Photos: Ariel Gutraich

In the City of Buenos Aires, some 300,000 women, lesbians, transvestites, trans people, bisexuals, and non-binary individuals marched from the National Congress to Plaza de Mayo to demand, among other things (full document at the end of this article), the implementation of institutional action protocols for the prevention of and intervention in situations of violence, discrimination, and/or harassment based on gender or sexual orientation; the effective application of comprehensive, secular, scientific, and respectful sex education that acknowledges sexual and gender diversity in all educational establishments; the enforcement of the Gender Identity Law in educational institutions; "No to homo-lesbian-trans-bi-hate! Never again will we return to biological determinism!"; and a transvestite/transgender employment quota in all educational institutions in Argentina.

DOCUMENT MARCH 8, 2019

We are standing for the fourth time, carrying out an International and Plurinational General Strike of Women, Lesbians, Transvestites, Trans, Bisexuals, Non-Binary, Fat and Intersex people of the working class; employed, unemployed, precarious, picketers and of the popular economy, making visible especially indigenous, native, Afro-Argentine and black women in order to begin to settle the historical debt owed to them.

This March 8th, we are striking because we are part of a collective and international history, and because Macri and the austerity-driven governors, with their capitalist and neoliberal violence, intend to steal our jobs, our bread, our health, and our education. After the green wave that flooded the streets and squares of Argentina and the world in 2018, we organized en masse to demand that abortion finally be legal, safe, and free.

We are striking because with Mauricio Macri's economic model, the austerity-driven governors, and the influence of churches, women, lesbians, transvestites, trans people, non-binary people, fat people, and intersex people have no future. We are striking because, organized, we say loud and clear: Enough with sexist violence in all spheres, enough with trafficking, enough with femicides, transvesticide, transfemicide, and hate crimes. We are striking because Macri's and the governors' austerity measures are impoverishing our lives, and the IMF budget passed by Congress says that our lives are worth less than a bus ticket. We denounce the leadership of the major labor unions—the CGT and CTAs—for turning their backs on our movement by not calling for a strike on March 8th, and we demand once again an effective general strike for our demands.

We are striking because we are all workers; we are the class against which capitalism is fighting globally, neoliberalism in our region, and the Macri administration in our country, through the advance of the right wing and imperialism throughout Latin America. In this strike, we embrace the history of all the historic strikes of the feminist movement and make it our own, because we are on the front lines against the reactionary right wing, neoliberal policies, and the interference of imperialist governments. We are striking against the national and sectoral Labor Reform and the Pension Reform, which affect our present and our future, further impoverishing us and feminizing poverty in our country, deepening social injustice, and condemning all workers to an illegal, illegitimate, and fraudulent debt.

Today we raise the collective ancestral strength of our libertarian diaspora: cumbes, palenques, cimarrones, quilombos. Today we pay homage to María Remedios del Valle, known as the Mother of the Nation, whom we recognize as a heroine of the struggles for Independence. We also honor our comrade Virginia Bolten, a working-class fighter and builder of the combative labor unions of the early 20th century, who led heroic struggles of the working class against employers and the State. We are here because we were preceded by the struggles led by the resistance of Indigenous women taken from their lands and by African women brought by the slave trade and their Black and Afro-Argentine descendants; the struggles of the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, of the piqueteros, of organized women, lesbians, transvestites, trans and non-binary people, fat and intersex people.

We stop, resist and mobilize in the streets against the advance of certain neo-fascist sectors in Latin America and the world that have us under the focus of their attack, threatening our lives and our human rights. 

We stand against hate speech that normalizes and imposes the norm of heterocispatriarchy. Biology is not destiny, that's why we stop and say NO to biologism. 

Our movement has no owner: it belongs to employed, unemployed, and precarious workers, to picketers, and to the informal economy; to women, trans women, trans people, lesbians, sex workers, people in prostitution, non-binary people, bisexuals, fat people, intersex people, Black people, Indigenous people, deaf people, blind people, wheelchair users, and other people with disabilities. We are striking against racism, xenophobia, and discrimination against women and Indigenous people, migrants, Black people, Afro-Argentinians, and Afro-Argentinians residing in our country, and against the cultural appropriation of our ancestral heritage that we have been suffering.

