With an ancestral ceremonyThe cry of “Marichi wew”, an indigenous Mapuzungun voice that means “ten or a thousand times we will win”the opening of the 35th Plurinational Meeting of Women, Lesbians, Trans, Transvestites, Bisexuals, Intersexuals and Non-Binaries was held in Huarpe, Comechingón and Ranquel Territory in San Luis.
The meeting place was the park of the former Ceramics, where from 9 o’clock the first groups that had arrived this Friday congregated, to which those that arrived this Saturday were added, and the local wind Chorrillero accompanied a cool morning that failed to cool the spirits of thousands of women and diversities.
Invoking silence “as a healing principle,” the Huarpes and Ranqueles authorities lit a fire and prayed to the elements of nature asking for “protection for the Encounter” and demanding freedom of Mapuche women detained during the eviction operation of the Lafken Winkul Mapu Mapuche community in Villa MascardiRio Negro, last Wednesday.
After that, and as the place was filled with flags, an extensive text was read, read in parts by those who organized the event, whose post was given to them by the organizers of La Plata, the last host city.
The document began with the defense of the name change, which stopped being called Women’s Meeting to take its current name. Feminist sectors did not agree with this modification, so they will meet next month, also in San Luis.
“We want to be firm: it is not just a name, it is the power of the struggle of our indigenous sisters, women, lesbians, trans, transvestites, bisexuals, intersexuals and non-binaries,” read the organizers. Naming ourselves multinational and with dissidence means breaking with the national borders imposed on us by colonialism, and with the borders of bodies imposed on us by a biology that defines a supposed normality based on white supremacy and the heterosexual regime and the male binomial -woman in which we are pigeonholed”, they added.
After citing each of the victims of femicides in San Luis, they denounced the environmental crimes and demanded the sanction of the Wetlands Law; they condemned extractivism and hegemonic agricultural production; also the concentration of the land.
To defend the integrity of childhood, they spoke out against the chineo, a name given to the sexual abuse of indigenous girls by Creole men, and the search request for Guadalupe Lucero Cialone, the missing girl in San Luis in June of last year. Guadalupe’s mother, Yamila Cileone, participated in the claim and on stage.
Under the slogan “The debt is with us,” the document reviewed the country’s poverty and indigence statistics that particularly affect the most vulnerable sectors, including the transvestite and trans population.
In a separate paragraph, the assassination attempt against the vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, was repudiated.
Already at 7:00 p.m., the march against transvesticides and transfemicides began. Colorful and creative, the mobilization of the dissident groups once again asked out loud “Where is Tehuel?”, the young trans man who disappeared in March 2021, when he left his home in the Buenos Aires town of San Vicente to meet Alejandro Korn with Luis Alberto Ramos, a man who had a history of homicide due to robbery who had promised him a job as a waiter.
The dissidents also reaffirmed one of their historic slogans: “The Church and the State are “separate affairs.” And they demanded effective compliance with the transvestite labor quota established by Law 27,636 and equal access to health and educational services. conditions than the heterosexual population.
“It is very important to demand that the trans labor quota be implemented throughout the state, because there are 200 quotas when there should be 3,000, just in the city of Buenos Aires,” Tomás Mácolo, a journalist, PTS activist and worker at the Guardianship Ministry of Minors with Trans Children and Adolescents.
Manuela Castañeira, leader of the New MAS, highlighted “a progressive element” in the meeting’s opening document “which is that unlike those previously prepared by the RCP, for the first time and clearly, it manifested itself in a claim for the separation of the State Church, making it clear that clerical institutions should not interfere or break these instances of organization and struggle”.
Meanwhile, the leader of the National Current Lohana Berkins of San Luis, Zayra Rojas, indicated that the Meeting is “a hinge to continue the fight to expand rights because being named, recognized and valued (…) infuses us with a new energy to continue fighting for the rights of the historically most vulnerable group in society”.
The program of the Meeting also includes 105 workshops in different school buildings, the National University of San Luis and the Deliberative Council.
