Theme: Violence & Oppression

By executive order, Argentina’s national government outlaws access to trans-specific healthcare for children and youth under 18, including those who had already been prescribed hormones and puberty blockers.

Various cities across Argentina hold massive anti-racist and anti-fascist pride protests in response to President Javier Milei’s homophobic and transphobic speech at the World Economic Forum.

For the first time, an Argentine trans woman is made legally eligible for economic reparations granted to those arrested for political activism during the nation’s last military dictatorship (1976-1983). This recognition explicitly names the ways that trans or travesti identity was seen as “subversive” and a menace to national security.

In April 2022, a federal judge issues an indictment against police and military officials for kidnapping, torturing, and sexually abusing travesti and trans people at the Pozo de Banfield clandestine detention center. It was the first time an Argentine court recognized the dictatorship’s persecution of travestis and trans people as a systematic, state-organized crime against humanity.

In late June, coinciding with the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, activists hold the first annual protest against travesticide (travesti genocide) in Buenos Aires. The demonstration honors travesti leader, Diana Sacayán, who was killed in her home the previous year. The specific focus on travesticide calls attention to the murders of travestis as well as poor living conditions like a lack of housing and healthcare.

Trans and travesti organizations in Buenos Aires joined a coalition against a legislative reform that expanded police power over public space, including a ban on soliciting sex within 200 meters of homes, schools, or religious buildings. The coalition, called Coordinadora contra el Código Contravencional, also included gay, lesbian, and feminist organizations, sex workers, students, left-wing parties, the unemployed workers’ movement, and street vendors (all groups that were similarly targeted by the reform’s other provisions). Despite public hearings and protests, the reform passed in 2004. Nevertheless, this formed a continuation of coalitional work that strengthened in future years.

The city of Buenos Aires prohibits the solicitation of sex in public spaces if it “disturbed the public peace”. The 1996 repeal of the police edicts legalized sex work, and this prohibition re-criminalized sex work by leaving open what police considered a “disturbance”. In 1999, all sex work was once again criminalized. In 2004, it was re-legalized but prohibited in proximity to certain public spaces such as homes, schools, and religious buildings. At each turn, these laws have been disproportionately used to target trans women and travestis.

In Argentina, three activists found Travestis Unidas (United Travestis). They aimed to put police targeting of their community on the public agenda. The group joined Buenos Aires’s second Gay-Lesbian Pride March the following year, and its members also appeared on several television shows with massive audiences to make that persecution visible to a national public.

The first travesti protest in Argentina is held in Buenos Aires’ central square and is attended by around twenty people. Travesti is a feminine gender identity specific to parts of South America. The demonstration occurred after several sex workers of this community were killed by police along the Panamericana highway. The number of protesters grew and eventually came to organize a larger protest as the Frente de Travestis (Travesti Front).