While austerity and repression are nothing new, we are witnessing their intensification under the Macri administration and the austerity-driven provincial governments, which attack social and political organizations and persecute those who fight and oppose them, using repressive forces, the judiciary, and allied mainstream media as their main instruments. We are striking because the number of police brutality cases is rising, and the discourse that legitimizes vigilante justice seeks to drag our children into court and deport migrants using all kinds of violence. We are striking because we fight for an Argentina and a world that are anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, anti-racist, anti-biological, anti-imperialist, anti-neoliberal, anti-clerical, anti-xenophobic, anti-ableist, accessible, plurinational, and decolonial. From a feminist perspective, we are building our movement against all forms of cruelty with which capitalism seeks to discipline our disobedience.

We pay tribute to the women, lesbians, transvestites, and trans people who paved the way and left a legacy that explains the strength of our movement. From the resistance of Indigenous peoples against colonization and the African peoples brought by the slave trade and their Afro-Argentine descendants, to the working women who built our first organizations in the 19th century; the disappeared and those who embodied the anti-dictatorial struggle. We are heirs to the pioneers in the fight for legal, safe, and free abortion, like Dora Coledesky. We honor all the anonymous fighters who are part of our history. We pay tribute to the trans activists who paved the way, left an unwavering legacy of struggle, and took the necessary steps for the repeal of police edicts, the passage of the Gender Identity Law, and the Transgender Employment Quota Law: Mocha Celis, Nadia Echazú, Claudia Pía Baudracco, Maite Amaya, Lohana Berkins, and Amancay Diana Sacayán. Yesterday, March 7th, on Lesbian Visibility Day, we remember Pepa Gaitán, murdered for being a lesbian. 

All our dead are present, now and forever! For all this, in this cry we embrace all our comrades in Latin America and the world: we will never return to the closet, the dungeon, or biologism; legal, safe, and free abortion; no to austerity; no to violence; long live those who fight!

WE STOP BECAUSE: 

● Safe and free legal abortion now! Approval of the IVE bill to be presented by the National Campaign for Safe, Legal and Free Abortion for the eighth consecutive time.

● Delaying, judicializing, and failing to guarantee access to abortion is TORTURE. We hold all political, health, and judicial actors responsible, including Governors Manzur and Morales, Tucumán Health Minister Rossana Chalha, Health Secretary Gustavo Vigliocco, Prosecutor Adriana Giannoni, and the director of the Eva Perón Hospital, Elizabeth Ávila. We demand their removal from office. We shout, "Girls, not mothers!!"

● Effective separation of the Catholic Church and all other churches from the State and its powers. The State must cease funding them. Churches must be removed from the judicial system, hospitals, education, and social policies. The agreements between the Ministry of Education and Abel Albino and Opus Dei must be annulled, as well as the decree issued by Minister Carolina Stanley that funds anti-rights and fundamentalist organizations like ACIERA, which obstruct our access to the right to legal abortion and attempt to force us to bear children against our will.

● We demand that all governors adhere to the Protocol for the comprehensive care of people with the right to Legal Interruption of Pregnancy, and that it be implemented without restrictions throughout the national territory with the techniques recommended by the WHO, as well as that the legislation that enshrines our rights as people with the capacity to gestate be effectively enforced.

● We demand the provision and public production of Misoprostol and Mifepristone recognized by ANMAT and access to AMEU.

● Effective implementation of secular, scientific, feminist, and gender-sensitive comprehensive sex education at all educational levels throughout the country, with a corresponding budget for its implementation. No to debt repayment, yes to a national budget for combating all forms of violence.

● We demand that information on abortion and comprehensive sexuality education be accessible in Argentine Sign Language and Braille. We demand respect for the autonomy and privacy of people with disabilities when making decisions about their bodies.

● Lesbians, bisexuals, trans men, trans masculinities, non-binary people, and agender people also have abortions.

● We denounce El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Suriname as femicidal states. By prohibiting abortion, they are responsible for the deaths and violations of the right to health of hundreds of girls, women, trans people, and non-binary individuals. Legal, safe, and free abortion now for all of Latin America and the Caribbean!

WE SAY VERY LOUDLY:

● Stop the austerity measures, layoffs, and price hikes: austerity and layoffs are also patriarchal violence. We demand the termination of the agreement with the IMF and the non-payment of the external debt.

