Reportage • Valen Iricibar • November 9, 2024 • Leer en castellano

“Please don't get so close to the platform,” rings an exasperated warning over the subway intercom in the city of Buenos Aires. "Do not push your feet in the door. Avoid accidents.”

“He was on the edge of saying ‘Calm down, you bunch of queers,’” riffed a passenger whose hair was cut into a mullet.

The other passengers laugh, the B Line car was overflowing with people going to the 33rd edition of the Pride March. Fans flitter, people clap and flags and dancing fill the air as the crowd thinkens toward the central Plaza de Mayo for the annual gathering of celebration and struggle that takes place every year on the first Saturday of November. This year it fell on November 2 and, throughout the day, two million people (according to organizers) attended the first Pride march under the government of Javier Milei.

"I have many friends who were afraid to come, because [Milei’s followers] are characterized above all for being very violent and anti-rights. But that made me want to be here even more,” said Carolina Unrein, a trans actress and writer. She wears a black beret to top off her monochromatic look. "Since I was very young, I always tried to overcome my fears, especially when I'm sure about what I feel. And I am very sure that I had to come and be here today.”

Pride and repudiation

For the first time in 40 years, Argentina has no government institution promoting or protecting gender policies. The Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity was shuttered and key support programs against gender violence have been decimated.

Other key spaces for the protection of LGBTQIA+ rights have also been shut down, including the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (INADI). According to the National Observatory of LGBT+ Hate Crimes, there were 133 hate crimes in Argentina last year, experts caution that these crimes are on the rise.

“We are in a context in which we have a government that celebrates being anti-rights, it admits that without shame, and for the first time in history the Pride March is happening explicitly without the presence and support of the national government,” said Fer Albornoz, the National Secretary for Mental Health and Addictions at Argentina’s LGBT+ Federation, who was also the health coordinator of the march.

The lack of funding was made up for with contributions from the governments of the Province of Buenos Aires, the City of Buenos Aires and companies and embassies, 30 of which issued a joint statement calling for the protection of the collective. “We are not facing a government that thinks differently, we are facing a government that is bulldozing our rights.”

Despite a storm in the forecast, people began to arrive early at the Plaza de Mayo. According to Albornoz, more people arrived earlier than usual, a sign they wanted to experience pride as something political, that goes beyond just a party. By noon the sun was out and it was humid and a little cloudy. the air vibrated with music coming off the stage in front of the Casa Rosada.

Several of the main rallying cries of the march focused on rejecting the president, his party La Libertad Avanza (LLA) and his followers. Key slogans condemned their economic adjustment policies and rejected their hate speech, which has spiked since last year’s electoral campaign. The brutal triple lesbicide that rocked the community six months ago was front and center. As in the protest marches demanding justice since the triple killing on May 6, the Organizing Committee of the Pride March (COMO) called out: “It's not freedom, it's hate”.

"I have no doubt that freedom is collective, it is never individual. What we see in the government is pure individuality, it's 'every man for himself',” said José María Di Bello, a member of the COMO’s History Council and an HIV positive activist. “Freedom is built on the basis of equality, without equality it is impossible.”

Di Bello had just left the stage after dancing alongside the DJ in a pink tutu with a black corset and platform boots decorated with butterflies. In their hand they carried a sign that reads “I live with HIV, with Milei I die,” warning of an issue LGBTQIA+ activists called out the week before the march. The government announced a 76 percent cut in the allocation of resources for HIV, sexually transmitted infections, hepatitis and tuberculosis. “This will effectively end prevention and treatment programs carried out by the nation,” according to an email newsletter from Act Up Argentina.

“Medicine is bought at market value because we buy it from multinational pharmaceutical companies,” said Di Bello. “What we are expecting is that the treatment that is purchased will barely be enough to cover 20 to 30 percent of the people who need them.”

A defiant celebration

Around the massive square are dozens of stalls where people are selling clothes, dildos, flags, food, and accessories. One group hands out flyers and plays with a big homemade cardboard die dotted with important figures from Argentina’s LGBTQIA+ movement. Under the lights shine the faces of Carlos Jáuregui, a key driver of gay visibility and anti-discrimination in the 80s, and Lohana Berkins, a travesti activist and proponant of the 2012 Gender Identity Law.

On the main stage, activists read the names of social organizers who passed away this year, including Magalí Muñíz, a transvestite activist who survived the dictatorship and police raids. One day earlier, her colleagues from the Trans Memory Archive filed a collective injunction demanding the state provide reparations to members of the transvestite and transgender community who are over 50.

“If one does not build from the memory of history, it is so hard to understand what we have now, and to push that struggle forward” says Di Bello.

More than 50 trucks pumping loud music rolled slowly towards Congress. It is the first pride march under Milei's government, but not the first in which his figure loomed large.

In 2023, Lali Espósito's song Quienes Son, featuring Moria Casán, the mother-in-law of then presidential candidate Sergio Massa, was on repeat. This year the song was Fanático, a pop response from the star to the bombardment of discourse from the president and his followers. 

Last year, “Milei no” was a popular message, as the march took plae just a few weeks before his election. This year, among the most popular slogans was a reformulation of one of the President’s homophobic posts: “For Milei, lots of gay sex”.

As the sun set over Avenida 9 de Julio the sky turned bright orange, and the defiant parade continued. In the river of posters, one cardboard sign read “Migrant Drag.” It was held up by Ricx Schüpbach, who was dressed in a myriad of bits of fabric, assembled as a critique of fast fashion. False eyelashes that look like antennae peeked over sporty sunglasses.

“We came because the situation here was better in terms of LGBT rights, the socio-cultural scene is luckily still persevering, through a lot of resistance” said the Swiss drag queen and journalist, who has lived in Buenos Aires for four years. "Argentina is attractive as a country to emigrate to. Now things are more complex, but, you have to go on, to resist. That's why we’re here.

The lights of the dome above congress shone starry white, like stars at nightfall. Unlike in previous years, the colors were not changed to the color of the rainbow to accompany the march. But all around the landmark building is a carnival of community, a queer whirlwind of celebration and resistance.

The actress Unrein recalled a famous phrase of Jáuregui: “In a society that educates us to feel ashamed, pride is a political response.” She unfurled her black fan tells Ojalá that manifesting pride is the key.

“The march is a space that we create for ourselves that does not have limits, and for me it is an invitation to take this into to our daily lives, to feel pride every day,” said Unrein. “In such a heterosexual world, where there are more countries that criminalize homosexuality than that have equal marriage, it is the only way we are going to be able to get the justice we deserve.”