By Lucas Gutiérrez. On Saturday, March 24, Matías Villalba and Ariel Croce were attacked by two men as they arrived at the General Roca train station in Quilmes. It was approximately 7:00 a.m. The couple were walking hand in hand after spending the night at a party with friends. “We were arriving at the train station to go back to my house in Lanús. It was in Irigoyen Square when two men appeared and attacked us. They started following us, insulting us, and throwing beer down our backs,” Ariel told Presentes. “When one of them responded, the attackers punched Ariel in the face, knocked him to the ground, and started kicking him. Matías intervened, and they also hit him; as a result, he still has a hemorrhage in his eye,” Ariel said.

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Battered and bleeding, Matías and Ariel approached the Quilmes train station to ask for help. They recounted that the employee at the counter asked them to move because “there were people trying to top up their SUBE cards.” The couple said that at that hour there was only one other person. “The employee called the company's security personnel who, along with a police officer, asked us to leave the station because, according to them, we were causing a disturbance,” Ariel said. He added: “We were only asking for assistance and what we received was indifference.” While the attackers were still in the area, the couple called 911. The young people said they made more than 15 calls. “We wanted it on record that we were calling from the Quilmes station because something urgent had happened. After more than an hour, a patrol car arrived, asked us a few questions, and left saying they couldn't do anything,” they recounted.

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Then they called a relative to come pick them up. They waited, sitting in the same spot where they had been attacked. “People walked by and looked at us, but no one came to help. They looked at us with morbid curiosity,” the young men recounted. “Luckily, we’re all right,” Matías told Presentes. As a result of the beating, the young man suffered a hemorrhage in his eye. Both bear the marks of the blows on their bodies. Matías Villalba is 26 years old, a photographer, and works as a salesman at a distribution company. Ariel Croce is 25, a radio and television producer who graduated from the Institute of Radio Broadcasting (ISER), and is currently looking for work. On Wednesday, March 28, the victims filed a complaint with the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Racism (INADI). Marcelo Márquez, an activist with the civil association Varela Diversa and a former INADI employee for twelve years, along with Gustavo López from the civil association Nexo, advised Matías and Ariel.  “Cases like this demonstrate the need to reform the anti-discrimination law to include discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, etc.”Márquez tells Presentes.

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“The place where they were harassed, assaulted, and abandoned by the police and the general public has security cameras, and there’s certainly a good chance of identifying them,” says Márquez. Meanwhile, the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (INADI) has opened an investigation into the act of discriminatory violence suffered by the couple. This will be in addition to the complaint that the victims will file next week with the federal prosecutor's office in Quilmes, where the events took place. The figures in Argentina show that attacks against the LGBT+ community are on the rise. Ariel Croce reflects: “Many people asked us, ‘What were you doing in the south?’ or ‘What were you doing holding hands?’ I feel that a sexist argument is present here. As if the time, place, and context had anything to do with the aggression.”