● We demand the reinstatement of all those dismissed from Pilkington, SIAM; workers from Hospital Posadas, Canale Cofco, INTI and Interpack, Pedidos Ya, Coca Cola and Casa de la Moneda. We express our full solidarity with the workers of FATE, MadyGraf, CNEA, Praxair-Linde, Telecom, Télam, C5N, press workers and all healthcare workers. 

● In response to the implementation of the Professional Healthcare Career Path in the City of Buenos Aires, we demand the inclusion of nurses, bioimaging technicians, and surgical instrument technicians with adequate salaries. We also demand an increase in administrative staff.

● We demand an end to layoffs and suspensions and oppose labor reform in all its forms. We defend collective bargaining agreements and all labor rights. We denounce employers' Preventive Crisis Procedures as a tool of extortion used to create precarious working conditions and facilitate layoffs.

● We demand improvements in working conditions for the workers of the 137 and 144 anti-violence hotlines and we stand in solidarity with all state workers in Programs, Secretariats and Ministries who are facing cuts and layoffs. 

● Stop sexual harassment and gender violence in the workplace.

● We demand the approval and implementation of the Transvestite/Transgender Employment Quota Law throughout the national territory and in all public and private work environments.

● Access to rights for precarious workers and those in the informal economy. Stop the persecution of African communities, migrants, and those working in informal economy. When there is austerity, poverty is feminized. Work under collective bargaining agreements and labor rights for precarious workers.

● Against the pension reform, the agreement with the IMF and the repression of the elderly, we retirees also went on strike.

● That the State and employers guarantee that domestic, caregiving, and social reproduction tasks, such as workplace and neighborhood cafeterias, laundries, 24-hour childcare, senior centers, etc., do not fall on our shoulders. It's not just love; it's unpaid work.

● Labor and social rights for sex workers and real job alternatives for those who want to leave prostitution. Stop the repression and harassment by the security forces.

● We demand compliance with the 4% employment quota for people with disabilities in the national government; the context of austerity blocks access to employment for women, lesbians, bisexuals, transvestites, trans and non-binary people with disabilities, their training and survival.

● Black Afro-Indigenous women want a 5% job quota in State agencies, inclusion in the formal labor market for the Afro community and Black and Indigenous identities.

● For collective bargaining without a cap for all workers, solidarity with the teachers' struggle for wages, for decent working conditions, for a quality public, free and secular education.

● That the crisis not be paid for by the workers, for a salary equal to the family basket indexed to inflation.

● We demand equal pay for equal work. Equal conditions for access, retention, and promotion in the workplace. We demand an expansion of the leave system and equalization of maternity and parental leave.

● The economic adjustment goes against the economic and housing independence of employed and unemployed women and gender-diverse people, and against the informal economy. For access to housing, land, and work.

WE MOBILIZED AND SHOUTED:

● Stop femicides, transvesticides, transfemicides, and hate crimes against non-binary, trans, transvestite, lesbian, bisexual, and all sexual and gender identities within our movement. Stop institutional, racist, and colonialist violence against members of Indigenous and native communities, the Afro-descendant community, and racialized people. For childhoods free from racism.

● Sexist attitudes, misogyny, and hatred are killing us. So far in 2019, there have been 48 femicides and 16 trans/travesticides in 67 days. We denounce the trans genocide. No more girls or teenagers harassed, abused, raped, or murdered. No more comrades revictimized by the media. We demand a larger budget to address, prevent, and eradicate patriarchal violence by not paying the external debt. We demand the promotion of policies for the economic and housing independence of women, lesbians, bisexuals, transvestites, trans people, and non-binary people who are victims of violence.

● We demand the implementation of Law No. 26,485 on Comprehensive Protection against Violence. We condemn the cuts to the INAM (National Institute for Women) by the Macri administration and its head, Fabiana Túñez, who is responsible for the budget cuts and the reduction in all programs against violence.

● We denounce all medical procedures that mutilate intersex bodies as a form of torture and demand the right of intersex people to truth and reparation.

● We demand respect for the integrity of fat, pathologized and stigmatized bodies.

