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Photos: Personal archive, Mati Magnano (opening) and FOB

She faced her struggles head-on. Standing nearly six feet tall, with a muscular physique and courage forged in the streets and in prison, she never hesitated to confront the police at a march or rescue a trans comrade from the station. With her olive skin, large eyes, full lips, and dazzling smile, her Afro hair dyed in a variety of colors, and a rock-inspired look not lacking in glamour, she would have easily passed the audition to accompany Mad Max, the Road Warrior— then some. A libertarian version, of course. That was Maite Amaya: a warrior and a libertarian, as described by those who, in these moments, are at a loss for what to do. Her immune system, weakened by HIV, couldn't stop the virus that infiltrated her digestive system, and after several days in the hospital, it took her. At 7 a.m. on Tuesday, she passed away at the Rawson Provincial Hospital, where a silent crowd awaited the outcome. “Our first political figure, both of organized anarchism and of the popular field,” her comrades from the Federation of Base Organizations (FOB) Regional Córdoba defined her, as they bid her farewell “with deep sadness and pain.”

Dissident butterfly

Born 36 years ago into a working-class family in the Argüello neighborhood, north of the city of Córdoba, since changing her name from Juan Matías to Maite in her teens, she has traveled many revolutionary roads: the cause of LGBT rights, “feminisms” – as she liked to say – and anti-capitalism; the denunciation of human rights violations in prisons and the persecution of sex workers; the piquetero, villera and anarchist struggles. Maite lived in the Kasa Karakol in the General Paz neighborhood, headquarters of the FOB and epicenter of libertarian militancy in Córdoba, where she acted as a supportive hostess to anyone who needed shelter or came to Córdoba to spread awareness of a people's struggle, such as those of the Zapatistas, relatives of the students disappeared in Ayotzinapa or the Kurdish guerrilla ("Feminist warrior, sistered with internationalist struggles. Dissident butterfly," says the statement published at http://kurdistanamericalatina.org ).

An indomitable fighter

Hundreds of people from various groups gathered yesterday at La Floresta Cemetery Park, on the road to Alta Gracia, to bid her farewell with poems and songs. On their way back to Córdoba, they celebrated her memory until nightfall with a tribute to Pachamama at her home, Kasa Karakol. “We are devastated. My daughters grew up with her,” her friend and fellow activist Natalia Di Marco told Presentes . “I’ve known her since she was active in Las Histéricas, Las Mufas, and Las Otras, the first feminist group where trans women participated. As a fighter, Maite was boundless,” Natalia added. Her daughter, Mica Fernández Di Marco, wrote on Facebook: “Maite embodies everything that must be brought to the forefront of the struggle: joy, companionship, the knowledge built through collective activism and shared with us. Rage and concrete, direct action against injustice, pointing out those responsible, clearly identifying the enemy, always fighting back.”

'Let the purists toughen up!'

For Flor Weiss, with whom she shared several spaces of struggle, Maite “was a force of nature, tirelessly campaigning in the most marginalized and violated areas of our society. And she wasn't just a social role model and natural leader, but she was deeply committed to each family. She was a pillar of support for the mothers whose sons or daughters were murdered by the police.” Laura Vilches, a legislator for the Socialist Workers' Party (PTS), met her at the Coordinating Committee for Justice for Natalia “Pepa” Gaitán, a young woman murdered in March 2010 by her girlfriend's stepfather. “At first we argued a lot because Maite was very anti-party, she considered them patriarchal and hierarchical,” she recalls, “but we agreed on defending the living conditions of trans people, on anti-capitalism, and on internationalism. Then, when I was arrested during the fight against Law 8.113 (the provincial education law), our shared fury against the police finally brought us together. When I got out of jail, she was there. I’ll never forget her hug. Even though she was an anarchist, when I took my seat in Congress she sent me a very warm message that ended with this phrase: ‘Let the purists get what’s coming to them!’ She was a wonderful person.”

“I demand to be a transvestite”

One of Maite's great loves was Laura Pilleri , the trans woman who came to terms with her gender identity while in one of the five prisons where Maite accompanied her: “We registered as a lesbian couple. So, as her partner, I could stay with her in jail on weekends,” she recounted in an interview for the exhibition * La Condesa. Nadie sabe lo que puede un cuerpo* (The Countess. Nobody Knows What a Body Can Do ). There, she also explained that “if we live in a society that is controlled to the maximum, totally alienated, punished, and monitored, imagine what prison is like. It's a small slice of the pie that reveals this oppression, and all the power and impunity they have to respond to an act of rebellion.” In one of the interviews for this project, Maite also speaks about AIDS and death: “I don't take medication, so I don't have a primary care physician and I haven't had any tests done since then. So, supposedly, I should already be dead. But nobody knows when they're going to be dead. And we're all going to be dead, whether some of us like it or not.” The doctor and journalist Marcos Ordóñez interviewed her for his program Cimientos. Educar en salud (Foundations: Educating in Health) , before the Gender Identity Law was passed in 2012. Marcos remembers her as having “a kind and sincere face, with gestures that fluctuated between firmness and tenderness, depending on the situation. With a virtuoso critical sense and the ability to deconstruct any certainty, she constantly challenged ideas and culture, even with herself. She was a combination of grassroots activism and intellectual pursuit. Faced with conformist positions, she doubled down. She transformed any space that evidenced injustices and inequalities into a battleground. Be it bodies, streets, slums, or neighborhoods. She left us perhaps when we needed her most.”

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In that program, Maite questioned: “Where are the solutions to the problems raised as the basis for the law? They don't exist. If the paradigms of existence are changed and the violence against trans, transvestite, transsexual, and transgender people for accessing a name ends, I say that of all the violence I have suffered and continue to suffer daily, at no point am I asked for documentation to prove whether I deserve the violence I receive or not. I receive it anyway (…) If I identify as a transvestite today, it has to do with a political stance of listing another category that tends to question the binary way of interpreting bodies (…) I demand recognition of the transvestite category as a possible femininity.”
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