Why trans women and transvestites are suing the State for institutional violence and demanding the right to social security
Thirteen transvestite and trans women are denouncing the Argentine State for institutional violence. They are demanding that the courts defend their right to social security so that trans people over 50 can live a dignified life.
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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina. The Trans Memory Archive, together with the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), filed an injunction denouncing institutional violence. They are demanding their right to social security so that trans people over 50 can live a dignified life.
“We are taking this legal action with thirteen signatories, handing over our own police files after a four-year investigation María Belén Correa, founder and director of the Trans Memory Archive told Agencia Presentes . “We are presenting the necessary evidence of the violence we suffered. We always had memory and truth, but we never received justice,” she added.
The protection is signed by María Belén Correa, Lara María Bertolini (Diversity and Justice) , Marcela Ángela Saibek, Andrea Soledad Vargas, Candela Nicolosi, Nicole Valentina Chavez, Paula Ezkerra Rodríguez (TAE Trans Argentines Exiles), Wanda Eliana Galeano ( Claudia Pia Baudracco Library ), Ivana Tintilay (Proud Whore), Alma Rosacintia Agüero, Patricia Alexandra Rivas, ( Historical Argentines Survivors ), Dalia Silvana Álvarez Valverde and Romina Campo.
A violence among all violences
Surrounded by the police file lining the walls of the CELS courtroom, María Belén Correa, Lara Bertolini, and Ivana Tintilay, three of the complainants, along with Lucía de la Vega and Quimey Ramos representing the organization, led the press conference on Friday, November 1, prior to the 33rd Buenos Aires Pride March, which took place the following day.
"That file is only a part of a comrade's case," they said at the beginning of the conference, to understand the magnitude of the police harassment and persecution. In their speeches, they spoke about the institutional violence they suffered not only from that institution. This structural violence also prevented them from accessing a retirement or pension, and from their right to health care.
“ We are here representing that which has been forgotten and has not been able to be discussed within the LGBTIQ community in our own voices and in the first person. But we cannot stop forgetting or rescuing the history of our persecution and resistance . That is the fundamental pillar of this amparo action and the corresponding precautionary measure. Since 1950, with the creation of police edicts, applicable in the provinces and municipalities with their corresponding specific codification, the persecution of trans people was established until 2012,” Correa said.
The amparo action consists of a request for the Argentine State to recognize this structural violence and extend the scope of Law 24.241 of the Integrated Retirement and Pension System to provide them with a universal basic benefit .
Towards the future
" We want to send a message to society as a whole so that the new trans generations don't have to face police persecution, so that they don't experience all the abuses we've experienced. It's a way to raise awareness ," Ivana Tintilay told Presentes.
Ivana was the first of the thirteen to search for her file. And she had to walk through the same halls she had walked through when she was detained during her adolescence. Unlike her fellow inmates, it wasn't difficult for her to access her documents.
“I arrived with my document in 2018 and asked to process the case. When we started, we didn't know there was a law that gave us the right to go and get our file,” she said during the press conference. “When I got the file, my lawyer told me to read it, but there wasn't anything new I didn't already know. I had a memory of all the police stations I was detained at and everything that had happened to me. She insisted I read it over and over again, until I realized the entire file referred to me as 'Jorge Eduardo.'”
Furthermore, she recalled, “While Argentina was celebrating democracy in 1983, this didn't affect our lives. The arbitrary police arrests, the humiliation in jail, the brutal beatings, and the trans femicides and transvesticides that occurred daily didn't stop. This situation never allowed us access to healthcare, decent work, or any social security measures, as a universal principle of human rights. Democracy for trans people arrived in 2012, as we welcomed our sisters and companions who couldn't withstand so many decades of agony, persecution, and death,” she concluded.
One more reason for pride
Quimey Ramos is a transvestite activist and CELS worker. Her task over the past four years was to chronicle the events experienced by these first 13 complainants. “I want to tell you that they were asked endlessly why they were the way they were. Why they are who they are. They didn't give the same answer. Governments, doctors, teachers, and parents all worked hard to find a reason. They didn't know the reason, but they knew there was nothing wrong with the truth,” she said emotionally.
After the conference, in conversation with Presentes , Quimey stated: “The political importance at this moment more than ever has to do with a sense of memory and justice for the past as a possibility for the future . And for the effective future of the 13 transvestites and trans people who are daring to promote this denunciation of all the crimes they have had to endure at the hands of the Argentine State.”
“There is a memory that we build,” she emphasized. “Today, there are many stories that claim that trans and transvestite people are a passing fad. In this way (among many others), they question our rights, our equality in life. It is very important to be able to explain that the social rejection that many people feel toward us without realizing it didn't just spring from nowhere. It is the product of police persecution and all its consequences, first and foremost, ” Quimet explained.
A small group that survived
Quimey recalls that the persecution ended in the Federal Capital in the mid-1990s, but that in the Province of Buenos Aires, the police edicts criminalizing trans people were only repealed in 2010. And that, in both Mendoza and Formosa, they were repealed in 2012 with the passage of the Gender Identity Law. "It's important to remember this in order to look forward with judgment. And to understand why we are, then, an expelled and systematically marginalized minority," she added.
Regarding the victims, she emphasized that they represent “a very small number of the population.” She highlighted the data published by the National Registry of Persons in 2022. “It shows that half of the transvestite population who changed their ID and died by 2022 were 44 years old on average. Another 25% were approximately 35 years old, and the total 75% died before the age of 53. So we're talking about a very small group whose survival isn't thanks to the guarantees the Argentine State should have provided. It's thanks to other factors absolutely linked to their own capacity for subsistence and survival .”
“We are here to let our own archives speak.”
At his side, Lara Bertolini emphasized, "This presentation gives us the opportunity to join social security as a preventive measure, with extraordinary features to prevent repetition and avoid neglect by the Argentine State ."
Through tears, she added: “The 13 survivors present here and those who are exiled in different parts of the world, we leave you our police files, our history, and our unity, to establish that women and trans femininities continue to build jurisprudence, legislation, democracy, and justice despite everything.”
“ We are here so that our own archives can speak. So that our own existence can speak, and so that our revenge is that we are trying to grow old and do so with dignity.” Bertolini expressed that her generation “had it a little better because I transitioned in the 90s. But this violence began in the 1950s, and we have to accept that we are still experiencing it today.”
Also from CELS, Lucía de la Vega emphasized: “In a year in which we have had to take defensive actions, this is our first offensive legal action. It is novel in its request that the State guarantee social security for trans women over 50. This is transformative, something that Argentine society and democracy owe them .”
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