Publication from BA.
As the practical part of the project is coming to an end and I’m leaving beautiful Buenos Aires to go home, yesterday we had our first publication. Th story of Luana was published as a column by Peter Schouten, in ‘Dagblad van het Noorden’ and ‘De Leeuwarder Courant’. I’m really happy it was translated to English by Arwen Scholten, as she worked wonders with Peter’s, sometimes painfully beautiful - yet Dutch - words. She managed to keep the essence and the poetry in tact and I’m very grateful for that.
To read in Dutch, click image below.
Luana, Butterfly Over the Abyss
“In this world of very hungry caterpillars, it takes courage to unfold your butterfly wings.” Her incredible history slams into my brain and sticks there. Luana’s life story and her favourite quote by Lohana Berkins, well-known Argentinian human rights activist, are not isolated phenomena: Luana’s life path represents that of a whole generation. And at the same time, it doesn’t. Why? Well, 42-year-old Luana lives to tell her tale. All the others in her fifty-strong circle of friends are dead.
Over the past month, together with photographer DaniëlMaissan, I have immersed myself in the world of trans and transvestism in Buenos Aires. A world that, according to its inhabitants, Argentinians still mostly associate with prostitution, drugs and disease. The intolerance towards this group is said to have its origins in the centuries old enforced Catholicism of colonial times, resulting in rampant machismo and all its extremely violent consequences.
At the same time, Argentina has partially disentangled itself from the dogmas of the church: over the past twelve years Argentinian LGBTI+ politics have been ahead of the troops. In the land of the Pope, same-sex marriage is a right, and what is more, since 2012, Argentina has a Gender Identity Law, allowing people to change their name and gender in their documentation without the intervention of a psychologist or doctor. Last year, a non-binary gender marker was introduced on official documents and a 1% quota established for public sector jobs for transgender and transvestite people. Theoretically and hopefully, these measures will increase trans people’slife expectancies beyond the 40-year span that Argentinian LGBTI+ organisations state that they have now.
Luana knew she didn’t want to be a boy from the age of four. Her mother in the conservative north of Argentinarejected her own child and from the age of eight Luanahad no other option than to survive in the streets. And those who go hungry allow themselves to be consumed; for her there was no other option on the menu besides prostitution. Girls like her were constantly hounded by police and arrested. Luana met her real girl-friends in jail.
Before she was officially of age, she ran to the capital, Buenos Aires, looking for a better and safer life. In squats she found support in a group of about fifty trans peers, all of them originally from the same northern part of the country. “Of those girls, I am the only one still alive,” she confides. Social exclusion, drugs, discrimination, violence and disappearances ruined all those around her eventually. She regards me stoically, her tears seemingly all spent, her eyes dry. “The love that we were denied is my driving force to change the world.” Wow, I did not see that coming.
Luana is now studying for her diploma from a secondary school especially founded for trans and transvestite people. This unique trans school opened its doors in 2011 – the first in the world – and today teaches around 100 trans students between the ages of 16 and 60. Here, they find safe harbour and that is Argentina, too. Luana’sdream is to become a journalist. From now on my long bucket list includes “make a story with Luana.” And that she can write is apparent immediately.
She composed a beautiful poem for her best friend Ana Paula, and recites a part of it for us: “Ana Paula is one of the transvestites with more stories than a night can tell. The night that he did not manage to escape from in the end. Even though we were unfree, we danced, we laughed, we cried. We ran from the cops that pointed fingers during the days and they treated us like queens at night. Ana Paula, queen of the night, my girlfriend, my sister.”
They lost touch a long time ago, because the drugs are stronger than anything or anyone else at this point in Ana Paula’s life. The ladies got to know each other in jail. “I watched a giant of a woman with a beard and high heels walk in,” Luana smiles, she herself quite a few feet shorter than her friend. Laughing themselves stitches turned out to be the foundation for their friendship.
The most beautiful flowers grow at the edges of the abyss. I wish Luana the most beautiful flower on earth to rest and feed her butterfly on. Her wings were cut off brutally when she was just a child and her dreams would never come true. But this butterfly does take to the skies after 42 years. Finally.
