Milei’s First Year in Argentina Leads to Setbacks for the LGBTIQ+ Community – Latin America News Dispatch

Argentina,
Features,
Southern Cone

March 25, 2025

By
Stanley Luna

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On a sweltering February afternoon in downtown Buenos Aires, the transvestite-trans collective leads a march alongside the human proper’s group the Grandmothers and Moms of the Plaza de Mayo. Behind them are migrants from everywhere in the world together with members of each Argentinas’ Afro and native communities. As the gang grows, hundreds of individuals come representing all kinds of teams: the LGBTIQ+ collective, the drag neighborhood, oncology and HIV sufferers, retirees, workers of public establishments, and people belonging to political events opposing the present Javier Milei administration.

“They impression our lives and this nation feels no ache. But it surely nonetheless has some reminiscence and a way of conscience. That’s what we use to wake them up, the notice that our lives are worthy, that we’re their daughters, their sons and their whores,” says trans activist Marlene Wayar, who marches with the transvestite-trans collective Las Históricas Argentinas. Wayar is on Avenida Mayo, a couple of blocks from the historic Plaza de Mayo. In minutes, the avenue has was a ballroom dance ground the place marchers chant slogans like “Fuera, fuera Milei” (Get out Milei) or “Dame, dame, dame tu furia” (Give me, give me your fury). It appears like a celebration however, in actuality, it’s a protest.

“They impression our lives and this nation feels no ache. But it surely nonetheless has some reminiscence and a way of conscience. That’s what we use to wake them up, the notice that our lives are worthy, that we’re their daughters, their sons and their whores.”

In response to xenophobic feedback made by the Argentine president, this march marked the primary time the place a big variety of migrants participated within the protest.

This previous January on the Davos Financial Discussion board,  Milei delivered a speech during which he linked homosexuality with pedophilia, claimed that feminists had been merely attempting to hunt privileges over males and made disparaging feedback about migrants and the environmental motion. In response, The LGBTIQ+ neighborhood mobilized by holding two assemblies which they known as the Federal Anti-Fascist and Anti-Racist Satisfaction March. They demanded that Milei respect the sexual range of Argentine residents and protect the rights the neighborhood had secured during the last decade. Within the days previous to the march, Argentinians negatively impacted by the federal government’s fiscal adjustment coverage additionally opted to hitch the protest.

Traditionally talking, Argentina has been a pioneer in guaranteeing rights for LGBTIQ+ individuals and ladies on the world stage. In 2010, it was the primary nation in Latin America to approve same-sex marriage; in 2012, it was additionally the primary within the area to have a Gender Id Legislation which depathologized trans identities and offered authorized instruments to make sure this group would have equal entry to primary rights. Extra lately in 2020, the nation decriminalized abortion and a yr later handed the Transvestite-Trans Labor Quota Legislation, which requires that 1% of state hires self-identify as trans.

The February 1st march additionally had the assist of notable Argentine artists and cultural leaders like singers Lali Espósito and María Becerra, who’ve each been attacked by President Milei for his or her place in favor of sexual range and their public opposition to the federal government’s conservative agenda.

An attendee holds up an indication in assist of trans individuals and queer girls in Argentina.

Regardless of the progress, legal guidelines in favor of the LGBTIQ+ neighborhood and ladies are liable to being systemically dismantled by the present administration. Because the march was being organized, the Nationwide Authorities mounted a marketing campaign to proceed its assault in opposition to what the ultra-right is looking a “cultural battle” of the  “woke agenda”: an ideological conflict between conservatism and progressive considering. On January 25, the Minister of Justice, Mariano Cúneo Libarona, introduced on his social community account X that he would ship to Congress a draft invoice known as “Equality earlier than the Legislation”, to be able to eradicate the Transvestite-Trans Labor Quota Legislation and to eradicate the determine of feminicide from the Argentine Legal Code. “Feminism is a distortion of the idea of equality that solely seeks privileges, placing one half of the inhabitants in opposition to the opposite,” the deputy wrote on his social media web page, including “girls are utilizing it to line their pockets and undermine males”.

“Feminism is a distortion of the idea of equality that solely seeks privileges, placing one half of the inhabitants in opposition to the opposite…girls are utilizing it to line their pockets and undermine males.”

A couple of days following the march, the Argentine Congress reformed the Gender Id Legislation  to ban minors beneath the age of 18 from accessing hormone remedy and stopping them from altering their gender within the state registry.

