“The situation is really chaotic, desperate,” said Florencia Guimares García, a travesti activist who is president of the House of Lohana and Diana Civil Association. “There is also a lot of fear among the trans and travestí community towards the government’s policies.”
Guimares’s group is named after Diana Sacayán, a prominent trans activist who was stabbed to death inside her Buenos Aires apartment in 2015, and Lohana Berkins, the founder of the Association for the Fight for Travesti and Transsexual Identity who died in 2016.
Guimares and three other trans activists — Julia Amore, Sasha Solano, and Daniela Ruíz — spoke with the Blade after they participated in a trans and travestí rights forum that took place at an LGBTQ cultural center in downtown Buenos Aires. Alba Rueda, the country’s former special envoy for LGBTQ rights, also took part.
“We are in a bad moment for the rights and quality of life of LGBTQ+ people,” Rueda told the Blade during a February 2024 interview.
Milei took office on Dec. 10, 2023, after he defeated then-Economy Minister Sergio Massa in the second round of that year’s presidential election. Rueda resigned before Milei assumed the presidency.
Milei, an economist and former congressman, shortly after he took office eliminated the country’s Women, Gender and Diversity Ministry.
Milei last year closed the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism, a government agency known by the acronym INADI that provided support and resources to people who suffered discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and other factors. Milei in 2024 also dismissed trans people who the government hired under the Trans Labor Quota Law, which set aside at least 1 percent of public sector jobs for trans people.
Argentina’s landmark Gender Identity Law that, among other things, allows trans people to legally change their gender without medical intervention, took effect in 2012 when Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was president. Milei on Feb. 5 issued a decree that restricts minors’ access to gender-affirming surgeries and hormone treatments.
Gay Congressman Esteban Paulón, a long-time LGBTQ activist, filed a criminal complaint against Milei after he linked the LGBTQ community to pedophilia and made other homophobic and transphobic comments during a Jan. 23 speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Millions of people in Buenos Aires and across Argentina participated in marches against Milei that took place less than two weeks later.
Milei is among the heads of state who attended President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Milei also spoke at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md.
“Violence is more explicit, more common,” Guimares told the Blade, noting police violence has become more common against sex workers who are trans or travestí since Milei took office. Guimares added this situation is worse outside of Buenos Aires.
“The situation is different, depending on the location, and even more so in other provinces,” she said. “Even living in the province of Buenos Aires isn’t the same as living in Salta, or in Jujuy, or in Corrientes, or in provinces where the population is more conservative, where the discourse from the churches is much stronger, where all of this has a much crueler impact.”
“Milei’s discourse has legitimatized all of this,” added Guimares.
Amore said Argentina before Milei “had been a beacon” for human rights around the world.
“We’ve been building these laws with a lot of struggle, a lot of effort, with allies, and it wasn’t enough because we didn’t reach our goal,” she said. “These are very young. Our democracy is very young; we have a 40-year-old democracy and we are talking about a Gender Identity Law that is 12-years-old.
Amore added Milei is trying to erase trans and travestí people. Ruiz, an activist and actress who founded Siete Colores Diversidad, an advocacy group, agreed.
“It is a cultural battle for us,” Ruiz told the Blade, referring for the continued struggle for trans and travestí rights in Argentina.
“It marks a cultural paradigm shift that we were carrying out day after day, making ourselves visible,” she added. “We carried it out by making ourselves politically visible, by presenting our travestí and trans Latin American visibility as a beacon to the world.”
The activists spoke with the Blade less than three months after Trump took office.
The American president, like Milei, has targeted the trans community with executive orders and policy directives. These include banning the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers and prohibiting trans adults and young people from sports teams that correspond with their gender identity.
Solana, a trans woman from Peru who advocates on behalf of migrants, noted one of the first executive orders that Trump signed directed the federal government to only recognize two genders: Male and female.
“Man and woman. Period,” she said.
Guimares added Milei’s anti-LGBTQ discourse isn’t even his “original speech, but rather a line drawn from the U.S. government of Donald Trump and its agenda, which he established from the beginning and which he campaigned on as well.”
“This also follows in line with parties like Vox in Spain and other European countries, where we see how in Hungary, where an LGBTI Pride march (in Budapest) is now banned, and in other countries around the world where the population is having a really hard time,” said Guimares. “So, it’s not something original from Milei, but rather he’s taking part in those political agendas to generate strategies and alliances to be able to access economic resources.”
Amore, for her part, urged her American counterparts to continue the fight.
“Don’t let down your guard,” said Amore. “Organize. Come together. Speak out. Become visible in community. Respect the diversity of voices and put your own voices first and make yourselves more visible.”