Legacy, friendship and performativity: an analysis of the ties between human rights activism and sex-gender activism in post-dictatorship Argentina

Abstract

This article addresses processes of political identification between human rights (HR) activism and sex-gender activism in Argentina. More precisely, it focuses on the ties established by feminisms with the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo during the democratic transition, and on the particular way in which the “Mothers” conditioned feminist forms and contents at that time. The article goes on to analyze the politics of friendship established during the 1990s by HR organizations with “travesti” activism, on the one hand, and with women’s mobilizations, on the other, and how the struggle to defend life, historically upheld by the “Mothers”, became a platform capable of accommodating other bodies that were precarious/made precarious due to sex-gender specifications. Finally, in relation to a more recent context of massification of (trans) feminisms, the article reflects on the performativity of the legacy of “the crazy women” of Plaza de Mayo in the “Ni Una Menos” (Not One [woman] Less) movement and the “Marea Verde” (Green Wave) movement; and considers the insertion of a dissident feminist perspective in HR activism, which is auspicious for new ethical-political rewrites, alliances and interconnections.