This is what the Federal Anti-Fascist and Anti-Racist LGBTQI+ Pride March will look like.
They're calling on everyone to join the Federal Anti-Fascist and Anti-Racist Pride March. "You don't have to be LGBTIQ+." Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, the CGT, and the two CTAs will also participate.
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The Federal Anti-Fascist and Anti-Racist LGBTQI+ Pride March, which will take place on Saturday, February 1, has already received calls to take to the streets in more than 100 locations in Argentina and several cities around the world. It was one of the immediate and forceful responses to President Javier Milei's speech in Davos on Thursday, January 23, misinformation, prejudice, lies, and attacks on sexual diversity.
The following day, LGBTIQ+ groups called for an LGBTIQ+ Antifascist Assembly in Parque Lezama (Buenos Aires) for Saturday. The attendance of hundreds of people exceeded expectations, and that same day, the date, time, and location were set for the Federal March of Antifascist and Antiracist LGBTQI+ Pride in Buenos Aires: Saturday, 4 p.m., from Congress to Plaza de Mayo. Within a few days, invitations to mobilize were circulating across the country and around the world with the same call: "You don't have to be LGBTIQ+ to march. It's key that we all unite ." Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, the CGT, and the two CTAs also announced they would participate in the march.
Why we march
“We march because the violation of rights in Argentina is evident, because we know the correlation between hate speech and violence, because that was the society that created us, and today it returns with the organized fury of the State,” Alba Rueda, a trans activist, tells Presentes. She adds: “ We march to make ourselves visible, to stop symbolic violence, to humanize ourselves, to put a face to the dehumanizing words Milei said. And because we also overcome fear, individualism, and indifference when we are all together.”
“The march seeks to raise awareness of a problem that, while it may seem disruptive that we, the LGBTNBQ+ community, are the ones bringing it, is structural and transversal: the fascism that the Executive Branch in Argentina currently embodies when it proposes an extermination plan,” Ese Montenegro, a transgender activist and state worker, tells Presentes.
At Saturday's assembly, Montenegro and Alejandra Rodríguez, an anti-punitive transfeminist activist and member of the Mostri Column, the YoNoFui organization, and the LGTBIQNB+ Antifascist Assembly, moderated the four-hour meeting in Lezama Park.
“Saturday's gathering overwhelmed us. It was a massive crowd: we went from 80 to thousands in the park. It was a very gratifying surprise. Assemblies are always a sounding board for the things that happen to us, the things that hurt us, the things that concern us,” Rodríguez told Presentes.
Montenegro speaks of a plan as a direct policy against "some misnamed minorities—that is, the LGBTQ+ community, migrants, people with disabilities—but in reality, what this does is enable the dehumanization of people. Just as they attack LGBTIQ+ people today, tomorrow they will attack migrants; in fact, they are already doing so with the intensification of some policies." He gives examples: they attack people with disabilities by taking away their benefits, they attack people living with HIV by denying them the remedies guaranteed by law, they attack public education by defunding it, they attack public hospitals by defunding them.
“They produce an enemy that they reduce to a clear minority when what they are doing is making people's lives precarious and enabling what we call a trickle-down genocide. Letting X number of retired elderly people, people with disabilities, people living with HIV die, enabling hate speech against LGBT people. And there are indirect policies that impose this narrative that enables hatred and the dehumanization of LGBTQ+ people, and that causes violence against us to worsen,” says Montenegro.
The march also seeks to express "that we all have a life in common," the activist adds. "They are enabling hatred among ourselves and creating the possibility of killing targeted groups. That is fascism, a phenomenon that is currently having a global impact."
You don't have to be LGBTIQ+ to march
"In response to what the president proposed in Davos, within 48 hours the collective organized a huge assembly and gave birth to a march that will be very large in Buenos Aires and at least in more than 20 cities across the country," Esteban Paulón, national representative and Secretary General of the Socialist Party in Argentina, told Presentes.
The congressman also filed one of the criminal complaints against MIlei's statements. The Argentine Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and Transgender People (FALGBT) also filed a complaint.
"Milei made the wrong choice; we queers are organized. The cultural battle is in the president's head, and it's colliding with reality once again. As happened with the universities, this is a society that doesn't want to go back. It may think there are certain institutional or economic reforms to be made, but it doesn't believe that means rolling back rights. After the end of the dictatorship, Argentine society always demanded further expansion of rights, " the congressman says.
