ABOUT

Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina is a family reunion. It arises from the need to embrace again, to look at each other again, to reconnect after more than 30 years with the companions we thought were dead, with whom we distanced ourselves due to differences or exile; and especially with the memories of those who are no longer with us. From our past, marked by exclusion and violence, many things remained unfinished in the urgency of existing. Photographs, stories, diaries, magazines, and objects reveal our activism before activism, and why today fewer than 100 of us are over 55.

The project was conceived by Claudia Pía Baudracco and María Belén Correa, both trans activists and founders of ATA (Argentine Transvestite Association) in 1993. They had envisioned a space to bring together surviving comrades and their memories. Pía died in 2012—months before the Gender Identity Law was passed—and María Belén founded the Archive from exile. In 2014, with the help of photographer Cecilia Estalles, she began collecting and digitally preserving the documentation for its preservation and protection. The Archive currently contains a collection of more than ten thousand documents, recording material from the early 20th century to the late 1990s.