The first transmasculine memory archive has been created in Mexico.
The archive manager, who for now is virtual, explains how this idea came about. "Memory is not just recollection, it's also the present," he says.
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MEXICO CITY, Mexico. “There’s a lack of knowledge about our stories,” says Aldri Covarrubias, curator of the Archivo de la Memoria Transmasculina MX (Transmasculine Memory Archive) . Presentes spoke with Aldri about building an archive focused on transmasculine people in Mexico, the importance of carefully collecting their narratives, and how this, in turn, proposes a form of care and encounters between people who “live their lives, whether chosen, temporarily, or permanently, within non-hegemonic masculinity,” as Covarrubias mentions.
The Transmasculine Memory Archive MX , currently hosted digitally and with some in-person activities in Mexico City, is inspired by the Argentine Trans Memory Archive . It is also inspired by the Trans y Fugas , a Mexican archive run by Laura Glover, who writes chronicles to recover the stories of trans women and their survival , the streets, and crime.
“The Transmasculine Memory Archive is a space aimed at producing our own forms of knowledge based on the experience of transmasculinities in Mexico. That is, all these non-hegemonic masculinities based on gender. Including non-binary people, raciality, and even other aspects that have been constructed in the past, and still in the present, such as traileras, machorras, and male transvestites,” explains Aldri.
The Mexican Transmasculine Memory Archive not only seeks to trace the past through efforts to search for and verify historical information from different sources such as journalism, historical archives and cinema, but also to build memory from embodied experiences recounted during the lives of transmasculine people , encounters and the recovery of art about transmasculinity produced by transmasculine people.
From a location on the eastern outskirts of Mexico City, Aldri Covarrubias answers five questions for Presentes.
–How is this memory file constructed?
-It's primarily about trying to trace the experiences of transmasculine people in life. Not just compiling information based on journalistic or purely historiographical efforts from the past. This is a methodological decision because there are gaps in our experiences, as there is no record, no database. There's no way to systematize our experiences. There's a lack of knowledge about our stories , and deciding not to take into account a strictly chronological or historical narrative is a coordinate from which we can situate knowledge about life.
This archive isn't a catalog of transmasculinities. The goal is to see how transmasculinity impacts and has impacted public life because we think of transmasculinity not only as a gender identity but also as a way we see the world. I don't lose my transness when I take off my clothes. I'm trans all the time, and my gender transition isn't the only one that affects me; there are many coordinates from which we can express ourselves.
–What triggered the need to build a transmasculine memory?
-A very marked weariness in my personal life because I told myself I couldn't be the only one . And the urgency of being able to look back and at the present to say that we are here, that we can bring those stories that concern us out of oblivion.
Also, of course, it has to do with my age. I'm in my 30s, so I ultimately went through a kind of mourning process, knowing that it wasn't through biological reproduction, being a pregnant person, that I was going to seek that transcendence, which I think is a very human thing to desire. Our own mortality confronts us with that question, and in the end, I don't see it as a question of legacy but of ancestry.
If we have all these imaginary figures we call mom, like Madonna, or ballroom figures, that LGBT people have ultimately twisted into the traditional, cis, patriarchal family, I've felt the urgency to ask, "Where are the grandparents?" "Where are these others, others who can push us forward?" Mainly to know that we're not starting from scratch, to remind ourselves that we won't go away in silence. Above all, in this fascist affront we're experiencing in the world, memory is also a proposal and a counterattack to that.
–It is common for trans memory to be linked to a narrative of death. How does this archive construct and make memory?
We don't want to build memory from experiences that the same person can no longer deny about what their life was like. This archive, in that sense, echoes what disca activism and mad pride say about first-person experiences. Nothing about us without us, us. And that breaks the logic of the film director, the psychiatrist who diagnoses us, the doctor who gives us hormones.
For me, this shift in perspective stems from taking a look back at the past of this entire collection of memorials, which was relevant. Above all, with the response to the HIV epidemic as a logic for managing grief and tracing meaning, which I think is very important for us to recover. Because these movements also provided the opportunity to rethink death, especially within a fascist affront that not only seeks our death but also the elimination of our transcendence.
This archive recovers that, in that sense, death is not destiny. So the bet is on life. Because we, we too, are the lives happening , and what we decide to tell about ourselves, we are a very great power in the face of extractivism and the logic of death that are so prevalent today against trans people.
-Why focus on building memory in life and from the present?
Leaving it as just a search for the past is a double-edged sword. If we want to label, classify, and systematize transmasculine issues, we'd only have about 60 years of histories where we could find some data. But they'd likely be represented as objects of medicine, sensationalist press, or gender studies.
The other side is that there's still uncharted territory to explore. When we talk about transmasculinities, we come across other major human themes, such as migration, the concept of health and illness, fatherhood, and so on . These are experiences we can explore, and perhaps that's where we'll also find those stories.
This formation of knowledge, between the past and embodied stories, told by them and by them, could not happen without clarifying that traditionally, transness is permeated by extractivism, especially by a cis-oriented perspective of scrutiny, where we are seen as objects of study, documentary objects, objects of spectacle. But never from any other perspective than as producers, journalists, historians.
For me, it's important to revisit stories in life because memory isn't just about the past; memory isn't just about recollection; it's also about the present. I believe that remembering from the present also involves seeing ourselves as actors, so as to no longer remain in this frank complacency of "I did what I could, and it'll be up to the young to keep the wheels turning ." Why? Remembering in life is also, in a way, confronting everything that seeks to eliminate us. So, as long as we remain alive, and you are alive, these are our times.
Photo: Geo González
What value does the creation of physical meeting spaces like the Memorial Social Club, which emerged from this archive, have?
-Primarily, it's a response to the lack of role models, representation, and encounters among transmasculine people. The initial approach to creating the Memorial Social Club is a response to the fact that there are people who are just exploring their non-hegemonic masculinity, and there's a need for a space to do so without judgment or prejudice. Because masculinity now, with the rise of identity, is simplified and equated with man = oppressor, male = violent.
Photo: Geo González
So, beyond asking for acceptance in other LGBT spaces, it was important for me to try to rehearse what one that put transmasculinities at the center would look like. Not because we want to be a Toby club, but to build community. And board games were the perfect option because when I recognized my own social awkwardness and that of some of my classmates, I thought that board games allow for this kind of forced socialization. It was an exercise that allowed us to listen to each other, to coexist, to talk to each other—for more than 20 hours in three different sessions.
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If you'd like to contribute your story to the archive, you can send a Transmasculine Memory Archive MX Instagram
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