By the Lohana Berkins Collective , we, transvestites/trans people/Indigenous women/Indian women/Muxes/Weyes/Black women/Afro-descendants, from Latin America and the Caribbean, our Abya Yala, declare today, # 8M : Our average life expectancy is 32 years, and the reasons for all our deaths are preventable. We are far from being able to go on strike; we have no jobs where our absence is felt. We are not considered equal to men and women. Our deaths are the responsibility of all states and all nations, all societies and cultures. Our deaths occur within all their institutions: family, religion, academia—and we emphasize the legal and medical-psychiatric institutions—healthcare, and security. Our deaths happen and are silenced in all social movements: workers, peasants, women, Indigenous people, migrants, working class, all unions, and all political parties. Our deaths are denied and covered up by all human rights organizations, and even animal rights are a way of avoiding talking about them. The United Nations insults us constantly with the Yogyakarta Principles, which remain a dead letter to this day. As active victims, we cling to the hope of an accelerated change in the status quo, but we work with reality; we live in this reality. And that is why we see it as fruitless in the short term to speak to the lurking killers and simply ask them not to kill us. Speaking to a state is difficult when we are just a handful of those who have any means, and what little we have gained is denied, thrown away, annulled, shelved.

A feminism that transcends biology

We want to speak to society, to the Women's Movement, and to feminism: to society so that it knows that the intention is to repair broken pacts and bonds, as Maite Amaya (an anarchist transvestite from Córdoba) said, “My body is no longer digging tunnels, but building bridges!” We are aware of the uneven progress made by society, but these are only small steps. We are aware of all the active and growing connections with the Women's Movement and of everything learned and created as vital and powerful strategies and connections in sisterhood with the feminist movement. In everything, we must continue building and contributing to see another humanity flourish. We will not achieve this by hiding reality. We will not be able to advance toward new, loving, and constructive relational forms through denial and silence, starting with an embrace, above all, of women and the Movement. Feminism is what we express: We want a FEMINISM as a political articulation of sisterhood that transcends biology, that addresses class, ethnicity, and the emerging genocide being perpetrated against our trans and gender-diverse bodies. There is a murderous social action underway, but it originates in social discourse and is carried out through the systematic persecution by state security forces, the failure of the courts to administer justice, and the lack of legislation that is consistent with protecting life and providing the resources to address it.

Our children are at risk

We want a FEMINISM that recognizes us as producers of labor and breadwinners, producers of knowledge, and consequently opens its funding lines so we can be managers, not just a target population; a FEMINISM that doesn't render us invisible. We will be allies of that FEMINISM that speaks for everyone and aspires to change this world. We want a Women's Movement that, before resorting to moralizing, acknowledges our at-risk childhoods, where between the ages of 8 and 13 we assume our identity and end up on the streets, in prostitution, experiencing violence and abandonment. We want daughters and sons who are also the product of heterosexual failure in the face of motherhood and fatherhood. We want them to work consciously and see that the battlefield is in the homes they build day after day. We want them to accept that it is they—mothers, educators, doctors, reporters, public servants, businesswomen—who allow fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers, friends, and neighbors to lay their disgusting and violent hands on our bodies. To date, only one mother is visible in our defense, Gabriela Mansilla, who fights for the rights of her daughter Luana; not an organization or movement, just one mother.

Education from a Diversity Perspective

We demand responsibility and commitment. We demand that they acknowledge and take responsibility for the trans genocide. We demand a framework law that frees us from hatred, just as it protects the Jewish community after the Holocaust and the Afro-descendant community after slavery, and as it protects those detained and disappeared by the Argentine military dictatorship. We demand its approval this year, with deadlines so that it is fully effective by 2025. We demand a Compensation Law for the victims of the systematic persecution of trans people by the State, perpetrated by Provincial and National police forces, for imprisonment, abuse, torture and rape, extortion, physical and psychological trauma, and the theft of our childhood and youth. We demand education that embraces diversity in primary and secondary schools and universities; our experiences are not only sexual but also relational. It is men and women who reduce our relationships to the purely genital and mechanical. We want parity laws created, reviewed, and adapted to ensure 33% men, 33% women, and 33% trans people. We want parity in labor, unions, and political party representation. We want comprehensive programs that prioritize our access to housing and credit. We want a National Trans Council to manage its own budget, independent of the government elected by men and women. We want nursing homes designed by us to guarantee dignified treatment. We want quotas and incentives in public and private universities. We want an effective anti-discrimination law, regulated and with monetary penalties. We want to defend childhood and the future. We want an immediate end to genital mutilation without the consent of intersex babies. You owe us life, time, and love. We want to be repaid, and the paltry gesture of appearing alongside you in a photo of plurality doesn't save lives, doesn't feed hunger, and doesn't offer solace after heartbreak. We are transvestites and trans people, love us as transvestites and trans people, let's build, educate, and dream of a world without violence, and let's act for that dream. The engine of change is Love. JUSTICE FOR DIANA SACAYAN! IT WAS A TRANS GENDER MURDER! ENOUGH of Fear, ENOUGH of Transvesticide and Femicide. ENOUGH of Hetero-Winca Patriarchy #NotOneMoreTransWoman #NotOneLess.]]>