Premiere of the documentary “Intimates” about trans people was the setting to present a shelter

(By Silvina Molina) Their childhoods, family acceptance and rejection, police persecution, meeting and recognition of identity in carnivals, economic vulnerability, and above all, the networks that build and sustain them are reported by people trans transvestites from the San Martín party in Buenos Aires in “Íntimas”, the documentary in whose avant premiere the opening of the Casa Refugio Evita Trans was announced.

That territory brought them together, and in a covid-19 pandemic, when they didn’t even have enough to eat, they got together to survey the situation of their peers, and from the bags of food they went on to create the El Teje organization that now, years later , provides training in trades, education and health care.

From there also emerged the Fuego beauty center – where nine people already work and are trained -, the Niñeces Felices Picnic-Dining Room and, now, the Evita Trans Shelter House.

Guillermo Castro, coordinator and architect of El Teje, reviewed this path in process from the stage, who told Télam that the shelter “arose out of the compañeras’ own need because almost all or many of them were or are in a situation of street, or they were going to be soon because they lose their rents very quickly because they are kicked out of the places and because, in general, they arrive in San Martín with nothing, migrating from other towns or provinces.

In fact, one of the protagonists of “Intimates” is Paola Acevedo, coordinator of El Teje, in whose house, a studio apartment in Villa La Cárcova, came to house 10 people.

“So we decided to rent a house there in Cárcova that has three rooms and a garden, we fixed it up and presented a financing project to the Women’s Ministry that is about to come out. It is to equip the place, because what there is now is everything thanks to donations,” Castro said.

Until that financing arrives, four people already live in the Evita Trans Shelter House, but the place has capacity for twice as many.

“The idea is to equip it, that it be divine, that it have everything so that the companions are well. And it also works as a containment device, not only as a refuge, as accommodation, but so that the companions can stay there for a long time until gain a foothold, get another rental, like a transit space, but without such a rigid stipulated time,” explained the social leader.

They also want to incorporate a social worker and a psychologist into the project.

The refuge house “will be linked to the La Marabunta coexistence space, which is the only one in San Martín that specifically provides attention to problematic consumption, and one of the few in the province, because it is the only one that is intended for cis women. and non-binary trans femininities,” Castro said.

And he hopes “that, no later than August, we can inaugurate the shelter house, when the financing arrives, to complete the project.”

Places for trans transvestites living on the streets are very scarce. The Not So Different organization has Casa Leonor, where up to four people can live in the western suburbs of Buenos Aires.

The other place identified is Casa Animí of the Familia Grande Hogar de Cristo Federation.

The talk is interrupted because the projection begins and the protagonists appear: Julia Ana Carrizo, Angela ‘Lulú’ Hernandez, Cristal Sabella (who passed away), Jorgelina Maneiro, Gabriela Chocobar, and Dana ‘Bubi’ Molina, 79, who received a cake and blew out candles at the end of the event.

Manuela Orellano, director of “Intimates” stressed that “this is the beginning, we are going to deepen this work”, where the “historical” ones were prioritized so that their stories remain for current and future generations.

Then there was a brief panel where Agustina Ponce, Undersecretary of Diversity Policies of the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity, contributed that the documentary “serves for cultural change, so that they understand who we are.”

Meanwhile, Greta Pena, head of Inadi, fought for the production “to be shown in all schools because it is a forbidden knowledge in education, which is the knowledge of who they are, of who we are part of this society.”

The national deputy Leonardo Grosso (FdT) valued the testimonies of the “Intimates” because “we learn from their strengths to face life, to transform reality” and celebrated that they reached Unsam “the only place in San Martín where they had not arrived” .

The Tornavías is full, there are people standing around who stay until the end and among the public there are representatives of social organizations, the Civil Association of Deaf People of San Martín, and Zulma Lobato -located in the front row- and Say Sacayán, from Anti-Discrimination Liberation Movement.

The meeting was led by Castro and by Arny, a reference from El Teje, had sign language interpreters, and the beginning and closing was with music, where the trans artists who took their first steps in the corsicans of the suburbs, today they take the stage and make the community where they chose to live dance.