"Dear Lohana and Diana, we finally have a law on quotas and labor inclusion for trans and travesti people."

"Diana and Lohana, I am writing this letter to tell you that we finally have that law and it bears your names: the Transvestite and Trans Labor Quota and Inclusion Law “Diana Sacayán- Lohana Berkins”.

June 28, 2021

Alma Fernández, transvestite activist

Ariel Gutraich Archive Presents Agency

Dear Lohana and Diana,

A few years ago, you laid your cards on the table, grabbed the deck, shuffled, set up your strategy, and dealt. You shuffled, and it was time to play the game; you poured a lot of trans love into it. The game had a purpose, and it wasn't something that could strictly be considered a game: that once and for all our lives would stop being shattered in a heterosexual and patriarchal society. As a secret ingredient, you showed us the ins and outs of the game. And that's how you taught us to do it!

Back then, I was a trans girl with a dirty face, living with my family in Tucumán. And even though my head barely reached the edge of the table, I listened and took notes. I was learning, along with so many others, how to be a trans woman, with a capital T.

Diana, you took one of the first initiatives that weekend I'll never forget. When all this began, you charted the course we had to follow. I was already living in Buenos Aires. One weekend you sat down and wrote out what the trans quota law should look like, jotting it down with a pen on notebook paper. Then you laminated it, and I saw you wearing it around your neck everywhere, gathering support.

Diana and Lohana, I am writing this letter to tell you that we finally have that law and it bears your names: Law of Quota and Labor Inclusion for Transvestites and Trans People “Diana Sacayán- Lohana Berkins.

I want to tell you that after the National Congress voted for it by a wide majority on Thursday, June 24th, a whole bunch of trans women of all backgrounds took to the streets to celebrate together the long-awaited transvestite and trans life project. "We are queer power," I discovered. Like when, in other, less happy times, we used to march against the injustices of some change to the urban code of conduct, or a corrupt police commissioner who often left his mark on our skin with the abuses of the police forces.

I want to tell you that it was a beautiful day with a huge sun and a sky that also deserves to be ours.

There were crows too; I saw them. When I think of crows, I wonder what nauseating abyss their behavior comes from, and at the same time, I think they frighten me more than sirens, more than cells and those dungeons where they keep calling and shouting our names. Crows have names, you know them, but here and now they aren't so important.

On Thursday, June 24th, it became very clear to society that we will never return to the dungeons or the street corners again, as you dreamed and entrusted us to do in that very sad year of 2015.

I want to tell you all, my queer friends, that on the night of June 24th, after the approval of the Trans Quota and Employment Law, my dad sent me a WhatsApp message at midnight. He said he was very proud of me and that he was going to sleep happy, because of where my last name had placed in this society. Even in that, you were wise when you warned me that this would happen to me and to us someday, if we joined the fight.

I want to tell you that from here, I have the privilege of witnessing how the transvestite and trans life project is taking shape in a society that is beginning to change. I want to tell you that families no longer reject them; they simply support them in their own way, although it's true that this isn't yet the case for many transvestites.

I want to tell you that the time of the revolution brought a paradigm shift, and the time is finally TODAY.

Prostitution won't be the only way to eat, live, laugh, and get ahead. Biology isn't, and never will be, destiny. And theory will become increasingly trans, South American, migrant, brown, abortion-seeking, poor, and Indigenous. I feel so happy; everything they told us would happen has happened. The time has come for trans women and trans people from the neighborhoods, the slums, and the red-light districts.

In a society that educates us to feel shame, trans pride is and must be collective. To continue transforming everything that needs to be transformed, to continue saying " Stop killing us ," to continue sowing and building that collective trans memory that belongs to everyone. Pride is going to the sixth march against trans murders on June 28th and, for the first time, celebrating that we have a trans job quota law.

Pride is thinking and building from a political perspective for those who will come after us, for those who are here now, and for those who have passed on. Pride is looking at the women who join the political arena every day, just as you, Diana and Lohana, taught us to do. With mistakes and successes, with spelling errors sometimes, with common and theoretical words, with trans-thinking approaches—that is what Pride is today.

I promise to continue embracing and raising all the flags, as you always taught me. I promise to continue accompanying the first flights of this beautiful army of butterflies that you, with so much trans love, bequeathed to us. Trans fury forever! My dear sisters, Diana and Lohana.

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