With fictional names, real details, and settings, * Fichados: Crónicas de amores clandestinos* (Fichados: Chronicles of Clandestine Loves) recovers silenced stories and recounts the cruelty and persecution of the Buenos Aires police intelligence services against the LGBTQ+ community. Its author, Cristian Prieto, works at the Provincial Commission for Memory. Pending and ongoing debates: LGBTQ+ memories, repression, and disappearances. By María Mansilla. Photos: by the author, Manuela Pez / Cover image: Helen Zout and Cristian Prieto. Exhibitions: L*s Otr*s, Provincial Commission for Memory . Cristian Prieto is a journalist and works at the Provincial Commission for Memory . This organization, created in 2000, was assigned to safeguard the files of the Intelligence Division of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police (DIPBA), which operated between 1957 and 1998. Although these materials have not been fully declassified and digitized in these 17 years due to their sheer volume, they have served as evidence to demonstrate—among many other things—that the last dictatorship spied on and persecuted not only people's student, social, political, and union activities, but also their private lives and sexual orientation. "I would find situations, people, places, and from there, I'd get a real shock," says Prieto. Because of having such material in his hands, his activism in the LGBT community, and also influenced by the revelations he found in * Fiestas, baños y exilios. Los gays porteños en la última dictadura* (Sudamericana, 2001), by Alejandro Modarelli and Flavio Rapisardi, he wanted to delve deeper into the subject. "Fichados, Crónicas de amores clandestinos " (Pixel Publishing, Perfectos atentados series) is the title of her undergraduate thesis in Social Communication, which she completed at the National University of La Plata (UNLP). Her research sought to investigate the police and institutional narrative that claimed gays, lesbians, and trans people had not been persecuted. To her surprise—Prieto writes in the prologue—she found pages upon pages that linked sexual orientation with morality.

[READ MORE: “The LGBTI struggle is also part of Memory, Truth and Justice”]

"We are called sexually immoral, pedophiles, homosexuals, effeminate, haggard, transsexuals, and butch women. Persecution, espionage, and surveillance were also verbs used to target 'crazy' people throughout the entire period of intelligence service existence (1957-1998). Clearly..." We were not the primary target of the last military dictatorship to be exterminated, but we were spied on from the beginning to the end of the intelligence service's activity.With democratic governments, with dictatorships, with or without edicts that penalized us: only to straighten us out or to avoid being the rotten fruit that invites others to rot with us."

 Fantasy names, real-life settings

Signed It consists of three fictionalized stories to understand the cruelty of State Terrorism towards people because of their sexual orientation. The names are fictional, says Prieto. But the La Plata settings, the atmosphere, the forms, the shadows, are not. One of these stories takes place in the 1960s, before the enactment of the contravention edict. Another, during the last military dictatorship. And the third in the 1980s. At times Signed It takes your breath away, like any good love story. Even more so when it's about love interrupted by informants, police, and neighbors acting as spies. Cristian Prieto's commentary cools things down, pulls readers out of their idyll, and reminds them that it's non-fiction when the police transcripts appear.

– Fichados intersperses love stories with direct, unequivocal quotes from police files. Why did you choose this style that combines narrative with denunciation?

When we were debating how to build an LGBT collective memory, we wondered if we should follow the same path as traditional human rights organizations. But in our cases, who would speak out for the trans women raped in clandestine detention centers? Or for the gay men arrested by police edicts? No one. Because there was always so much shame about having these sons and daughters. We also wouldn't have had almost any sources. Nor any kind of support from the State. That's why we understood that the path had to go hand in hand with art, with literature. Just as we've also built diversity through humor.

Unresolved debates and disappearances that do not cease

Prieto says the sexual dissidence movement owes itself "more interesting" debates. And that one of them involves "deconstructing the Nunca Más report." "One piece of evidence we have is the interview Carlos Jáuregui conducted with Rabbi Marshall Meyer, who was part of the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP). The rabbi tells him that there were 400 missing homosexuals, but that due to pressure from the Church, which was part of CONADEP, it was decided not to publish that section. We also think that many of those cases are included in other chapters of Nunca Más. Because: how can we report that there were 400, if there is an impossibility not only of finding sources but also of obtaining testimonies? How can we know if someone was disappeared because of an edict or because of their political activism? On this point, we owe ourselves a more interesting discussion. The issue remains relevant because trans women continue to disappear, and hate crimes are commonplace."

Confessional: "I don't believe in coming out of the closet"

In his research, Prieto also found himself mentioned in the Buenos Aires Provincial Police intelligence files. He was born in Bahía Blanca, where he spent his childhood and adolescence. It wasn't until he was 16 that he learned his Chilean parents hadn't come to that city seeking a better life, but as exiles. His father had been detained in the National Stadium of Chile. After finishing high school, he moved to La Plata to study Communication at the Faculty of Journalism. "I never sat my parents down and told them I was gay. For me, the obvious isn't something you ask about. I did tell them at some point that I was moving in with Leo, for example, and that maybe if they called, he'd answer. I tried to keep my sexuality as just that, and not a confessional. And for me, coming from a Salesian school and being involved in Christian activism since adolescence, everything felt like a confessional. I don't believe in this whole 'coming out of the closet' thing; I don't agree with the term. There's a compulsive feeling that says you absolutely have to come out," he says. Fichados was presented on Friday, August 4th at the Centro Cultural de la Cooperación (Buenos Aires). It will soon be a free book and available for anyone to download.