Photo: @festivxldiversidad The now legendary Festivxl de la Diversidad (Festivxl Diversity Festival), which raises its voice against the stigmatization and persecution of the Mapuche people in southern Argentina, and against violence against dissident bodies, kicks off today in El Bolsón and continues until Saturday, January 6. Marlene Wayar, Susy Shock, Sudor Marika, Dani Umpi, and Kumbia Queers are some of the artists who lend their bodies and voices to this celebration of dissident, cultural, and political resistance. “It’s a grassroots festival in a territory where two young men (Santiago Maldonado and Rafael Nahuel) have died defending the cause of the Mapuche people,” Analía Pavicich, one of the organizers, told Presentes. Last year, the focus was on the environment in response to the threat of a real estate development in Pampa de Ludden. For this, its tenth edition, the organizers expect around 1,000 people to arrive at this emblematic location in Patagonia, from various parts of Latin America. There are workshops, talks, open radio broadcasts, and concerts, in a space that celebrates a decade with the motto: “Cultural, political, dissident, and in resistance.” For some years now, the festival has stopped being called the Festival of Sexual Diversity and has become simply the Festival of Diversity. A way of broadening its scope. “It was always a festival of embrace, feminist, to spread new ways of relating affectionately. But we are not experiencing a moment of expansion. We are in a context of regression in rights and repression. Many dissident causes converge here, in addition to the sexual one. Reality is showing us a different scenario than the one we imagined,” said Analía. The Diversx Festival is a self-managed project. “It’s made out of a desire to touch that nerve so that people can feel that there is another. Because there is a construction of otherness as an enemy that has to do with the fear of the capitalist system. We have to work on many bonds at a social level, and this festival is about that,” said the organizer.

[READ ALSO: Kumbia Queers: “We must educate for diversity, accept and celebrate differences”]

Programming

The trans summit kicks off today at 11:00 AM at the Community Integration Center (CIC), followed by a welcome bonfire gathering for everyone. Historical activists such as Marlene Wayar and Susy Shock will be among the speakers.

[READ ALSO: Susy Shock: “All failures are due to upholding the binary”]

The music will be provided by Dani Umpi, Kumbia Queers and Sudor Marika among other artists.

[READ ALSO: Sudor Marika: the band that brings cumbia to the LGBTI struggles]

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