Travesti associations,state policies,and NGOs: Resistance and collective action in Buenos Aires,Argentina

Introduction

Argentinean travestis ¹ have been historically deprived of access to many citizenship rights because of their non-normative sexualities and gender identities. Like other Latin American travestis, their main source of income is prostitution/sex work ² where they are exposed to violence and exclusion. Although there are no official statistics about this population, several studies carried out by the local travesti organizations have shown that almost 79% of them work in prostitution/sex work, and over 90% have suffered violent episodes, including police harassment and sexual abuse (Berkins, 2008). This is a result of their expulsion from home and school at an early age, their lack of access to the health care system and lack of opportunities for work, apart from prostitution/sex work. Many of them die at a young age.

Since 1990, several organizations have emerged in the country as a response to this situation. Initially, these pioneer groups focused their efforts on the public denunciation of the violence exerted by security forces ³ and on the organization of HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns. Nowadays their purposes have diversified and they have broadened their demands to encompass access to education, housing, healthcare and work. Through this process of resistance and negotiation, their initial alliances with pre-existing LGBT groups have been extended to include other social groups, governmental and non-governmental institutions and international agencies. ⁴

Travesti political organizations have frequently been thought of as part of the so-called sexual diversity movement. Some exceptions are found in a few ethnographic studies. In Argentina, the work of anthropologist Josefina Fernandez (2004) has analyzed the formation of the Asociación de Lucha por la Identidad Travesti y Transexual ⁵ (ALITT) and their alliances and confrontations with other feminist and gay-and-lesbian groups in their struggle to gain recognition of their gender identities. The emergence of travesti political movements and the ‘scandalous’ acts performed by travesti activists in Brazil have also been analyzed by Klein and Kulick (2003), who pointed out that these groups were created on the basis of previous experiences in activism around HIV/AIDS prevention (Klein, 1998). The life stories of travesti activists, committed to fighting for sexual and human rights, have been proposed as research issues, aimed at documenting social and political emancipation strategies and the construction of citizenship within those communities (Siqueira Peres, 2005). The construction of transgenderism as a political problem in Spain has been approached from a different perspective which places the current initiatives, claims, policy developments and political actors in their social, political and institutional contexts (Platero, 2011).

In this article I inquire into the trajectories of travesti associations in Argentina, as part of a broader investigation of the relationship between these groups’ demands and the ways in which state agencies and non-government organizations (NGOs) shape them and their members. I suggest analyzing this process by focusing on the configuration of a multidimensional and dynamic field of force (Roseberry, 1994; Thompson, 1984) in which both NGOs and the State’s techniques of governmentality over travesti groups simultaneously assimilate, re-elaborate and resist them. I draw on Foucault’s conceptualization of governmentality (Foucault, 2007) and Roseberry’s approach to resistance and struggle within processes of hegemony (Roseberry, 1994). The article is part of broader research project that proposes a political and anthropological framework to study the relation between inequality processes and the modalities of collective action (Grimberg, 2009). It takes into account an ethnographic perspective developed by political anthropologists centred on the analysis of power relationships and the understanding of politics as a dimension of daily life (Vincent, 2002).

A description of the history of travesti political activism is essential to compare and contrast two of the main local associations: ATTTA (Asociación de Travestis, Transexuales y Transgéneros Argentinas) and ALITT (Asociación de Lucha por la Identidad Travesti y Transexual). It is suggested that the tension between prostitution and work is at the core of this. For ATTTA, the claim that sex work should be regarded as a type of labour allowed them to focus on HIV/AIDs prevention, establishing bonds with state agencies and NGOs related to health and receiving funds from international institutions. Within a different network, ⁶ ALITT took an abolitionist position, rejecting the notion of prostitution as work. The construction of the claim for dignified work was enabled by local feminist debates and the ‘productivist turn’ of the Argentinean government, which had promoted the formation of labour cooperatives to achieve the social inclusion of those previously deemed ‘unemployable’. Both the State and NGOs required ALITT to adopt a repertoire of institutions, routines and rules, in order to become cooperative workers. As Ferguson and Gupta stated, NGOs ‘are not states, but are unquestionably state-like in some respects’ and thus should be considered an integral part of the apparatus of governmentality (Ferguson and Gupta, 2002: 994). As is suggested throughout this article, travesti organizations have learnt to make their demands according to the logics of governmentality; however, in Roseberry’s terms, the ‘common framework’ established between the State, NGOs, and subaltern groups is always contested and resignified.

