Silvia Delfino, an academic, analyzes how the struggles of the human rights movement and LGBTQ+ collectives are intertwined. She reflects on the construction of memory and the lack of visibility of testimonies regarding state terrorism repression against the LGBTQ+ population. By Silvia Delfino* Photo: Ariel Gutraich In Argentina and Latin America, LGBTQ+ rights movements are inscribed within the struggles against repression on our continent. This is a unique characteristic of these movements compared to the rest of the world. When historicizing dictatorship and genocide, there is an important distinction—one that Flavio Rapisardi (LGBTI activist and PhD in Communication) always mentions when discussing the clandestine struggles of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and travesti people. Unlike in the United States or Europe, LGBTQ+ movements highlight something specific to our region: that repression and exclusion not only produce poverty but also political proscription. Codes of minor offenses and misdemeanors, police edicts, are some of the ways in which a conservative liberal state seeks to dismantle forms of political organization. While in other parts of the world the rights of LGBTI people are experienced as demands for individual freedoms, in Argentina and Latin America they are rights against repression and exclusion. We fight for collective emancipation. Since 2003, the Argentine State has recognized the demands sustained for years by the human rights movement by acknowledging its responsibility in the planning of the genocide. The struggle of LGBTI people is also part of this process of Memory, Truth, and Justice; it is part of the struggle of the 30,000 disappeared.

"The testimonies reveal the repression of LGBTI people"

In the trials for crimes against humanity taking place in various courts in Argentina, testimonies reveal the repression of LGBTI people. This information emerges daily, but the process of Memory, Truth, and Justice is very complex. And there is still progress to be made in making it visible. It was also very complex to bring to light issues such as rape and sexual violence in torture and extermination centers, the degrading treatment of women—acts that had their own specific characteristics and were not simply practices subsumed under torture. It is a task we have. What is heard in the trials does not yet have the full scope it could, but this memory is being created. testimony of Valeria del Mar Ramírez (The first trans woman to receive her legally corrected identity document), who was kidnapped twice and tortured at the Banfield Detention Center, demonstrates how persecution was part of the degrading treatment of the trans community under the dictatorship. She suffered a double denial: not only police persecution but also being held in a completely clandestine location. This is why it is so important to raise awareness of gender violence and the moral and sexual panic surrounding it, as well as the specific repressive actions against non-heteronormative sexualities, which are based, among other things, on the construction of the figure of the internal enemy and also on the criminalization of forms of political organization. Today, the persecution of trans people, which was previously carried out through municipal codes or edicts (for example, against wearing clothing that does not correspond to one's biological sex), is being shifted to the Narcotics Law. At the International Women's March on March 8th (#8M), one of the strategies used for the repression that took place hours later was to claim that neighbors had complained about drug dealers on a street corner, when it was clearly a case of persecution that combined identifying the women as having participated in a march with gender discrimination. And just as the struggles for human rights were embedded in regional struggles, so too was repression: for example, Operation Condor. The fight for Memory, Truth, and Justice has always been regional and territorial. Because repression is never exceptional but rather planned, accompanying a specific state and economic model. Neoconservatism appeals to a common sense in which discrimination, proclaimed by the state itself, implicates common sense in inciting violence against these groups. We see this in the United States with Donald Trump, for example, with his denigrating statements against trans people and migrants. Or when Mauricio Macri called for "a prison for migrants." That is why LGBTI movements place so much emphasis on making visible the planned repression and the construction of representations where collectives appear "enabled" or "disabled" for communal life.

"There is no single, homogeneous, and stable identity."

This is the case with the notion of gender identity, as the women who championed that law said, and with marriage equality; they change everything, because the identity of the nation is different. Achieving full citizenship is not just about removing obstacles but about changing collective history. And there is no single, homogeneous, and stable identity, but rather an identity built through shared practices and struggles. Similarly, the struggles for the recovery of the identity of babies, girls, and boys who were appropriated are articulated through collective identity. Mothers and Grandmothers never asserted a right to identity recovery in isolation, nor in terms of patriarchy or family: it was—it is—about recovering history. The history we built together. The history we heard in court. Children raise the issue of recovering or knowing their identity, which was neither a simple nor instantaneous moment. Just as it isn't for a trans person who changes their name. It is about the recognition by the State and the Justice system that all people have the right to a complex identity built through collective struggles.   *Silvia Delfino She holds a degree in Literature (University of Buenos Aires (UBA)), is a member of the Argentine League for Human Rights and the Argentine Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Trans (FALGBT). She teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses at UBA, the National University of Entre Ríos, and the National University of La Plata.

Follow Presentes:

Twitter @PresentesTLGBI

]]>