A multitude of trans neighbors and transvestites starred this Saturday afternoon in the streets and corridors of the Padre Carlos Mugica neighborhood in the fourth edition of the Trans Villera Plurinational Diversity Pride March, in which they demanded a Comprehensive Transvestite Law and public policies of all levels of the state to guarantee access to rights.
This year’s edition had as its main motto “for a law of entrepreneurship for diversity, for a comprehensive transvestite law, for a transvestite job quota and for a real urbanization in the town with diversity”and was attended for part of the day by the Minister for Women, Gender and Diversity, Ayelén Mazzina.
The minister affirmed that “it is a pride to be able to visit a space of struggle and vindication like this, that is why I chose it for my first territorial tour; I come from San Luis, which is a province that bets very strongly on the recognition of fellow transvestites and trans and that is a look that must also be consolidated throughout the country”.
“We are people with many capacities and we need our rights to be recognized, you have lived through many processes fighting for those rights from which we youth must learn”the official pointed out.
“This will not be the last time I pass through this space, because I promised to accompany the development of this work cooperative, and because I promised that I will come to play football in the space that they have consolidated and that is very important because of what it costs for us diversities to enter a space as patriarchal as soccer; I ask you to continue fighting because you change the lives of the compañeras, you have saved many lives of many compañeras,” Mazzina completed.
From ten o’clock in the morning, neighbors from the Mugica neighborhood began to meet in block 12 in front of the Trans Villera House of Diversity led by Martina Pelinco, which also houses the Alma Mater Training Center together with a textile cooperative that provides work to trans people.
With the participation of numerous social, political, and union organizations, the mobilization began after 4:00 p.m., accompanied by music and multicolored flags that were greeted by the neighbors who came out of their houses to witness the mobilization.
LaTrans Villera Plurinational
Martina Pelinco, promoter of the march, stated in a dialogue with Télam that “the Plurinational Trans Villera was born because we wanted to show another way of marching for diversity, claiming our plurinational and villera identity; with that idea we summoned all the neighborhood organizations, neighbors and referents of apples to ask them to accompany us to make visible our identity and the rights that are still being stolen from us, but do it in a cheerful way so that they see that we are still resisting”.
“At first, more than one was amazed because they did not imagine how many trans or transvestite neighbors they had, but when they began to see that we were organizing ourselves and that we were looking for the opportunity to manage basic rights such as an identity document, they began to see us differently; there many Our neighbors who also had problems in accessing the document or other rights came looking for us so that we could tell them how we did it or accompany them,” he recalled.
The activist pointed out that “an important milestone was the first trans villero soccer championship in the neighborhood with which they got to know us better and began to see that here we have an institution from which to articulate different solutions for the neighborhood and a work cooperative.”
“We wanted them not to rob us of hope and for us not to be left with prostitution as the only job to be able to pay for a room or eat, because there are also many girls who, due to various problems, could not do that either; from the textile cooperative we felt that we have an alternative and we are militating to build others here in the neighborhood,” he added.
“I am happy because many of the younger girls who are here today are not going to have to go through everything we had to go through in order for our most essential rights to be recognized; they are going to be able to grow up in a happier environment in the that her compañeras don’t die around her and I think that this is the payment that we, the greatest, see in our militancy, we still need to conquer many rights, but we see that our sisters are going to have a better future than us and that with their strength will go for what is missing,” Pelinco completed.
