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By Veronica Stewart

Photos: Fran Bariffi

On Saturday, January 9th, the LGBT+ community of the municipality of Azul finally held its first Pride March despite the pandemic. With all the necessary protocols and precautions in place, the celebration was able to proceed, 30 years after the first march in Argentina. However, what was meant to be a celebration ended with threats from the Municipality for having placed a rainbow flag on the statue of San Martín.

“They dragged San Martín and turned him into a standard-bearer of our proud multicolored flag,” said Patx Ruiz, an organizer of the march. Municipal officials said they would take legal action against the activists.

The Secretary of the Chief of Staff and Government of the Municipality of Azul, Alejandro Vieyra, called it “a deplorable and shameful act.” For his part, Mayor Hernán Bertellys instructed the Municipality's Legal Department to determine whether the incident could be considered a crime under Article 222 of the Penal Code, which punishes with one to four years in prison anyone who publicly desecrates a national symbol.

“The issue here is hateful,” said Patx Ruiz. The INADI's response was swift and forceful: in its statement, it expressed its condemnation of the municipal officials' response. It asserted that “if some people had the same commitment as San Martín to cultural diversity and his policy of incorporating Indigenous peoples into the liberation process of our countries, they should be concerned about and working on behalf of the most vulnerable groups and sectors of Azul.”

A hostile municipality

Federica Ciuro, the march organizer, is an activist in La Plata and has experience dealing with hostile municipalities. “It didn’t surprise me,” she told Presentes. “I knew they’d latch onto something. They were annoyed because they know we’re flexible and have a political identity, that we know what we want.”

Patx Ruiz, for his part, recounted that they were initially offered help, but ten days before the festival, they were told it would be impossible. “A day and a half before the march, they told us we wouldn't have electricity, which was essential even to read the manifesto, because supposedly we didn't have authorization,” he said.

That warning was not sent by either the self-proclaimed "pro-life" organizations or the police when they held their respective demonstrations in Azul.

The organizers believe this highlighted the necessity of the march. “The conservative responses from both the local government and those who expressed their opinions on social media also made us realize that there is a whole struggle to be waged in Azul ,” Francisco Bariffi, who was in charge of communications for the march, told Presentes. “The municipality’s response doesn’t weaken us or overshadow all the positivity we were able to build,” he added. Angie Ruiz, one of the march organizers, told Presentes that “we transform any anxiety or anger this might generate into power to continue making ourselves visible.”

“While they’re securing the six votes they have left in Azul, we want to make sure our trans women don’t die at 35,” said Patx Ruiz. “We’re trying to understand the sea and the ways of the other side of the ocean, and these people are fighting over a puddle of water.”

“We have to give Azul her little queer story”

The march was organized with the support of over 40 institutions, businesses, shops, and individuals. This allowed the march to be organized in a self-managed and collaborative manner, with all COVID-19 protocols and precautions followed at all times.

“Unlike massive marches, this felt very intimate, not only because of the number of people, which was still quite large for Azul, but because we all knew each other,” Francisco Bariffi pointed out . A friend of his even commented on how liberating it was to be able to march in drag along the same route he used to take to rugby, years ago, “wondering why he was doing it or feeling unable to express himself freely.”

Federica Ciuro, another organizer of the march, told Presentes that “at the march I saw people who used to make fun of me when I was a child. Suddenly I saw them and understood a lot of things, that maybe they made fun of me because they wanted to be me. It was a historical reparation for me, for my teenage self and my childhood, and also for the city.”

Federica had thought there weren't enough people in Azul to organize a Pride march, but on Saturday she realized there were. They just needed to get together. In that sense, Patx Ruiz emphasized how important the march was, being "the first of many massive demonstrations." He added that the intense response from the city reminded him of the importance of decentralizing the movement.

“We have to give Azul its own little queer history,” Ruiz said. “We have to stop buying into the idea of ​​small homelands and patriotism. That's what the statue shows us: which heroes are we really seeing? We deserve more Juana Azurduy and Diana Sacayán. We can question San Martín. There are heroes living every day that history doesn't talk about. I wish those were the kinds of discussions the State would give us.”