That very same day, Gabriel Villalba, a 17-year-old trans teenager, was relieved that his endocrinologist had lately elevated his dose of testosterone but in addition admitted to worrying about what would occur after his two-month prescription runs out. He has no concept what’s going to occur along with his remedy, contemplating he is not going to flip 18 till August.

Villalba suffers from anemia and had began the consultations and medical examinations to entry the hormone remedy in February of final yr. After receiving the scientific outcomes, the endocrinologist approved the hormone remedy in December 2024. However now, Villalba says, the physician is afraid to proceed treating him, for the reason that latest reform limits the remedies that trans well being specialists are allowed to manage. In response to the adolescent, trans individuals even of authorized age have informed him that their medical doctors don’t need to deal with them for the reason that reform handed.

“After I discovered about every thing, I began speaking to my buddies and I bought offended. In the event that they take away my testosterone, I do know that my well being issues will return once more, I’ll lose all of the adjustments I’m already having and it’ll have an effect on my psychological well being rather a lot,” remembers Villalba, who’s a part of the Secretariat of Households of Trans Youngsters and Adolescents of the Argentine LGBT+ Federation. The federation has filed an injunction to droop the reforms to the Id Legislation and, within the Argentine capital, the Contentious Administrative Court docket has already ordered to pause the modifications to the legislation.

“In the event that they take away my testosterone, I do know that my well being issues will return once more, I’ll lose all of the adjustments I’m already having and it’ll have an effect on my psychological well being rather a lot.”

A person marches within the LGBTIQ+ Federal Anti-Fascist and Anti-Racist Satisfaction March with an indication in opposition to Javier Milei, who has made statements connecting homosexuals to pedophiles.

The Gender Id Legislation was handed after years of wrestle by the transvestite-trans collective. As soon as Argentina achieved democracy in 1983, this group continued to be persecuted and criminalized for his or her gender id and expression by way of the Codes of Misdemeanors and Contraventional Codes, which started to be repealed in 2007. With out this legislation, a 6-year-old by the title of Luana wouldn’t have grow to be the primary trans little one to entry gender reassignment well being providers in 2013; nor would trans individuals now have entry to the well being system or the correct to training. A lot much less would the Transvestite-Trans Labor Quota Legislation have been handed in 2021.

Nonetheless, in his anti-woke discourse, President Milei has constantly focused the LGBTIQ+ neighborhood. At Davos, he cited a case of a U.S. couple sentenced in December to 100 years in jail for little one abuse to be able to assert that “in its strangest variations, gender ideology is apparent and easy little one abuse. They’re pedophiles”. Following this speech, hate crimes in opposition to sexual minorities, particularly lesbian girls, surged in Argentina: a neighbor set fire to the house of a lesbian couple within the Province of Buenos Aires, a passerby beat a lesbian couple as they walked hand in hand within the capital and, within the northwestern province of Salta, one other man entered the house of a lesbian activist and stabbed her seven times.

These circumstances are along with the triple lesbicide that occurred on Could 6 final yr within the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Barracas the place a neighbor threw a bomb and attacked two lesbian {couples} sharing a room in a resort. Sadly, solely one of many victims survived. The assault was dedicated hours after, in a radio program, Milei’s pal and biographer, Nicolaś Márquez, stated that homosexuality is an “unhealthy and self-destructive” habits.

A protester shows the names of the three lesbian girls murdered by a neighbor in a hate crime in Could 2024.

In 2024, based on the Observatorio del Instituto contra la Discriminación de la Defensoría del Pueblo, there have been 140 hate crimes in Argentina. Forty-eight p.c of those circumstances consisted of murders, structural violence and suicides. The ages of the victims ranged between 30 and 39 years outdated, and probably the most affected by these assaults had been trans individuals. The violence suffered by trans individuals, significantly trans girls, signifies that, based on the Latin American and Caribbean Community of Trans Individuals, their life expectancy in Latin America is lower than 41 years.

Along with members of the LGBTIQ+ neighborhood, straight Argentines additionally attended the march in assist of queer rights. Celia Molina, an 85-year-old heterosexual girl, stated she was stunned when she heard Milei’s speech in Davos commenting, “We now have to cease this idiotic insanity that harms us. I’m nervous concerning the greater than 50% of the nation that voted for Milei”.