In this light, what is suggested is the introduction of an ethnographical approach. Research methods are based on qualitative techniques, such as participant observation in a local travesti organization in several periods between 2008 and 2011, in-depth interviews and the analysis of secondary written sources. ⁷ I was able to learn about the background and dynamics of the group by taking part in meetings, activities and training courses attended by members, travelling by bus and joining in many social gatherings. I focus on daily life experiences, on knowledge, demands and strategies developed by the subjects and on subjects’ social practices and relationships (Atkinson and Hammersley, 2002).

Organizational courses

Argentinean history, like that of other Latin America countries, consists of a succession of democratic periods interrupted by several military coups d’états. The most recent period of dictatorship, which lasted from 1976 to 1983, was also the cruellest: 30,000 people were kidnapped, tortured and killed by military and paramilitary forces. In 1983 the democratic system was re-established and is still in force. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 1990s the recurrence of police harassment was crucial for the development of collective actions among travestis who constructed themselves as ‘the community to which democracy hasn’t arrived yet’. The main reason for this definition was related to the ‘police edicts’ ⁸ that were in force in Buenos Aires from 1932 to 1998 and that allowed the police and other security forces to suppress a number of behaviours not considered criminal, but punishable by penalties such as fines or arrests.

The infringements that concerned the travestis directly were summarized in the idea of ‘scandalous acts in the street’, a recurrent category in the police edicts, and were used by security forces to justify the identification, suppression and imprisonment of travestis. In the 1980s and 1990s travestis regularly spent up to 30 days under arrest for the ‘public exhibit of cross dressing’ and ‘offering of the carnal act’ ⁹ (Berkins and Fernández, 2005). Other forms of police abuse identified by the travestis were sexual abuse, beating, insults, torture and bribes that were required to be allowed to work in certain areas. The narratives of this period are fragmentary and sparse, because only a few ‘survivors’ – of violence, HIV/AIDS and other complications related to precarious access to the health care system – remain.

In 1995 some members of the Argentinean Travestis Association (ATA), one of the first travesti organizations, left the group and established two others: ALITT and OTTRA. ¹⁰ The establishment of the autonomy of Buenos Aires ¹¹ in 1997 marked the beginning of the debate on the abolition of the police edicts. The travestis increased their public appearances, exposing their living conditions and the abuses committed by the police. They argued that the edicts that regulated the use of public space criminalized their identities, that their only work opportunity was in the streets and they lacked other ways of making a living. ATA became ATTTA in order to include people identified with the categories travesti, transsexual and transgender and developed a trans network with several offices around the country. ALITT was reluctant to accept these categories, which they saw as ‘definitions imposed by the Global North’ and completely unrelated to the Latin American travesti experience. In this search for recognition and affirmation of the travesti identity, ALITT also took issue with the terminology of HIV/AIDS prevention policies, according to which travestis were considered as part of the high-risk groups, together with men who have sex with men (MSM). Thus, ALITT rejected the resources granted by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to finance projects of prevention for this group, claiming that the definition was ‘violent for their identities’. ATTTA, on the other hand, decided to accept them, mostly because HIV/AIDS was still the principal cause of death in this social group and the resources would finance their activities. The implementation of these prevention projects focused on the distribution of condoms and leaflets for trans sex workers, the organization of ‘train-the-trainer’ workshops, the promotion of HIV testing and the monitoring of HIV treatment.

Following the line of UNAIDS, ¹² in 2007 the Ministry of Health in Buenos Aires signed a resolution to ensure all gender identities would be respected in hospitals and health centres, in terms of summoning, registration and other requirements. Recognizing that one of travestis’ main reasons for disliking the health care services was being called by the name on their identity document and being hospitalized in male wards, a special programme was established at one of the city’s main hospitals. The aim of this programme was to facilitate access to the system and monitor how the resolution was being enforced; it was also funded by the Global Fund. ATTTA, along with other HIV/AIDS NGOs, collaborated by carrying out awareness-raising activities with hospital staff, providing guidance, accompanying trans people who attended the institution and promoting HIV testing and condom distribution in the neighbourhoods where they lived and worked.

The problem of prostitution and work

The problem underlying the separation of ATTTA and ALITT is related to a major debate about the relationship between prostitution and work, which also took place in AMMAR (Asociación de Meretrices Argentinas), an organization for women in prostitution/sex work. From AMMAR two new branches were created. AMMAR-CTA argued that prostitution should be regarded as work, with the ultimate goal of having the sex trade spaces controlled by the State – establishing brothels and ‘red zones’, registering sex workers and controlling them with health certificates. They joined the Argentinean Trade Union ¹³ (CTA), demanding the same labour rights as any other workers. In contrast, AMMAR-Capital was against considering prostitution as work because they believed it to be a situation – not dignified work – generated by a sinister articulation between capitalism and patriarchy. This position can be considered abolitionist, seeing prostitution as a necessarily humiliating condition that must be eradicated. Without criminalizing the subjects limited to that situation, the supporters of this stance demanded the creation of employment opportunities and a fight against the procurers’ networks. Officially, Argentina holds the latter position on the level of international treaties on the subject.