“It is important that everyone joins in.”
“ This time, Milei is attacking a specific population group, but we've already seen during her first year in office that if retirees bother her, she attacks retirees. If students bother her, she attacks students, women, and now we're here. Milei opposes anyone with rights that don't match the brutality of her vision. This paves the way for demagoguery: by diminishing and silencing segments of the population, attacking and treating us as enemies,” says Alba Rueda.
Along the same lines, Representative Paulón clarifies that "it will not be a march of LGBT people, but rather a march of a democratic society that hadn't found a way to channel this feeling of constant attempts to trample on rights. And it found in the community the catalyst to come together and go out and say that this democratic consensus is not negotiable ."
“The call is transversal. It's important that everyone joins. The call isn't limited only to LGBTIQ+ rights or the social movements Milei attacks,” emphasizes activist Alba Rueda. “Society didn't vote for demagoguery; it voted for a government that respects the rules of democracy. Respecting the regulatory framework means not promoting more hatred, not dehumanizing a country that endured the last civil-military dictatorship. It's a broad rights agenda that includes ESI, the Micaela Law, and the gender perspective. It's important that we add our voices to say that this is not the society we want.”
“ It's an invitation to imagine a different world together, where fascism has its limits,” Montenegro emphasizes. “We will not return to those despotic, dark places. We will not return to the dungeons. We will never return. So the invitation is open for all of us to march together this Saturday.”
They ask Congress to speak out
Paulón (Encuentro Federal) and a group of legislators from different parties, including Mónica Macha (UP) and Maximiliano Ferraro (CC), signed a draft resolution yesterday asking the Chamber of Deputies to speak out categorically and repudiate Milei's statements in Davos "whose terms are totally opposed to the regulations that govern our country, regarding Women and Diversity, as a consequence of the laws in force in domestic law and the International Human Rights Treaties, of a supralegal nature, which oblige the National State and are part of the constitutional text itself, in accordance with Article 75 of our Magna Carta."
From the assembly to the streets of the country and the world
“The response to the economic violence, political persecution, and sexual repression of Javier Milei's government bears the colors of our community. Together and in alliance across the country, articulating all our differences. We need each other now. Spread the word, organize, participate!” expressed the LGBTQIA+ Antifascist Assembly.
That Thursday, when Milei spoke in Davos, the first WhatsApp messages began, culminating in an emergency meeting in Lezama Park at 8 p.m. About 80 people attended, most of them members of the Mostri Column, a space created last year to collectively inhabit public space. They decided to expand the meeting to Saturday.
On Saturday, Lezama Park was renamed "Néstor Perlongher" in honor of the historic writer, journalist, and LGBTIQ+ rights activist. This is a place that has been the scene of historic struggles for the community. It was also the place Milei chose last year to launch her La Libertad Avanza party at the national level. There, a crowd made up of diverse identities, students, healthcare professionals, memorial workers, political organizations, retirees, and self-organized individuals voted to hold a federal march on February 1st.
“ We have a power that goes beyond social media , beyond the number of followers, beyond what you have to tweet. Go back to the streets, stop being bourgeois. The LGBT community has to go back to the streets. It has to embrace the broken, the broken. There are a lot of queers, lesbians, bisexuals, whores, transvestites who are sleeping in the square. We have to go and embrace them, to ask for their forgiveness. We have to rebuild popular unity. Not to remove Milei, but so that the next government puts our demands on its agenda,” said Georgina Orellano , general secretary of the Argentine Sex Workers Union ( AMMAR ), in a speech that was applauded by those present.
The response and outrage were so overwhelming that Milei himself had to come out and try to "clarify" what he had expressed in Davos without metaphors. "Everyone joined a campaign of outrage over supposed things we never said, with the sole aim of causing harm and scoring a political point in the petty Argentine electoral dispute," the president said on his X account.
“The march is going to be massive. While it emerged from our community, it is by no means restricted solely to sexual identities,” says Rodríguez. The demands and the need to be together in the streets and say enough are beyond us. “We are part of society: education workers, healthcare workers, researchers, artists, precarious workers, and those in the informal economy. The precariousness of life and the impoverishment to which this government is leading us also affects us, and we believe that all those sectors that feel affected must come to the streets, join us, and make this a widespread collective cry and expression.”
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