After the President received the elections with 56% of the vote in 2023, he rapidly dismissed at the very least 900 trans workers who had been employed by the State beneath the Transvestite-Trans Labor Quota Legislation. Quickly after, he eradicated the Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity, which was chargeable for public insurance policies in favor of girls and sexual range; and likewise dissolved the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism. 

For Carlos Alvarez, a homosexual man of African descent, the closure of those establishments represents a disregard on the a part of the federal government for the significance of selling human rights for all individuals. With these selections, he says, the Nationwide Authorities leaves complete populations unprotected. Nonetheless, Alvarez believes that the February 1st march marked a change within the dynamics of social actions inside Argentina by concurrently confronting fascism and racism.

“Sadly, we’ve got grow to be victims of a neoliberal authorities that’s destroying establishments, not solely by way of the State, however in all of the struggles during which girls, indigenous individuals, LGBTI, afro descendants and other people with disabilities have superior,” laments Alvarez.

Beginning in entrance of Congress, the march led to entrance of the of ‘La Casa Rosada’, (The Pink Home), the official office of the Argentine President.

The “tradition battle” throughout Latin America: Set backs for El Salvador

Argentina is just not the one nation in Latin America that’s presently waging a battle in opposition to sexual range. The Bukele administration in El Salvador can also be happening the assault.

After being elected president in 2019, Bukele dismantled the Secretariat of Social Inclusion which included workplaces that obtained complaints of gender discrimination in public establishments, offered coaching on gender points to federal employees and arranged job festivals for the LGBTIQ+ neighborhood. Whereas the division was transferred to the Ministry of Tradition, native social justice organizations have claimed that within the six years Bukele has been in workplace, insurance policies put in place by the 2 earlier administrations had been not being carried out, together with tips associated to the well being system.

In 2021, the Salvadoran ruling celebration obtained a majority in Congress and, throughout its first parliamentary classes, the pro-Bukele bench vetoed a collection of payments that it thought-about “out of date”, such because the Gender Id Legislation and the decriminalization of abortion.

“We entrust our kids, who’re what we worth most, with an training system, to be able to educate them helpful issues for his or her lives: biology, math, necessary issues, for his or her studying. After which they arrive and need to put ideologies into [our children], they need to put issues into them which might be opposite to nature,” Bukele informed Catalina Stubbe, the Hispanic director of Mothers for Liberty, a U.S. group that’s in opposition to intercourse training together with discussions of LGBT people in colleges. He made this speech on the 2023 Conservative Motion Convention, the place Donald Trump and Milei had been additionally in attendance.

“We entrust our kids, who’re what we worth most, with an training system to be able to educate them helpful issues for his or her lives… After which they arrive and need to put ideologies into [our children], they need to put issues into them which might be opposite to nature.”

 Shortly after the convention ended, each the Bukele and Milei  governments prohibited state establishments from utilizing the acronym LGBTIQ+. This censorship may be seen in Argentina because it pertains to complete sexual training in public establishments in addition to in El Salvador, the place a play created by drag artists discussing the violence they face has been pulled from the Nationwide Theater in San Salvador.

“In these virtually six years of presidency… the advances which were achieved over the earlier decade in facilitating entry to basic rights for the LGBTIQ+ neighborhood have been dismantled one after the other. As well as,  public establishments and  authorities officers, together with the president have emboldened hate speech in opposition to sexual minorities,” says Roberto Zapata, an activist with the social justice group AMATE. The activist additionally emphasizes that trans girls have been probably the most affected by Bukele’s conservative agenda.

AMATE has been documenting circumstances of trans adolescentes who’ve been discriminated in opposition to by instructional establishments for expressing their gender id. As well as, based on Zapata, the Ministry of Well being has made it so medical consumption varieties omit all sexual orientations and gender identities outdoors the cisgender and heterosexual norm.

Underneath the Bukele administration, official knowledge signifies that 85,000 Salvadorans have been detained within the nation during the last three years however NGOs like Socorro Jurídico Humanitario estimate that hundreds of those detentions are arbitrary. Zapata argues that this overhaul of the jail system in El Salvador has “permeated” social actions as activists now worry persecution and/or the dismantling of  their organizations by the authorities.

The connection between the Trump, Milei and Bukele administrations shouldn’t be ignored. With Milei in attendance at Trump’s inauguration and Bukele’s acceptance of utilizing Salvadoran prisons to accommodate U.S. deportees of various nationalities in accordance with Trump’s anti-migration coverage, these presidents should not merely united by an “anti-woke agenda” however of their ways rooted in repression and cruelty.