While ATTTA is a member of the Latin America Sex Workers network (RedTraSex), ALITT argues that prostitution is not a job but a situation to which most of the travestis are confined because of the lack of other employment opportunities. This distinctive political stance is a result of different alliances with feminist groups, with whom they fought the police edicts mentioned earlier. In response to their demand for dignified work, ALITT received a donation of five sewing machines from the National Ministry for Social Development in 2005, which made it possible to develop a project to establish a labour cooperative. The project was presented to the National Institute for Associativism and Social Economy (INAES), a state agency that recognizes, regulates and promotes the formation of cooperatives. INAES provided them with financial assistance to buy a house and set up a workshop. They also received funds from the National Ministry of Labour to finance some training courses. In June 2008, the ‘first labour cooperative for travestis and transsexuals’ in the country was inaugurated, with great impact across the whole spectrum of LGBT, feminist, leftist and other human rights activism.

The formation of this labour cooperative can be understood within a context shaped by different state policies developed since 2003. In December 2001, Argentina had to face one of the most serious crises of its history. Following a decade of policies that almost extinguished the national industrial infrastructure, raised unemployment rates to unprecedented levels and plunged most of the population into poverty, there was a memorable social revolt. A state of emergency was declared and four presidents were overthrown between late December 2001 and early January 2002. After a provisional government which devalued the local currency and called democratic elections, Néstor Kirchner assumed the Argentinean presidency in May 2003. He governed the country for four years, followed by his wife Cristina Fernández, who was elected as president in 2007 and re-elected in 2011. They both took steps to overcome the critical situation in the country. One of the most important was the ‘productivist turn’ of the State, which began to discourage subsidies previously given to the unemployed, emphasizing the creation and proliferation of labour cooperatives. These measures were intended not only to bail out many bankrupt companies and to reduce unemployment rates, but also to achieve the social inclusion of those people considered unemployable. Under this category there were people in extreme poverty with limited access to education and without work experience. Even if these policies did not have travestis in mind as their ideal beneficiaries, travesti associations found it possible to be included in them.

The new period that began in 2003 has also been notable for the improvement in the human rights situation of the country. As was mentioned earlier, Argentina faced an extremely cruel dictatorship between 1976 and 1983. During the early democratic days, the military dictators were punished for the crimes they had committed, but were later absolved and released by the same governors that ruined the economy in the 1990s. Consequently, one of the most significant measures of the current period has been the reactivation of the trials and maximum sentences for military officials involved in those crimes.

In addition, various state agencies have also been reinforced, such as the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (INADI). Historically, this institution has collaborated with LGBT associations, promoting and supporting public debates about sexualities and gender issues within national and provincial parliaments. It made a crucial intervention in the process which ended with the passing of the Same-Sex Marriage law in 2010 and the Gender Identity law in 2012, seen as ‘a step forward’ in the human rights recognition for LGBT groups. The changes that the State has made in the last decade regarding the recognition of the ‘right to be different’ can be thought of in an increasingly transnational context and mediated by a rhetoric of diversity and plurality. In Argentina, this rhetoric has been strongly related to demands for the respect of human rights, undertaken by organizations of relatives and victims of state terrorism after the last military dictatorship.

The inauguration of the ‘first labour cooperative for travestis’

In 1977, a group of women called Mothers of Plaza de Mayo had begun to organize demonstrations in front of the executive mansion, demanding the return of their sons and daughters who had been abducted by military and paramilitary forces because of their political activism. They continued to be committed to social justice programmes, promoting the formation of labour and dwelling cooperatives for the poor. They also managed a small publishing house and broadcast a radio programme, to which the ALITT president was invited to talk about her activism. She explained the organization’s viewpoint regarding prostitution and its struggle for dignified work. ‘You should create your own labour cooperative’, proposed the Mothers’ president, Hebe de Bonafini. The following day, she arranged a meeting between the group of travestis and the president of INAES.