● We demand the effective implementation of the National Gender Identity Law! Stop transphobic and transphobic rhetoric! Access to legal gender recognition, so that our identity on our ID cards is not binary but respected in all its expressions.

● We denounce the precarious situation suffered by our older lesbians, who reach adulthood without housing and without family.

● Against child sexual abuse. We demand comprehensive assistance for victims, protocols for child sexual abuse in schools, and we demand that mothers not be criminalized. We demand the repeal of Law 24.270, which prohibits contact between parents and children. We oppose forced contact with abusers under the guise of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS). We demand the removal of pedophile priests and denounce their cover-up by churches.

● We demand the dismantling of trafficking networks and the repressive and judicial forces of the state that are complicit. Victims of trafficking must have access to the necessary resources from the state to live their lives free from violence and economic hardship.

● We denounce the increased repression against migrants, sex workers, all workers, and people in prostitution. Stop the repression, persecution, abuse, and police extortion of sex workers and people in prostitution. We demand the repeal of the articles of the law that allow for the detention of anyone without a warrant and that criminalize the practice of prostitution. The streets belong to everyone; being poor is not a crime.

● Down with this government's anti-immigrant policies! No to Decree 70/2017! No to the deportation of women, transvestites, and transgender people for having criminal records! We condemn the expulsion of Vanessa Gómez Cueva, a Peruvian citizen separated from her children. Migration is not a crime, it is a human right! Not one more migrant!

● Stop the persecution of the Wichi people and all native peoples, stop taking their children away, stop imprisoning them with false testimonies for drug addiction and arbitrary transfers out of their territories, stop the violence against Wichi women in Formosa and Salta. 

● We are striking against drug trafficking networks that use the bodies of women, transsexuals, lesbians, transvestites, and girls as commodities. Against the abuse of power by repressive forces in the neighborhoods against young women. For access to healthcare in the neighborhoods and slums.

● Against violence against girls, adolescents, women, lesbians, transvestites, and trans people who are homeless or have problematic substance use.

● We condemn the fact that women are imprisoned for minor offenses that criminalize our survival, while the crimes of corporations and drug trafficking go unpunished.

● We demand the application of the Brisa Law. Release of women held in pretrial detention for minor offenses, house arrest for mothers with children under 4 years old and for female heads of household. Review of homicide cases involving women who attempt to defend themselves against patriarchal aggression.

● Stop gynecological and hospital violence against women, lesbians, bisexuals, transmasculine people, and non-binary people. Stop obstetric violence: We choose when, how, where, and with whom to give birth! Compliance with Law 25.929 on respectful childbirth. Stop the theft of babies from Indigenous, African, and Afro-descendant women.

● No to the LGBTTTI protocol (General Protocol for Personal Searches and Detention of People Belonging to the LGBT Community) of Minister Patricia Bullrich. No to the Chocobar doctrine and the Anti-Terrorism Law.

● We denounce the double violence exerted on women and the LGBTIQ community of minority linguistic communities, such as the deaf community, due to the lack of interpreters and special telephone lines to make complaints in Argentine Sign Language and Braille, in police stations, courts, hospitals.

● We, the young people, overflowing the green tide, denouncing abuses in schools, we, the children through our parents, are here today to fight for a dignified and feminist childhood and youth. For trans children, for their right to a happy childhood, free from violence, pathologization, and harassment in schools and health centers.

● We demand the Historical and Economic Reparation Law for Indigenous, African, Afro-Argentine, Afro-descendant, and Black women, who have been historically invisible and are victims of the slave trade. We demand an end to the forced sterilization of Indigenous, Afro-Argentine, and other women. We demand a deeper psychological study of racism to provide mental health care and support for Indigenous, African, Afro-Argentine, Afro-descendant, Black, and racialized women, as they suffer the consequences of daily racism, which negatively impacts their psyches and childhood. 

● We demand the safe return of Johana Ramallo and María Cash and the clarification of all existing cases. We condemn the persecution suffered by Julia Leal, a protective mother and key witness in the María Cash case, at the hands of the judicial system and the prison service in the provinces of Salta and Tucumán.

PARAMOS:

● Against classist, white, racist and heterocispatriarchal justice.

● Against discrimination in access to positions in the judiciary.

