Casandra Sandoval is a feminist journalist, trans activist, and national secretary of the CFTTA (Argentine Trans and Travesti Federal Assembly). Since 2002, she has worked on the team of the Undersecretary of Family Farming at the Ministry of Agroindustry. A week ago, she received her dismissal notice after working for almost 16 years on a precarious contract. She (the only trans person in that Ministry), along with 16 colleagues from Salta, is fighting for immediate reinstatement and permanent positions.

By Casandra Sandoval 

Photos: Emiliano Oh

I am a communicator by vocation and training. And I am involved in the holistic support of the Indigenous communities of northern Salta. First, as I recall, in productive projects for rural youth and in the training of Indigenous communicators from seven different ethnic groups or original peoples, who today are the driving force behind the community radio station La Voz Indígena (The Indigenous Voice). It couldn't have been any other way because it was alongside my Indigenous brothers and sisters that I found respect and recognition. In a place like Tartagal that makes you feel contempt and discrimination, it is even more intense and painful when you recognize yourself as part of indigenous peoples, a queer transvestite, a South American Indian, and a feminist. Although my friends knew how to value me and little by little from that year onwards a collective work experience began to be built that still accounts for a process or network of voices that shout from the mountain demanding the right to drinking water, light, land and territory, decent housing, work, inclusive education, respect and dignity.

That ancestral, denied cry constitutes me. And with these cries and sounds, I began to be born. With these words of wind and wet earth, the trans woman I am, who writes here, was born.

I brought voice and joy to all the Provincial Family Farming Fairs held in the city of Salta, inviting, through my charisma, that vendors and consumers express their opinions, and in general to all the indigenous and Creole peasant fairs and seed fairs that take place in my north.

For over a decade, we have been defending and valuing the experience and knowledge of our people, reconnecting with the wisdom of our ancestors, and creating mechanisms built on the principles of living well. This work has been practically invisible or nonexistent to a government that today only understands numbers, demanding that tasks be carried out without the slightest budget, to the detriment of a process and a history of intergenerational work.

Transvestite pride alongside the peasants 

Unlike other state offices, the Undersecretariat was able to assemble an interdisciplinary team of professionals from different fields and qualified technicians to work throughout the country. That's why we worked side-by-side with small farmers, developing strategies to improve the quality of life for thousands of rural families in Salta, defending native land, and collaborating with nothing less than Pachamama, or Mother Earth. This hard-working trans woman drew strength from these small things. My pride and my trans fury are born from these lands that gave birth to the great trans leader, Lohana Berkins. She is my trans Pachamama, who would surely be with us now, demanding what is right.

Currently, this government considers our presence and our work less important. The agricultural law in Argentina is a dead letter. It's not being implemented. No budget is being allocated for family farming; it's simply not happening anymore.

The Minister of Agroindustry, Luis Etchevere (former president of the Argentine Rural Society) decided to fire us.

So far, more than 300 of us technicians from the Secretariat are unemployed. And as far as we know, in this new approach to “modernizing the State,” the wave of layoffs will affect nearly a thousand workers at the Ministry of Agriculture.

The list of technicians laid off in Salta was very carefully compiled. The Undersecretariat has practically disappeared from all of northern Salta, here in this north of conflicts and roadblocks, the north of "the Indians and the Blacks, the north of the lazy and those who want everything handed to them." The gender and value-added area of ​​the Secretariat in Salta, without any leaders and with only one colleague, will have to carry out the National Registry of Family Farming (RENAF) throughout the province.

The case of one of my colleagues, who was fired for the second time, deserves special mention. Liliana Medina was on long-term medical leave for treatment due to workplace violence (the first such case in Northwest Argentina to date), and when provincial coordinators were replaced, she was forced to return to the job where she suffered workplace violence. This week, she was fired again.

Land interests of the powerful 

The bottom line is this: they told us we can't continue working. That our contracts won't be renewed. And we, colleagues with 25 years of service, are left adrift. It's clear there are economic interests at play in the land and territory where Peña Braun and Macri have their sights set. Consequently, the Undersecretariat must be eliminated and cease operations (at least in northern Salta).

I insist, I am a precarious worker with a Framework Law contract that was renewed annually and has been in place for almost 16 years. And we never stopped demanding permanent positions. This means that, while the situation is worsening under this government, the conflict already existed during the Kirchner administration. It's important to remember that Urtubey, our governor and a leading figure in Peronism in Salta, is a staunch ally of the reactionary policies of President Macri and his Minister of Agroindustry, Luis Etchevehere, former president of the Argentine Rural Society, who is primarily responsible for our dismissals.

Need for a transgender employment quota 

As the only trans/travesti employee at the Ministry, I want to emphasize the need for a trans quota nationwide. While I wasn't fired for being trans, I consider it discriminatory to dismiss me in a country where we denounce the State's historical neglect of the trans/travesti community, who suffer violence and lack access to the most basic rights. The demand for access to and retention of dignified work is a heart-wrenching cry that resonates deep within us.

We need the people to join us, but also for our unions and associations to unite their demands for a national strike because behind every layoff there is a family, and because by leaving a trans person without a job they continue to perpetuate violence against our identities.

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