This cooperative comprised almost 40 people, most of them travestis. During its first three years of existence they produced t-shirts, sheets and bags on a small scale, and also took training courses on dressmaking, design, printing, data processing and marketing. The lessons were taught by instructors chosen from LGBT and feminist activists whom they knew, and who were accustomed to dealing with travestis. In return for attending classes, the members of the cooperative received a small monthly grant from the National Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security. They also received boxes of non-perishable food, delivered by the Ministry of Social Development. Those in need had access to housing subsidies from the local government of Buenos Aires, as well as vouchers for supplies at supermarkets. All these benefits were possible because of the activities of the president of ALITT. She built an extensive network of political and personal relations that supported her initiatives, including activists from political parties, human rights, feminist and LGBT groups, national and international organizations, legislators, academics and government employees of various fields.

Many of these were present at the inaugural ceremony of the cooperative. Its president, the city mayor, INAES president and Hebe de Bonafini, the cooperative’s ‘godmother’, gave opening speeches. Standing in front of an audience of almost 50 people, De Bonafini claimed: ‘Work is dignity for everyone. Travestis wished to achieve dignified lives, and so they asked for work. We should support them in this project, and encourage similar projects all around the world.’ The INAES president added: ‘This is an extreme effort for social inclusion. By acknowledging the distinction between travestism and prostitution, we are broadening the concept of citizenship.’

The speeches revolved around three topics: citizenship, dignity and inclusion. They also shared a common factor: work. The lives of the people involved in the project changed radically, thanks to their new work, with standards, schedules, salary and health insurance. Nevertheless, this public construction of work as the core demand and the participation in the cooperative as a means to achieve a dignified life came into tension with other continuities in their everyday lives.

During the first months of fieldwork, from September to December 2008, a group of eight travestis aged between 40 and 70 attended computing lessons at the cooperative. The spirit of these gatherings was characterized by recurrent conversations about their knowledge of street prostitution and sex work. They knew most of the other travestis of the city and shared stories of conflicts with neighbours and police forces. Some of them no longer needed to work the streets every day, thanks to the grant they received while attending the lessons, while others still could not afford to leave the activity.

One cold Friday, a demonstration was organized by ATTTA at the Flores ¹⁴ police station after the brutal beating of a travesti from the area by one of the police officers. That day, during computing class at the ALITT cooperative, people discussed whether or not they should attend the event. Two travestis who often worked in the neighbourhood believed it was important to be present, in order to express solidarity with their colleagues; they invited me to join them. When we arrived there, we saw part of the street blocked by a patrol and a group of about 30 travestis and women who were demonstrating, with the large flag of one of the local travesti associations. The president of ATTTA was holding a megaphone and standing next to the other demonstrators. While singing and shouting ‘Federal Police, National Embarrassment’, some girls held up banners with the words ‘Stop Bribes and Police Violence’ and ‘For an Independent Sex Work’. Slightly upset, one of the travestis of the cooperative told me that she agreed with the former slogan but found the latter inaccurate: for her, prostitution was not work but a degrading situation she hoped to overcome if the cooperative succeeded.

***

Three years later, the associates were still receiving a monthly grant from the National Ministry of Labour, which was also funding training lessons for dressmaking and printing. In addition, the Ministry of Social Development, chaired by Alicia Kirchner ¹⁵ made an arrangement with the National Institute of Industrial Technology (INTI) to instruct the members of the cooperative on the making of school overalls. Once the course was finished, the Ministry bought them all and distributed them among students from public schools. Even though the teachers’ view was that not all of the associates were technically prepared to accomplish the job properly, the Ministry placed an order for a thousand overalls. Thus, while many other cooperatives failed shortly after completing the training courses, in this case the members understood there was a ‘political will’ to sustain and encourage their project. They called themselves ‘the darlings of Alice’ (Kirchner) after the benefits they had received in time and opportunities. Ministry employees became used to visiting them at the workshop, and attending to their requests for subsidies, supplies and boxes of non-perishable food. Indeed, they obtained retirement pension benefits for a 70-year-old travesti who had worked in the streets her whole life.

The power of the State relies not only on coercive forms, but also on regulatory ones, which define certain types of subjects and identities while denying others. The State responded to ALITT’s claim for work opportunities by employing all the necessary resources to allow this group of travestis to become ‘dignified workers’ through the creation of a cooperative. This is one of the privileged techniques of governmentality (Foucault, 2007) to manage employment for the working classes. In fact, applying this technique brought a number of changes with disciplinary effects to their daily lives, such as the obligation to meet deadlines, follow schedules, obey rules, and accomplish working objectives. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that all cooperative members adopted a dignified work rhetoric, one that was previously used by their president only. It can be argued that

the forms and languages of protest or resistance must take forms and languages of domination to be heard or registered … to the extent that a dominant order establishes such legitimate procedures, to the extent it establishes not the consensus but the prescribed ways to express both acceptance and discontent, it has established a common discursive framework. (Roseberry, 1994: 130)

