The Brooklyn Rail

Tama Kallsen, Gala Otero, and Eli Hernández are founding members of the Argentine LGBTQ+ artist-activist collective Asamblea Desviada Conurbano Sur. The group is based in the conurbano, or Greater Buenos Aires, a zone that is often considered marginal to the city’s prolific cultural scene. The collective playfully challenges such logic, branding their group desviada, which means both sidetracked and deviant. Drawing from Argentina’s long tradition of mixing art and politics, the “artivist” collective uses performance and visual art to build community and demand justice for queer and trans people.

Last November during Buenos Aires’s massive Pride march, the group performed Deviant Procession. Dressed in black to puncture the rainbow motif of Pride, the collective enacted an enigmatic procession, part-vigil, part celebration, that honored those who have struggled and died fighting for LGBTQ+ rights. They carried an altar adorned with photos of dead or missing queer and trans folks and chanted portions of an iconic text entitled “Fag” that the theater artist Pepe Cibrián performed in the Argentine Congress during debate over the legalization of gay marriage. They stopped to light candles and place flowers.

The performance occurred in a context of an increase in gay hate crimes in Argentina, particularly homicides in recent years. Since right-wing President Javier Milei took power in 2023, he has made the LGBTQ+ community a target of his “anti-woke” agenda, threatening to strip away hard-won rights such as inclusive labor laws for trans people, equitable access to hormonal treatments, and the ability to officially identify as nonbinary. In January, at the Davos World Economic Forum, he railed against “gender ideology,” equating it to pedophilia, spurring massive protests in Argentina and around the world.

I spoke with Kallsen, Otero, and Hernández in the small radio studio of a local cultural center. Between sips of mate, the trio reflected on the Deviant Procession, the group’s artistic processes more broadly, and the extra cautions needed in the current climate of repression. It felt important to speak to them during a parallel wave of repression in the US under Trump, especially considering Argentina’s recent lived experience with dictatorship. “Here in Argentina, there is a very strong history of activism for human rights and historical memory, as a way of not forgetting the terrifying events that ravaged our country,” Tama Kallsen said. “If you were born after the return of democracy, you learn it is necessary to be an activist in order to transform reality.”

Vera Carothers (Rail): How and when did the collective begin?

Eli Hernández: That was in 2022. March 7 was coming up, which is Lesbian Visibility Day here in Argentina, created to commemorate the death of Pepa Gaitán, a lesbian who was murdered by her girlfriend’s stepfather. So that date is seen as a day of protest. We noticed that there wasn’t really anything happening on that date here in the conurbano. If you wanted to be a visible lesbian, you had to go to the capital. So that year we decided to organize a festival here in Plaza de Escalada, which we named Tortapalooza, as a play on Lollapalooza and tortas¹. A lot of people came, happy that we had organized this so they didn’t have to go to the capital. That’s when we started to see that there was a desire to come together, to think about what it’s like to live as a sexual dissident outside of the city.

Rail: Were you part of collectives before this one?

Gala Otero: I was in Tatagua first, which was also a transfeminist² collective that provided support in cases of domestic violence, and that’s where I met Tama and Eli. And then Tatagua kind of fell apart, and well, the assembly was already emerging at the same time.

Rail: Did Tatagua also do artivism?

Otero: I understand that it had an artivism component. Artivism always seems to appear in everything that is community-based or involves putting your body on the street. It’s a very important tool.

Tama Kallsen: With Tatagua dying, we needed to put our energy elsewhere. At least here in Argentina, there is a very strong history of activism for human rights and historical memory, as a way of not forgetting the terrifying events that ravaged our country. So if you were born after the return of democracy³, you learn it is necessary to be an activist in order to transform reality. And also, being influenced by transfeminism, which came to break with established forms and bring other possibilities for constructing identity, we chose to direct our activism toward a space where our sexual orientations, gender identities, and political identities were part of that construction.

