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Meet a Grantee

Asociación Lucha por la Identidad Travesti y Transexual, Buenos Aries, Argentina

In Argentina, those who live full time in their gender of choice call themselves transvestites. As one of the country's most disenfranchised communities, they are imprisoned on a regular basis without being formally charged with a crime. While in jail, transvestites are beaten, raped by police and refused blankets, medical treatment and legal counsel.  Discrimination is rampant, and it is impossible for them to find work.  Most become street sex workers.

Since sex-reassignment surgery is illegal in Argentina, transvestites modify their bodies using hormones and cosmetic surgeries. No hospitals will treat them, and they are forced to purchase drugs and silicone on the streets.  Adding to further indignities, it's illegal to change one's name in Argentina.  So although transvestites adopt females names for their daily lives, their formal credentials identify them by their male names.

Lohanna Berkins is regarded around the world as a prominent and eloquent spokesperson for transgender rights. In Argentina, she has worked tenaciously to improve human rights for herself and other transvestites.  In 1994 she founded ALITT (Asociación Lucha por la Identidad Travesti y Transexual) with the goal of educating and politicizing transvestites struggling with poverty and unemployment.   The struggles are real. "Our survival is very limited," Berkins says, "and it is very infrequent to find transvestites older than 50."

Berkins was thirteen when she was thrown out of her family's house. They couldn't stand the shame that she-then an effeminate boy- brought to them.  With no place to go, Lohanna hitchhiked to the state capital and lived in the streets until she was taken in and cared for by a community of travestis. They taught her two key elements of survival for transvestites in Argentina: prostitution and how to run from the police.

Today, Berkins reports that she is "the first travesti who doesn't have to resort to prostitution in order to survive in Buenos Aires." She works as a secretary for a state representative.  He is sympathetic to ALITT's work and allows the organization to make use of his computer on a regular basis.

With funds from Astraea, ALITT purchased a video camera and their own computer.  Long overdue, these tools enabled them to more effectively educate society, lobby government officials and publicize their work.  "We will document how our compañeras are treated in the streets by the police, how we have to live in hotels, and how hospitals deny us health services. "

An all-volunteer organization of some thirty people, ALITT is reaching out to compañeras transvestites across the country, teaching them about political action and how to claim their basic rights.  They offer self-esteem and identity workshops, host debates and organize collaborations with an array of feminist groups and human rights organizations.  And they are making headway.  ALITT reports that, transvestites "no longer tolerate violence passively, but now they fight every day againstany institution that discriminates against them."

Asociación Lucha por la Identidad Travesti y Transexual/Association Fighting for Transvestite Identity (Buenos Aires, Argentina) works for the recognition of transvestism as a legitimate identity by lobbying the government for rights to education, health, jobs and housing.

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