BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA . The glass in the door of the room where Pamela Cobbas, her partner Mercedes Roxana Figueroa, and temporarily Sofía Castro Riglos and Andrea Amarante lived has been shattered. In broad daylight, the Barracas hotel room shared by the two lesbian couples is all that remains: soot covers the walls and a few belongings in black. On Sunday, May 5, at 11:30 p.m., Justo Fernando Barrientos, the man from the room next door, made good on his threat. He opened the door, threw a homemade explosive, set fire to the room, and started a fire. After the attack, all four were hospitalized. Pamela and Mercedes died, Andrea remains in critical condition in intensive care, and Sofía is recovering.

Pamela Cobbas was 52 years old. She died hours after the attack due to the severity of her condition. According to hotel neighbors, she was a candy and cosmetics vendor. On social media, she was openly lesbian and in favor of gender rights. In some photos, she can be seen with her son. 

Mercedes Roxana Figueroa, also 52 and Pamela's partner, died on Wednesday. Neighbors said the women lived off odd jobs; some believe they sold handkerchiefs, while others believe they cleaned clothes. 

Andrea Amarante remains in critical condition, with 75% of her body burned, and was admitted to intensive care the day before yesterday. Of the four, Andrea is the youngest, at 43 years old. The Cromañón Coordinator reported that she is a survivor of the Cromañón massacre, the fire that occurred on December 30, 2004, in a nightclub in Once during a concert by the band Callejeros.

"Andrea did not receive financial assistance and is not a beneficiary of the Health Program for victims of Cromañón. Andrea was homeless and slept wherever she could. Twenty years later, all of Andrea's fears and nightmares came true," the Cromañón Coordinator said in a statement .

Sofía Castro Riglos, 50, is the only one with a favorable prognosis, as she "is responding well to treatment," according to the medical report. She was able to give her statement at the hospital on Wednesday.

“I had already threatened them”

“He had already threatened them once. It was last Christmas. He told them he was going to kill both of them (Pamela and Mercedes), and look what happened now,” says Diego Hernán Britez. A street vendor, he is 51 and lives on the second floor of the family hotel located at 1621 Olavarría Street, in the southern part of Buenos Aires, where the crime occurred.

Diego says he overheard several verbal arguments between the man and the women over the two years they lived there. He admits that Barrientos disliked the fact that they were lesbians and made it explicit.

"They argued a lot. They called the police once, and I understand they reported him. He called them 'monkeys' because of their orientation . He called them 'lesbians,' 'dirty fatties,'" Britez told Presentes.

Barrientos is in custody, charged with homicide and serious injuries. The 14th National Criminal and Correctional Court, headed by Edmundo Rabbione, is investigating the incident. In response to this media outlet's inquiry, it was reported that, by order of the judge, no information about the case will be provided except to the parties involved.

It was lesbicide: an act of hatred against lesbians

Since the news of the attack broke, various activist organizations have called for it to be investigated as a hate crime motivated by the victims' sexual orientation. Today at 5:00 p.m., there will be a rally at the National Congress, with replicas in different locations across the country, under the slogan "It's not freedom, it's hate. It was lesbicide."

“The attack causes us deep pain and anger: it wasn't just any incident. It was an act of hatred toward lesbians . The crime occurred in a context of extreme precariousness, where the four lived crammed into one room, and where LGBTQI+ identities are the focus of increasing violence on a daily basis,” expressed the collective Self-Convened Lesbians for Barracas.

At the top of the stairs leading to the first floor, 89-year-old María Rosa Correa, the home's owner, was busy sorting through some of the space, leaving Pamela and Mercedes's room. "One of them, I don't remember which one, had a son. She told me once that she was going to visit him in Mar del Plata, where she lived," she recalled. 

Many of the belongings, clothing, and objects were caught in the fire and then the water. Collecting the water from the floor with a bucket, a man who is an urban recycler and in charge of cleaning the hotel, along with María Rosa, placed the destroyed items in boxes and bags to throw them away in the nearby dumpster. One question is to what extent the scene of these hate crimes is protected, beyond the initial investigation. 

The fire primarily affected the entrance to the women's room. The master bed was there, along with other belongings, such as a suitcase with a melted handle. Little remained standing: a pair of shoes, a 2023 diary, a baking book, and a fuchsia backpack with a trolley, among other things.

One room away is the room of Fernando, the perpetrator. The door is locked with a chain that allows it to be opened about ten centimeters for his cat, who now lives with a family from the hotel. He shared the kitchen and bathroom with Pamela and Mercedes, as with the rest of the apartment.

“They were very good girls. So was he. They all paid on time, they didn't have any debts. I never had any problems with any of them. For me, they were the devil. I can't explain it completely if I don't,” said María Rosa.

Some of the hotel's residents prefer not to discuss the relationship between Barrientos and her victims. "You see how lesbians are... they don't even speak to men," commented one of the hotel's residents. 

For Diego Britez and other residents, the situation was different. “There are a lot of people here who think like him (Barrientos),” he said, referring to prejudice and hatred against LGBT+ people.

“I don't know why they say they were troublemakers. It was just because sometimes they invited friends over, played music a little louder on a Friday, like everyone else, and shared pizza and a few beers. They weren't troublemakers, but even if they were, it doesn't justify what he did,” he asserted. And he acknowledged that Barrientos' violent behavior was a recurring one. “I'd had problems before with a gay man who lived at the hotel. He made him leave. He threw a shoe at his door and yelled 'faggot,'” Diego recalled.