Rail: What does Asamblea Desviada mean? For me, the concept of the asamblea or “assembly” is very Argentine.

Kallsen: The assembly is very significant in our country because it is a tool for horizontal decision-making. It is basically a space that is usually a circle where we are all on the same level, seeing each other side by side, leaving no one behind, no one ahead, no one above, no one below. It is a circle where words circulate.

Hernández: I also feel that the assemblies of our generation come largely from the 2001 uprising ⁴ that was happening in different neighborhoods. In this group, we are all very much children of 2001.

Rail: And to return to the word desviada or “deviant”?

Otero: When we saw the need to get together and form a group, we held an assembly, a meeting, a mateada⁵ in the square so that anyone who wanted to join in could do so, and in that dialogue we found people who perhaps didn’t identify with the word torta, so that’s when we looked for a name that could encompass all identities, and that’s when the Deviant Assembly was born. It comes from that which doesn’t fit the norm. Even being from the conurbano in that sense, not based in the capital.

Kallsen: We are very proud of where we’re from.

Otero: Die-hards.

Rail: What is the conurbano? And why are you so proud?

Kallsen: What a question! For those who don’t know Buenos Aires, there is a sector that is the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, and everything around it to the north, west, and south is Greater Buenos Aires.

Hernández: It’s like a boundary that marks the difference between where God attends, in the capital, and where he doesn’t, where we just get by as best we can. Living in the conurbano means having to take a lot of different forms of transportation to get to work if you work in the capital, getting up many hours earlier, or coming back and sometimes not having a bus after midnight to get home, so you have to wait until six in the morning for the train to start running.

Kallsen: The feeling is that everything takes a lot more energy because of what Eli was saying about transportation, about resources. But it’s also good to have that different perspective on life because when you’ve always had everything at your fingertips, it limits you from thinking about other realities. What happens when you live an hour and a half away from the capital? There’s no such thing as “I come, I go, I don't know who my neighbor is.” There’s something very beautiful that is built in the community, but it can also be very difficult when that community doesn’t register and accept these possible transformations in your way of life.

Rail: What are the particular challenges of being LGBTQ+ in the conurbano compared to in the capital?

Otero: In the capital, you can probably come across people dressed however they want any day of the year. People can walk around more freely. Also, in terms of work, there are fewer job opportunities outside the capital. That means that you might not be able to show your true identity because if you’re a trans person, it’s harder to get a job. Tehuel, who is a person from further south, disappeared while looking for work in Korn.⁶ Even in my neighborhood, walking hand-in-hand with my partner has made me sweat a few times, and I’ve lived in the same neighborhood my whole life. Luckily, I’ve never had any problems, but you do notice how people look at you, and that limits you a little.

Kallsen: The fear is there. Maybe nothing has even happened to you, but in your head there’s the possibility that it could happen to you, or to your friends, and it’s super painful and it also shapes the way you live on the street. It makes you very disciplined.

Rail: How does the collective operate in this context? Because you all are out there on the streets.

Kallsen: With caution. We have never experienced a situation like the one we are living through now. Since Milei’s government took office, the rules have changed. We have to think of new ways to be activists, and that means having a more refined approach. We also have to think about how much to expose our lives and our health because it does matter if a comrade is attacked. It impacts our bodies and our mental health. We want to live and build other lives so we have to take care of ourselves and think about when to move forward and how.

Rail: And how do you see the role of art/performance within that?

Otero: I remember once during the pandemic I performed for a space in Lomas de Zamora called La Toma. They had organized an olla popular⁷ for Childrens’ Day. I have a character who is a police officer and I was wearing a real police uniform that I found in a school and took with me. In the performance, the police came to confiscate toys that belonged to the children. And while we were acting it out, the real police came. They arrived just when we were doing the part where the police were taking toys away from children, which didn’t make them look very good. I was wearing a real police uniform, with a number and everything, which is not allowed. There was a moment when the police cornered us and said, “We have to arrest you.” And people started to form a circle around us, and at one point they just had to say, “Okay, fine, we’ll let you go.”