● We demand the immediate dismissal and impeachment of judges, prosecutors and judicial officials who reproduce patriarchal violence.

● Effective implementation of the Micaela García Law. Mandatory and cross-cutting training for workers and judges on gender, sexual orientations, and gender identities to achieve a gender perspective in judicial processes. Allocation of resources to strengthen gender policies in the justice system.

● Stop the harassment in the justice system! We, the female court workers, denounce the violence perpetrated against us by those who are supposed to administer justice. The misogynistic rulings reflect the treatment we receive from female court workers.

● Acquittal for Higui, Mariana Gómez, and Joe Lemonge. Justice for Diana Sacayán!

● We demand the approval of the Historical Reparation Law for transvestite/trans sisters persecuted, tortured and disappeared by the State.

● Dismissal of charges and freedom for all popular activists. Repeal of all repressive laws. Freedom now for Milagro Sala, Mirta Guerrero, Gladys Díaz, Mirta Aizama, Graciela López, Patricia Cabana, Adriana Condori and María Condori.

● We denounce these judicial powers that act dismissively and without a gender perspective in cases of abuse and femicide and that, as in Jujuy, Tucumán, Salta and many provinces, are the support of impunity, both of the governors and of the national Macri government that represses our people and exercises all kinds of institutional violence against women, children and all human groups that question injustices and inequalities. 

● We demand the clarification of the lesbicide of Marcela Crelz and the recognition of the murder of Pepa Gaitán as a hate crime.

● We demand the dismissal of charges against Soledad Magdalena, accused of killing her husband in self-defense and her daughter; she has been relentlessly criminalized by the patriarchal justice system. We demand the acquittal of Morelia Colque, accused of acting in self-defense. We demand the clarification of the Natacha Jaitt case.

● Human rights for Indigenous women and defenders of their territories. Stop the criminalization and judicial harassment in ancestral territories. Compliance with the Inter-American Convention of Belem do Pará. Acquittal for Moira Millán. 

● Justice now against priests and their accomplices, guilty of child sexual abuse in the Próvolo schools for the deaf in Mendoza and La Plata, sent to Argentina from Italy knowing the history of abuse in religious institutions.

WE SAY:

● Health is not a business. Down with the CUS! We want to live and be healthy! We condemn the elimination of the Ministry of Health and its downgrading to a Secretariat. We demand that the Secretariat of Health be reinstated as a Ministry with a budget commensurate with the state's responsibility for national public health.

● We denounce the increase in syphilis and tuberculosis, and the lack of supplies and medication in hospitals, especially for HIV and reproductive and non-reproductive methods. We oppose the removal of benefits and pensions for people living with HIV. 

We are not an added cost!

● We demand that endometriosis be included as a gynecological disease and that it be treated. We demand the necessary resources to provide care and conduct research on all diseases with an ethnic perspective throughout the Plurinational State. 

● No to the pathologizing health system. No to the compulsive medicalization of people, especially children and adolescents.

● People with disabilities say: No to disability cuts. NO to forced sterilizations. We demand the promotion of the deinstitutionalization of women and girls with disabilities and guarantees of their inclusion in the community. We demand accessibility as a right! We demand teams of professionals trained in the specific treatment of people with disabilities. We demand interpreters in Indigenous languages, Braille, and Argentine Sign Language in all health centers, schools, and public agencies.

● Legalization of cannabis cultivation for health purposes, which granted healthcare autonomy to women, lesbians, bisexuals, transvestites, trans people, and non-binary individuals who are caregivers for people with disabilities and other health conditions. Enforcement and funding for Law 27.350 on medicinal cannabis. Stop criminalizing us for defending the right to health!

● We demand curricula with a gender perspective in the training of health workers, understood in a comprehensive way.

● We demand that the physical integrity of health system workers and users be guaranteed.

● We demand the effective fulfillment of supplies for hormone treatments and gender affirmation surgeries in force in the Gender Identity Law.

● Stop polluting our territories! Especially in the case of the Wichi people; deforestation and extractive industries pollute the water, sicken children who are born with respiratory problems, without intestines, and with heart conditions. For the health and lives of the Wichi and Mapuche people. 

● The patriarchy wants us dead or sick. We want to be alive, free, and healthy! 