“He set them on fire and then hit them.”

Sergio Araujo, 36, lives on the second floor of the hotel. Although he initially didn't want to talk, he soon approached to ask how his neighbors were and share what he had experienced. "When I saw the fire, I shouted for everyone. I woke my dad, who had already gone to bed, to get him to come down because we didn't know what could happen. When I came down, I saw the girls. I went to get a fire extinguisher I have in my room. I brought it from my mom's, and we used that to get into the room," he said.

According to at least two people, including Diego and Sergio, when the women managed to leave the room, Barrientos began beating them. “When they left the room on fire, he hit them and pushed them back into the fire,” Araujo said. “There were five of us trying to separate him from her so he would stop hitting her,” Britez added. Such vicious attacks are common in hate crimes.

They managed to get the women to the showers and put them under the water. “Several of us tried to help them. But there were people who didn't come forward to help. That makes me angry,” said Sergio, who hasn't been able to sleep since what happened.

"I carried the oldest one on my back down the stairs. Then she told me several times it was him. I feel bad because we couldn't save them," she said. 

After the attack, City Police found Barrientos in the building's second-floor bathroom with a sharp saw that he had used to injure himself, according to police sources. 

Housing crisis in Buenos Aires

The hotel has twenty rooms and about thirty people live there. The ground floor, first floor, and second floor with a terrace house street vendors, self-employed workers, cardboard collectors, and retirees, who share bathrooms and a kitchen. A room costs around 50,000 pesos. Some come from having previously lived in shelters or from being homeless. Others arrive there after being evicted. 

The building is a small hotel with an aristocratic feel, now completely dilapidated. All that remains of those years is a wide marble staircase and an imposing facade, now in ruins. The owner bought it in the 1980s. The years, rising rates, and an increasingly severe housing crisis in the City of Buenos Aires made everything worse. 

The City of Buenos Aires "is experiencing a shortage of housing in habitable conditions," says the report "Housing Shortage in Buenos Aires City " by the Buenos Aires City Ombudsman's Office. And nationwide, one in three households in Argentina lacks adequate housing. In other words, there is a housing shortage affecting more than 4 million households . The main causes: a lack of sustained housing access policies, the growth of temporary tourist rentals, the increase in vacant housing, and the closure of hotels and guesthouses.

Adding to this are the inconveniences brought about by Decree 70/2023 of the current government, which repealed the Rental Law. According to a national survey conducted in March 2024 by the National Federation of Tenants and Ni Una Menos , rental conditions worsened after the DNU. In the City of Buenos Aires, the cost of renting a two-bedroom apartment increased from 179,832 to 249,942 pesos, on average.

Based on complaints received by the Buenos Aires City Ombudsman's Office regarding hotels and guesthouses in the city, the agency conducted an investigation to determine the living conditions of these establishments. Among the key data, they found that 45% of the establishments surveyed are overcrowded, and nearly 20% exhibit critical levels of overcrowding: three or more people per room. Furthermore, 43% of the establishments surveyed have balconies without adequate protection, 38% have cracks or falling masonry, and 55% do not have properly marked or safety-compliant electrical panels, among other issues.

More hate speech and attacks on diversity

For activists, this incident comes within a context of escalating hate speech and attacks on sexual diversity. It was recently revealed that during 2023, in Argentina where the victims' sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or expression were used as a pretext for lethal violence. This figure represents an increase compared to 2022, when there were 129 hate crimes , and the previous year, when 120 were recorded.

Meanwhile, the national government and public figures affiliated with La Libertad Avanza promote hostile discourse and misinformation about the LGBT+ community. Last week, a lawyer friend of Javier Milei, said in an interview with Radio Con Vos that "when the State promotes, incentivizes, and finances homosexuality—as it has done until Javier Milei appeared on the scene—it is encouraging self-destructive behavior." Using false data, he justified why there should be no public policies supporting the LGBT+ community.

The list of hate speech and discrimination is very long and goes on .

“State sanctioning of violence and discrimination generates more violence and discrimination in society. Hate crimes are linked to the increasingly prevalent hate speech in our country,” analyzed activist María Rachid, from the board of directors of the Argentine LGBTI Federation, in an interview with this agency.

The organization 100% Diversity and Rights Demanded Justice believes the judiciary "must address this attack and murder from a gender perspective and as motivated by hatred toward lesbian identity." It also demands that the political authorities of Buenos Aires and the National Executive Branch "condemn the incident as lesbophobia."

"We denounce the dismantling of national agencies and policies for protection against gender-based and lesbophobic violence, such as the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INADI) and the Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity, as well as their programs for the care and prevention of gender-based violence, gender identity, and sexual orientation," they stated. "This incident does not occur in a vacuum but rather in T+ people

The Ministry of Women and Diversity of the province of Buenos Aires was the only institutional voice within the government to publicly condemn the attack. It did so through a statement, stating: "Given the lack of support caused by the closure of the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity, the INADI (National Institute of Women and Diversity), and other organizations that safeguard the rights of the LGBT+ population, this ministry urges the national government and the City of Buenos Aires to provide all necessary resources to support the victims and their loved ones, and to guarantee interventions with a gender perspective."