There were people who probably didn’t even understand what we were doing, but when they saw that we were acting, they stayed there, they stood up to the police, and the police ended up leaving. In that sense art is really helpful. For people who may not be familiar with certain issues, it makes them see things from another perspective, through the aesthetic.

Rail: Can you explain Deviant Procession, the action you did at the Pride March?

Otero: The idea of the procession is people going to a place, and it can be a procession to a funeral or it can also be something more festive. I think we fused the two things. It wasn’t very festive. We dressed in black, we even covered our faces. We mixed in some color here and there, but I think we made a choice to go against everything that the march is, so as not to forget. There are many people who go to the march to party, without perhaps being aware of what it means, how it came about, the people who died. Not everyone has social awareness of their own community.

Hernández: The procession takes up the question of how to bring to the present those people who fought for a lot of rights, who make it possible for this march to exist today on such a large scale. When this march first started, many people wore masks because they couldn’t show their faces, because if they did, they would be fired from their jobs if they appeared in a newspaper, for example. It’s about making memory flesh, bringing it into the present. Reclaiming enjoyment and pleasure, but not forgetting that in order to have that, all these things happened, and all these people were able to open those paths. It was very striking to see. We were lined up carrying the altar we had assembled, which had on it a sparkly shoe.

Rail: Why a shoe?

Hernández: I think all of us has a little altar in their house with a photo of someone and some objects, like a little Pride flag, candles, and so it was like, okay, we’re going to carry this like they carry the Virgin in processions, playing with that religious aspect, but giving it our more pagan twist. We set up an altar where we had these photos of Lohana Berkins and Carlos Jáuregui, Tehuel, poems by Ioshua⁸, and then there was a sparkly heel, feathers, bringing in a little bit of the travestis⁹, a little packet of androlone, which is from Testogel for people who take hormones, a little bottle of antiretroviral medication that people with HIV take, that is, bringing in a little bit of this and that and putting it all together. We were all dressed in black with a black veil that we lifted at certain moments. Gala would go ahead with a little bell and stop at a certain moment and read a text by Pepe Cibrián, who is a very famous marica¹⁰ in Argentine theater. He was very visible in the eighties and nineties, very disruptive.

Rail: And were you able to observe the audience’s reaction to the performance?

Otero: I remember people’s eyes because I was the one who recited the text so I looked at them and there were many people who were crying. Afterward, we left the little altar leaning against the floor, and many people passed by and left things; they were grateful that there was somewhere to leave an offering, a little candle, some bay leaves.

Rail: What would you like to share with someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to live in Argentina right now?

Hernández: We are a generation that is in some ways the offspring of the 2001 crisis and the resulting social unrest here in Argentina, and that, along with the history of the coup d’état and the dictatorship of 1976, makes us think, “Hey, I don’t want to go through that again.” Being part of collectives and doing activism on a daily basis has to do with wanting to transform reality in a certain way so that we don’t go back. I think that with Milei’s government, that fear becomes very present and very real, like, this is something that can happen, and it has to do with the advance of fascism in many territories and in Latin America in particular. It’s important to understand that we have a fascist, far-right government that tends toward violence. We’ve been fighting against this sort of thing for a long time and I think that this government is going backward.

Rail: Do you have any specific demands? What do you want to see changed?

Kallsen: Having the right to a dignified life, not only in terms of material things and basic needs like food, shelter, a job with rights, which is already a lot, but also making our lives less exhausting in terms of the mental and emotional burden. Fear of kissing on the street, fear of your friends not arriving home after a night out, there is an extra mental and emotional burden that is very exhausting, and I think that takes away from our quality of life, which we deserve. We want them to stop killing us because we want to live, but also, we want to truly live, without having to constantly worry about hormones, about getting a job, about being able to study.