WE DEMAND:

● No to cuts in education! No to school closures, no to UNICABA! Justice for Sandra and Rubén. Organized and in the streets, we managed to stop the closure and relocation of night schools. Let's go, kids!

● We condemn the persecution and criminalization of teachers who guarantee access to Comprehensive Sexuality Education. We demand comprehensive curriculum reforms developed by the entire educational community to serve social needs and incorporate a cross-cutting gender perspective. Down with the Higher Education Law and the National Education Law.

● Implementation of Law 26.852, which promotes comprehensive reform in study plans to include Afro-Argentine history and culture in the curricula of all educational levels.

● Teacher training for the detection of and response to racist practices.

● Creation, implementation and democratization of institutional action protocols for the prevention and intervention in situations of violence, discrimination and/or harassment based on gender or sexual orientation.

● Effective implementation of comprehensive, secular, scientific, and respectful sexual and gender diversity sex education in all educational establishments. Guarantee the availability of accessible educational resources for deaf, blind, and other children and adolescents with disabilities.

● We demand the processing of the amendment to Law 26.150, on Comprehensive Sexual Education, which is stalled in Congress.

● The Gender Identity Law must be enforced in educational institutions. No to homo-lesbo-trans-bi-hate. Never again will we return to biological determinism! 

● Secular and scientific Comprehensive Sexual Health Counseling in all educational establishments. 

● Down with restrictive dress codes in educational spaces!

● Creation of maternal-paternal gardens/child development centers that can be accessed by students, teachers, non-teaching staff and administrative personnel.

● Leaves of absence for gender-based violence. Democratization and gender equality in all educational institutions.

● Transvestite/transgender employment quota in all educational institutions in the country. 

● All our support to the teachers' and students' struggle!

WE MOBILIZE AND REJECT:

● Against the attempted coup by Yankee imperialism in Venezuela in the name of “democracy” and “human rights,” promoted by Trump, Bolsonaro, and Duque, with the support of the European Union and the Lima Group. Known for their fascist, discriminatory, and misogynistic policies, they are enemies of the working class, women, lesbians, bisexuals, transvestites, trans people, non-binary people, and Afro-descendants. We also repudiate the support of the Argentine government. Yankees out of Latin America! For a workers' solution in Venezuela.

● For the self-determination of bodies and territories. So that the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean will never again be the backyards of the US. No to interventionism and no to war! Women, lesbians, bisexuals, transvestites, trans and non-binary people, Afro-descendants, and children are its main victims.

● No to foreign interference in Haiti!

● We stand in solidarity with the 54 women imprisoned in Nicaragua since April of last year, who have been on hunger strike since February 27, 2019 demanding their freedom, and with all those throughout Latin America who will not be able to take to the streets this March 8. 

● Justice for Marielle Franco, murdered in Brazil for being black, lesbian and from the favela.

● Solidarity with the migrant caravan from Latin America, and especially with the women, lesbians and bisexuals, trans people, transvestites, non-binary people, and Afro-descendants, who we know are doubly subjected to violence, both outside and within their own communities. We condemn all xenophobes, racists, classists, misogynists, and homophobes, as well as the brutal repression they suffered in the United Mexican States.

● British out of the Argentine Falklands! Out with imperialism from Latin America! We are a feminist, anti-patriarchal, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-clerical, anti-racist, anti-colonial, anti-biologist movement, accessible, equitable, and independent of all governments. On the road to the 34th Plurinational Gathering, today we embrace our sisters and brothers from all corners of the world to continue fighting against all forms of violence, exploitation, and oppression, and to shout together:

Sex education to make informed decisions, contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and legal abortion to prevent death!

Separation of Church and State!

We will NEVER return to the closet, the dungeon, or biologism!

Welcome back to all the dismissed employees!

No to the austerity measures imposed by Macri, the IMF, and their complicit governors!

No to imperialism!

The State is responsible!

Not one less: we want to be alive and free!

Sex education to make informed decisions, contraception to prevent abortion, legal abortion to prevent death!

Separation of Church and State!

We will NEVER return to the closet, the dungeon, or biologism!

Welcome back to all the dismissed employees!

No to the austerity measures imposed by Macri, the IMF, and their complicit governors!

No to imperialism!

The State is responsible!

Not one less: we want to be alive and free!