years later, in July 2013, assumed the presidency of the foundation, despite the fact that he had been undergoing dialysis for about a year. The same year in which we celebrated the promulgation of the Civil Union Agreement (2015), work in which Luis was fundamental, he received his second kidney transplant.”
The Fundación Iguales statement highlights Larraín’s virtues, such as his drive, intelligence and vital transparency, which defined him as a person. His experience in the fight against chronic diseases became an additional cause that he embraced with the same determination with which he approached the defense of LGBTI + rights.
