Together and United: the trans cooperative that cares for the elderly
In Rosario, a group of trans people who were dealing with their addictions created a cooperative to access work and move away from problematic substance use.
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Yanina Saucedo, 49, leaves her house at eight in the morning. She doesn't want to be late to the nursing home where she works two hours a day caring for Rosita, a 91-year-old woman, “Italian, lovely, lucid, and without prejudices.” Yanina brings a fruit salad she prepared because she knows Rosita likes something fresh in the summer. “That's my job: to keep her company, to make her feel better,” she says. The day before, she read her five paragraphs from a book. She doesn't remember the title, but she does recall that it was about the sea and loneliness. Yanina Saucedo is one of the six trans women who make up Juntas y Unidas (Together and United), a workers' cooperative that offers gerontological support and care services in the city of Rosario. It emerged from the support provided by the Diversity and Gender Center of the Andrés Rosario Program Civil Association, an institution dedicated to addressing substance abuse and situations of rights violations.
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Yanina arrived at the Andrés Program in 2018. Her partner had passed away three years earlier, and she was going through “a difficult time with her health, due to alcoholism.” She arrived and found other women facing similar situations. “The classes we took came with a team of doctors and psychologists. Together we got through it. They fought against everything, because it’s very difficult to get out of a situation like the one I was in. But the classes also became a chance to think differently, to live another life, because there’s more to substance abuse than meets the eye. I never, ever imagined this: that we would form a cooperative,” she says with a smile.
Deborah Segovia also came to the program because of addiction problems. She wasn't looking for a job because she says she's happy with her current one, sex work. She knew her current colleagues "from the street" and says that their relationship grew stronger with the program. "During the training, I started therapy. It was mandatory. I'm not a big fan of psychology, but it helped me a bit, and now we're doing great, waiting for new jobs to come up."
For Deborah, this cooperative is an opportunity, not only for her and her colleagues but also so that society “stops seeing ghosts in trans people.” “We too can give love to others, provide companionship, and socialize.”
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Deborah and Yanina emphasize the need for the State and the public to commit to ensuring that the Juntas y Unidas cooperative is consolidated with new jobs and trust in the trans/travesti community. “We want to work and for people to trust us,” they say, echoing the cry of thousands at every demonstration.
The cooperative has already received its registration number from INAES and the Provincial Directorate of Cooperatives. It was officially launched in December 2019. Its members meet weekly at the Andrés Rosario Program Civil Association and the “Casa de las Locas” Cultural Center. They receive support from leaders in their trans community, healthcare professionals, and administrative advisors.
To care, to love, and to have a job
Mara Ojeda is 37 and joined the Andrés Program in early 2017. “Like everyone else, I started because of substance abuse and another fundamental issue: unemployment,” she says. Mara believes there’s a common thread: sex work and nightlife fostering problematic substance use. They had to address that, but also get to the root of the problem: finding a job. “I finished high school 20 years ago. I was already trans, and I knew it wasn’t going to help me get a job, that they weren’t going to hire me because they were judging me for who I am. Imagine if I was going to think about doing what I wanted! Dreaming of a job? Forget about it. In a way, they took away our dreams,” she says.
For Mara, the cooperative is both a collective and personal achievement, a way to build something of her own. “I joined thinking I’d never be able to. I didn’t feel capable of doing anything other than prostitution. Achieving this seemed impossible, and being able to do it was wonderful,” she says. “That Mara of 2017 was insecure and a little skeptical of herself, but not through any fault of her own. I wasn’t given the opportunity to be who I am. I’ve already taken the first step; I made it.”
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As soon as she entered the Andrés Program, Mara got a job at a nursing home and stayed there for about a year and a half. The best part of her job, she says, is being there for someone who needs you. “That fills your heart,” she affirms. And she emphasizes that if there’s one thing trans women know, it’s caregiving. “We always look out for each other,” she says. She recalls that they were—and still are—kicked out of their homes, exposed to institutional and sexist violence, discrimination, and a lack of basic rights like housing, work, and healthcare. “Trans women are always there for each other. We know what it’s like to care for someone. This job is a chance to show what was denied us; we know how to care, love, and hold down a job.”
Quality of life for all
Fabiana Fernández is an anthropologist, teacher, and part of the Andrés Rosario Program (PAR) team, which supported the Diversity and Gender Center that gave rise to the Juntas y Unidas (Together and United) workers' cooperative. According to Fernández, the initiative emerged from an analysis by Michelle Mendoza, a trans activist from Rosario, who approached the Andrés Program to raise the need to address the problematic substance use among her peers. When they went to traditional institutions, both public and private, they encountered numerous obstacles.
“As the Andrés Program, we decided to address that demand, and it turned out to be a major transformation for the association. The trans women changed our institutional life and our own lives, literally. They now move through the institution with great ease, feeling like it belongs to them. It was a very important process for us,” Fernández celebrates.
From work addictions
One of the program's proposals was that the initiative be coordinated by a member of the trans community and supported by professionals from the program and the Undersecretariat of Diversity of the province of Santa Fe. “This mixed coordination was fundamental. It made a huge difference in terms of the outreach, in how the contradictions between institutional logics and the specific needs of the community were addressed,” the anthropologist emphasized.
The proposal had two branches: therapeutic care and a productive unit as a counterpart. “We understood that survival strategies are what encourage substance use. So, with the girls, we considered that having a job alternative could be a good incentive,” Fernández added.
From the program's perspective, "we are all addicted to something." "The consumption of any substance or anything that fills certain voids becomes problematic when it prevents you from creating a healthy life context, conducive to yourself and others," explains the anthropologist. "In that sense, we continue to view problematic substance use among our trans/travesti colleagues with concern. In some cases, it's exacerbated by the life strategy they need to survive: sex work often deepens substance use, as does discrimination, of course, and the entire context of exclusion and human rights violations to which their daily lives are subjected. All of this generates a crushing anxiety that exacerbates substance use."
The program explains that its goal is not to cure anyone, nor even to stop people from using drugs. What it seeks is to transform that use "into something that doesn't hinder a better quality of life." "That's why the support is long-term and focuses on individual processes; we don't see it in terms of success or failure, but rather in terms of what it contributes to quality of life. We are happy and proud of what the women of Juntas y Unidas have achieved. You have to have a cool head and a warm heart for this support, thinking of it in terms of restoring rights, and that's all it is: from enabling the construction of a bathroom to facilitating visits from family and friends for a birthday."
Contact information
The Juntas y Unidas cooperative operates in the city of Rosario, Santa Fe province. To contract their gerontological support and promotion services, contact them at 0341-155-044443.
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