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SALTA, Argentina. In the early hours of Saturday, February 11, Maite Katya Rivero's rest was interrupted by insults and stones thrown at her home by a man she had previously reported for similar incidents. This time, the attacker punched her and stabbed her in the right leg, above the knee. The young woman is still recovering, and the assailant is in custody.

The incident occurred around 3 a.m. on February 11 in the small town of General Pizarro, in the Anta department of Salta province. Maite Rivero, a young trans woman, told Presentes that the attacker, identified as Gustavo Cisneros, assaulted her when she went outside to ask him to stop yelling insults at her and throwing stones at her house.

The man already had a restraining order issued by the court last year, after Rivero reported him for harassment and death threats.

Rivero recounted that in the early hours of Saturday, instead of leaving, the man continued to insult her because of her gender identity and repeatedly threatened to kill her. When she went outside to tell him to leave, he pushed her, they struggled, the man punched her, she managed to escape and ran to the corner, where the attacker caught up with her. “He started hitting me, fell on top of me, I managed to turn around to get away, and that's when I was stabbed. If I hadn't put up my arms or leg, he would have stabbed me in the chest,” the young woman said.

Wounded, Rivero screamed, and Cisneros ran away. Rivero then went to close her front door, intending to seek medical attention; some young people nearby saw that she could barely walk and offered to help her get to the Pizarro health center.

As they were on their way to the first aid room, Cisneros returned: “He was stabbing me, yelling things at me.” He threatened her: “I’m going to kill you, you don’t know who I am.” In their desperation to escape, the boys who were helping her hoisted Rivero onto their shoulders and ran. The attacker followed them for a short distance and then gave up the chase.

A police station that doesn't take complaints

Maite Rivero recounted that after receiving treatment, she went to the General Pizarro police station to file a report. But they wouldn't take her. "I stood there for about half an hour waiting for them to take my statement." Tired, she warned them that she would file a complaint with the Municipal Women's Office. "What are you waiting for, for me to kill myself?" she retorted, and left.

“I went back home scared because I didn’t know if the guy was going to come back or not. I went back alone,” she said, adding that the police didn’t even offer to escort her. By then it was 7 a.m. She took tranquilizers and slept, although she was very afraid that the attacker would return and set the house on fire, as he had threatened to do.

Rivero emphasized that this is the second time they have refused to take his complaint at this police station. The first time was at the end of last year, when he tried to report Cisneros for insults, kicking and throwing stones at his house, and repeated death threats. That complaint, which he ultimately filed in the neighboring town of Apolinario Saravia, is what led to the restraining order issued by the Salta court.

On this occasion, she also filed a complaint in Apolinario Saravia, where Gaby Sotelo, the head of the Women's Area of ​​that municipality, sent her a taxi to take her to report the assault.

The assailant, arrested and charged

The Public Prosecutor's Office of Salta confirmed that the Apolinario Saravia delegation of the prosecutor's office of the city of Joaquín V. González is intervening in the incident, that the aggressor was arrested and that he was charged this Monday, February 14.

General Pizarro is in the Chaco region. It's a small town, with no more than 10,000 inhabitants, where everyone knows each other. That's why Maite Rivero knows her attacker; "he was born and raised here in town, just like me."

Maite lives in a small house by the railroad. Cisneros occupied a room next door. The first few months were peaceful, but then Cisneros “started bothering me in the early hours of the morning, kicking my door, insulting me, and at first I let it go, I let him get tired and leave.” Until one day she reported him to the police because he was threatening to kill her.

A restraining order was then issued, stipulating that Cisneros had to vacate the room he occupied next door, a location identified as a drug dealing spot. Maite Rivero stated that, however, this never materialized because the Pizarro Police Station was responsible for ensuring the man complied with the order, and failed to do so.

“I didn't have a very nice childhood.

Maite Katya Rivero, who is now 26 years old, has lived in that railway construction site since her family kicked her out of her home when she was 18, the age at which she gathered the necessary strength to stop hiding her gender identity.

In the interview with Presentes, she said that she has worked since she was very young, first on farms in the area as a harvester, and then as a hairdresser, while she waits for the National Parks Administration to comply with the trans job quota law and admit her to the staff of park rangers who work in the Pizarro National Reserve.

“I had problems with my family from a very young age because they kicked me out of the house,” she recounted. The daughter of an absent father, she was orphaned at 13, along with a younger sister and brother. They went to live with their grandmother but suffered abuse at the hands of their uncles, particularly one. “I had an uncle who abused me my whole life,” she said. “I didn’t have a very happy childhood, to say the least; I was always being mistreated and beaten.”

After her mother's death, Rivero decided to take care of her younger siblings. "They were younger, and my uncle, who was always mistreating me, wouldn't let me continue studying because he said I was wasting my time, that I'd never finish, that I'd never amount to anything in life." And so, "he decided to send me away from home to work, from a very young age. When I was 13, he decided to send me to work in the fields, and well, I had no other choice; I was under the same roof as him." She worked on the farms, harvesting tomatoes, peppers, onions, and potatoes. "If I had the chance to buy clothes for my siblings, I would buy them shoes, everything. I did what I could to support my siblings."

At 18, she stopped hiding her gender identity. That's when "I could defend myself, report it, because when I was very young they wouldn't let me leave the house or see anyone, so I had no way to do anything." "All of that made things difficult for me because it was like I was trapped and it was like (my aunt and uncle) didn't want me to go out, because they said I was a disgrace to the family, that I shouldn't even have existed, so all of that upset me."

Without protocols for gender violence

Gaby Sotelo, head of the Women's Area in Apolinario Saravia, told Presentes that before accompanying Maite Rivero to file the report, she made sure she received medical attention, since there is no hospital in Pizarro. Therefore, she took her to the hospital in Saravia, where she received care, but they confirmed, once again, that "no one knows the health protocol" to apply in cases of gender-based violence.

Sotelo said that with the Observatory of Violence against Women of Salta there were failed attempts to carry out training activities for members of the health teams of the hospital of Apolinario Saravia, but said that the continuous changes in management do not favor progress in this sense, given that every so often they have to start the conversations from scratch with the manager on duty.

Another aspect he questioned is that the training sessions are usually attended by people who work in Primary Health Care, when "it would be necessary" to train those who have decision-making power, doctors, members of management teams and administration.

Sotelo also confirmed that there are many cases of gender-based violence in the area, “as throughout the province,” she added. “It has to do with the entire patriarchal structure” that still persists in the province, with socioeconomic situations that violate women's rights, and “the oppression is stronger for women in rural areas.”

In this context, she considered the Micaela Law an “important tool” but said she doesn't know how effective its application is. “In many of the cases I've supported, I've witnessed institutional violence, how people are revictimized.” In Rivero's specific case, she recalled that once the hospital notified the police station about the assault, they sent officers without a patrol car, which hindered the filing of a report, and once again they had to find a taxi to get to the police station.