It was night time when the radio programme finished. While we were walking to the bus stop, approximately 20 blocks away, one of them started to complain about how busy she was with all the work she had to do for the cooperative – waking up early, spending the whole morning with errands and the afternoon in the workshop. She compared the situation to her reality a decade ago. She used to have ‘regular’ clients from Friday to Sunday, and could devote the other days of the week to resting and making clothes for her shows. ‘I used to live like a queen, I had time and money … not like now’, she complained. When we arrived at the bus stop, she suggested to the other travesti that they should take the opportunity of being there at night to ‘pick up some clients’. However, the other one discouraged her, saying that it was too late and that she preferred to take the bus with me.

Situations like these show the tensions involved in the creation of the cooperative, not only as a normalizing technique but also as an opportunity for people. For the great majority, prostitution no longer represented their main source of income, but a possibility, a kind of strategy. The street codes and logics still remained and were reinterpreted through new experiences. Going to work could mean either going to the cooperative or, depending on the context, a delicate way of referring to prostitution/sex work. The exercise of this activity represented a ubiquitous issue and source of metaphors, images and jokes, in tension with the idea of the cooperative as dignified work.

One day, during the visit of a TV journalist to the cooperative, two of the associates engaged in the following conversation, with a humorous tone:

Sheila: I don’t want to appear on TV, because none of my neighbours know … 

Jacqueline: What? They don’t know you are a travesti? (Laughs)

Sheila: No, they don’t know that I’m a member of the cooperative … What would my clients think?

Jacqueline: ‘Oh, of course … Because having a dignified job is embarrassing for you (laughs).

According to Roseberry, the common framework is never finished but fragile, problematic and contested. Values presented as universal, such as dignified work, can hardly be shared by people for whom prostitution has always been their only prospect in life. If one adopts a point of view ‘from below’, it could be said that these senses may develop a creative potential: their new lives as workers and their past experiences in prostitution are not mutually exclusive, but in constant articulation and friction. For instance, consider the slogan they invented to publish their first production of sheets: ‘Take us to bed, but in a different way’.

Final words

As one of the subaltern groups that have suffered the most in Argentinean recent history, travestis have developed remarkable political organizations to fight violence and exclusion. The aim of this article has been to inquire into different aspects of the emergence and progress of travesti associations, an under-examined topic within the existing literature. It has explored their insertion into a political network beyond the scope of LGBT activism, and the constitution of a dynamic field of force comprising a multiplicity of state agencies and NGOs.

In narratives about their beginnings, the State appeared as a recurrent source of suffering for this community, not only because of its repressive role, carried out primarily by security forces, but also because of their exclusion from health, education and labour systems. Recently, a productive side has begun to emerge, conceding citizenship rights historically demanded by travesti groups. This process can be explained as a result of years of struggle, but also as an outcome of the changing national and international contexts that, for instance, allowed the trans issue to be included in the human rights agenda.

As shown in the two cases described, the problem of prostitution and work was crucial to the division within travesti associations, and for their construction of political connections. Adopting a sex work perspective allowed ATTTA to focus on HIV/AIDS prevention, establishing bonds with other NGOs in the area and receiving funds from UNAIDS. NGOs and international agencies have state effects over the organizations to which they are linked, making it necessary to consider their governmentality in a common framework with that of the State (Ferguson and Gupta, 2002).

Within another relationship network, ALITT took an abolitionist position to reject the idea that prostitution could be considered work. Their claims for a job alternative for this group were heard and addressed within the State’s ‘productivist turn’, which promoted the creation of cooperatives as dignified and genuine work, in contrast to the policies of the previous decade. State agencies and human rights NGOs connected to ALITT suggested that their demand for dignified work could be met through a cooperative project. Those institutions placed on the travestis a repertoire of routines and rules, which were adopted, though not without conflicts.

After two decades of resistance and organization, Argentinean travesti groups began to state their demands addressing those frameworks proposed ‘from above’ in order to be heard. Learning to speak according to the logic of State and NGOs made it possible to access many citizenship rights, previously unachievable for them. However, this ‘common discursive framework’ (Roseberry, 1994) was contested in their everyday lives on the basis of their previous experiences. Although the tension between prostitution and work was the main reason for the division of the pioneer groups, neither group could effectively solve it. On the contrary, it was a vivid contradiction in their daily lives, as has been shown throughout this article. Within the field of force in which travesti associations, state agencies and NGOs acted, governmentality shaped travestis’ lives, though it was simultaneously resisted and resignified, as prostitution/sex work has always been an alternative and a source of metaphors for thinking about themselves.