Ornella Infante i Belén Correa: "Today they don't imprison you, they make you idiotic with Netflix"

PalmaThe rise of the far right is a transversal phenomenon that affects groups from different spheres of societies. The transfeminist movement is one of them, and Argentine activists Ornella Infante (former director of the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism of Argentina) and Belén Correa (researcher at the Archive of Trans Memory of Argentina) know this well. Both warn that the rights gained in recent decades are in danger and insist that no social conquest has been made without a struggle nor is maintained without defending it. Infante and Correa participated last Friday in Palma in a meeting on memory and rights.

What role does historical memory play within the trans movement? Can it also be a tool for political resistance?

— Belén Correa: Memory serves to not repeat mistakes. In my case, archives are a tool to reach memory, truth, and justice. Without them, we would not have the documents, which are the evidence, but only narratives. Trans memory has been invisibilized and our archives were in police departments, psychiatric institutions, and even the morgue.

— Ornella Infante: Memory is also linked to the historical context of peoples. We have enjoyed democracy in Argentina for a short time. We stopped paying with prison for our gender identity and our sexual orientation under the Peronist governments of Ernesto and Cristina Kirchner. I was tortured by the Police of the province of Tucumán in 1995, at 18 years old. And the codes that criminalized sexual diversity and transvestism ruled throughout the country: what happened to me in San Miguel de Tucumán happened to companions everywhere. It is important that all generations know how rights were obtained, because nothing falls from the sky.

— B. C.: The legislation criminalizing transsexuality was in force in Argentina until 2012 [the offenses were for dressing according to a sex not assigned at birth and for incitement to carnal act]. I was arrested in 2011 just for being trans. But, during the 1930s, Argentina was a refuge for European trans people. We have records in the archives of a group of Spanish women who settled there and were arrested and taken to psychiatric hospitals. The awakening of activism occurred in the 1990s, with the first Pride marches. Since then, Argentina has been at the forefront of Latin American activism, with a gender identity law that surpassed the Spanish one.

How can an identity be built when the context is hostile and strives to make a collective invisible?

— O.I.: Identity construction is not erased beyond institutional violence and a heterosexist, sexist, patriarchal, binary, and clerical society. It is built from the deepest and nothing stops it. Visibility has to do with the people who have put their bodies on the line for rights and with civil society organizations. I don't believe in people all alone. If a population is not made visible, it will never achieve its demands. Nothing ever comes from the palace to the population, but from the streets to the palaces.

What parallels do you see between past struggles and the current moment?

— B.C.: To say that Milei's government is like a dictatorship is to devalue what was actually experienced during the dictatorship. But in the economic part, the same recipes of the dictatorship are used. Here, it can be compared. The far-right in any country, Argentina, Spain, the United States, Bolsonaro's Brazil, etc., always uses trans people as a scapegoat. Whether they prohibit us from playing sports, going to the bathroom, or having our hormones. Fascism always has the same face and history repeats itself. Today they don't imprison you: they make you stupid with Netflix and lock you at home without expressing an opinion.

— O.I.: Since Javier Milei came to power, he has been carrying out a dizzying policy of State reduction. The leader of the opposition, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who granted rights to millions of Argentinians, remains imprisoned: to women, domestic workers, the universal child allowance, same-sex marriage, the Gender Identity Law, assisted fertilization, and the recognition of children from same-sex parent families before same-sex marriage. Milei has closed the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversities, the National HIV Program, and the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism, even though violence always targets the most vulnerable people, women and diversities. He has closed the National Institute of Indigenous Affairs: who could say that in a country like Argentina, with such numerous indigenous peoples, a president would close this?

Can the Argentinian transfeminist movement be compared to the Spanish one?

— B.C.: Both have been at the forefront and have fought for spaces within feminism for trans people. And both in Spain and Argentina there is a strong TERF [Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist] movement, which tries to prevent things from being this way.

— O.I.: There is a sector of feminist militancy that has become bureaucratized. There are leaders who debate from a position of privilege, from their academic, white, and European feminism, and they do not speak to us who have another type of feminism.

How has the rise of the far-right affected society's day-to-day life?

— O.I.: If the president says outrageous things, the rest who have a bit of authority do the same. Also, we are starving. We get paid and by the 10th we have no money. We invent to be able to eat every day.

— B.C.: The equivalent of a Spanish minimum wage earner in Argentina earns 200 dollars.

— O.I.: This translates into violence. There is a lot of violence in our country. Not only on the street, but institutional and political, with hate speech, from the president and all those who accompany him in the cabinet. It is easier to unlearn than to learn, and society is unlearning.

Are there alliances with other struggles, such as anti-racism and environmentalism?

— B.C.: The cuts affect the entire population. We're talking about universities, hospitals, and teachers. A moment will come when the social explosion will happen, because the country is used to taking to the streets. They are uniting different groups out of desperation.

— O.I.: Let's put differences aside and weave a framework to fight for an Argentine government that decides in favor of the country. Not like now, when it is subordinate to the United States. Milei does the same as Trump, but with inferior quality, like an outlet. Women, popular political parties, Peronism, and all of us who want the good of the homeland are focusing on the main discussions and leaving the others for another time.

What debates are happening right now within the movement?

— O.I.: I will be repetitive. Right now, hunger, the emptying of the State, and political persecution are concerning. The government is not sending food to thousands of popular and community canteens, despite court rulings stating that it must. We are worried about the advance of the right and how it comes to destroy institutions, to shatter workers' rights. They have also threatened to erase the Abortion Law, remove the Gender Identity Law, close the sexual and reproductive health program, and remove funding from the comprehensive sexual education program, which we transfeminist movements achieved.

What narratives need to be built to counter that of the far-right, which occupies so much space on social media?

— B.C.: When Milei won, we met with a group of Brazilian activists to find out what they had done with Bolsonaro. Part of their strategy had been to try to break the algorithm by talking about him, but without naming him. What is said on social media is not what is experienced in reality. No matter how much they tell me we are doing well, it is not like that. Reality makes the narrative of virtuality fall and helps to build another narrative. People who were in favor of the right are already doubting.

— O.I.: Fantasy can last for a while, until it fades and truth arrives. The right is skillful at changing the axis of debate: they insult you, they demonize you, and they move forward. On the other hand, we want to explain things, break down, rebuild, build arguments, and do politics. This often doesn't work because they empty us of content. One way to reverse this is to set social media aside a bit. We can have an exchange with many people. An attempt is made to make the population stupid from the comfort of their homes, and the left must regain the revolutionary initiative. The lack of response from the institutional politics that has governed us for a long time, distant from reality, also plays a role. We need people who belong to the people to govern. So far we have only had representative democracies, and we need expressive democracies: politics must be sensitive and have the capacity to encompass us all.u