Argentina: “Peasant feminism is not going to kneel before this disastrous government”
Dhanna Pilar Moyano is a trans woman who works as a goat farmer in Luján de Cuyo (Mendoza). She is a member of the Union of Landless Rural Workers (UST) and the National Peasant-Indigenous Movement We Are Land (MNCI-ST). Aged 37, she is president of the community Agua de Las Avispas and participates in the Centro de Educación, Formación e Investigación Campesina (Cefic/Tierra).
She is the daughter of peasant families, the third generation to work in the fields. For her, returning to the countryside was a way to work. “Before, I lived on the streets, I worked as a prostitute. And suddenly I said ‘this is not for me, because I’m not 30 years old’,” she says.
Today she says she carries “three backpacks”: the struggle for peasant families, for women and for trans identities. Looking ahead to the Antifascist and Antiracist Pride March, she assures: “I am marching for those who today we can stand up and shout but we don’t know if tomorrow we will be there”.
In Argentina, the average life expectancy of a trans person is around 37 years, 40 years less than the rest of the population. In recent years, laws such as the Gender Identity Law or the Trans Labor Quota aimed at improving the quality of life of this population, strengthening the institutional framework that guarantees them human rights such as the right to identity, education, health, housing and work. Four decades of democracy were not enough to settle the debt with trans people, who continued to be persecuted in democracy due to the codes of misdemeanors that sanctioned transvestism.
“Peasant production is the guardian of our health and our production. It is the one that takes care of our environment to continue enjoying our landscapes and productions, which are being worked hard in our territories”
Dhanna Pilar Moyano
Javier Milei’s government deepened the institutional debt towards women and sexual diversities. He went further: his policy was one of attack. He dissolved the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (Inadi) and dismantled the Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity, agencies dedicated to the enforcement of key laws against gender violence and the promotion of public policies for women, lesbians, bisexuals, transvestites, trans and non-binary. In 2024, according to the Observatory “Ahora que sí nos ven”, there were 267 femicides and eight transfemicides. A gender-based crime every 22 hours.
On January 23, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Milei again took aim at feminisms and socio-environmental movements. His words expressed the violence of his policies, even linking LGBTQ+ identities with pedophilia. This week, the Ministry of Health (in charge of Mario Lugones), fired 40 percent of the staff of the Directorate of Responses to HIV, Hepatitis, Sexually Transmitted Infections and Tuberculosis. This Thursday, in Cañuelas, a man set fire to the house of a lesbian couple.
The state discourse that promotes physical and symbolic violence and the adjustment in terms of policies for women and the LGTBQ+ collective are knotted in this government. But there is also a popular and federally organized response. In Buenos Aires, the Anti-fascist and Anti-racist Pride March took place all over the country, with more than a hundred calls throughout the country.
In Argentina, the average life expectancy of a trans person is around 37 years, 40 years less than the rest of the population.
Peasant and popular feminism
Surrounded by plants and work tools, Dhanna looks at the camera and says:
“Our challenge from Argentina, from the peasant and indigenous movements is to be able to continue defending our struggles to continue defending food sovereignty. Peasant production is the guardian of our health and our production. It is the one that takes care of our environment to continue enjoying our landscapes and productions, which are being worked hard in our territories”.
Article by By Mariángeles Guerrero | Tierra Viva | see link