These LGBTQ+ Archives Defy Erasure, One Memory at a Time

The Trans Memory Archive of Argentina started as a closed Facebook group where friends from the 1980s and 1990s could reconnect. It was successful and the digital space was soon filled with anecdotes, letters, and chronicles. Then, photographer Ceci Estalles proposed “expanding it beyond anecdotes,” says Nastri.

The big leap forward was the exhibition This One Left, This One Was Killed, This One Died (Esta Se Fue, a Esta La Mataron, Esta Murió), featuring intimate portraits of friends in prison, exile, or otherwise absent. Soon after, the archive’s team started to dream of building a bigger presence.

Today, Nastri works with the archive’s managers, who are generally older adult witnesses to the community’s history, as they archive, conserve, and digitize documents. For them, going to work is an act of resistance. In Argentina, 9,000 people (as of 2021) have amended their national identity documents to reflect their gender identity. People between the ages of 40 and 79 accounted for only 17 percent of that figure with those over the age of 60 accounting for just 4 percent.

The Trans Memory Archive of Argentina holds more than 100 documentary collections with 25,000 items dating from 1930 to the early 2000s: photos, film, audio recordings, letters, brochures, posters, press releases, police files, magazine articles, identity documents, and personal diaries. Their work is self-financed through projects, book sales, and monthly contributions.

On the website, there are images from childhood, exile, activism, letters and postcards, carnival celebrations, private parties, birthdays, sex work, everyday life, shows, portraits, as well as ones from people’s professional lives. The documentary archive that Pia created now lives alongside 40 other similar archives in Latin America.

At the end of June, during Argentina’s winter, Hernández tells me in a video call that future generations must know about the repression they experienced. Her generation survived persecution and harassment from the police during the dictatorship. Without this archive, Nastri believes that not only would a crucial part of history be lost, but many moments of joy would also be forgotten. “Something that this community has are strong family bonds,” she explains. “They have a tragic history but it’s shared in a very joyful way.”