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

WIRED

21 hours ago

Jul 13, 2025 5:30 AM In Latin America, LGBTQ+ history collections are a form of resistance. Grassroots projects are using the memories of community members to fight against systematic violence and demand justice. For a long time Argentina's Trans Memory Archive was only a virtual space, but today it is a hybrid one. Its staff is responsible for the preservation and protection of items that share the story of trans life in the country. Trans Memory Archive of Argentina
Being queer, often, means feeling unseen. 'We come from a history of erasure that is manifested not only through hate crimes and discrimination, but also through a lack of representation, symbolic violence, and the absence of legal protections,' explains André Mere Rivera, director of the Queer Memory Archive of Peru (Archivo de la Memoria Marica del Perú).
The project Mere leads is part of a growing wave of collaborative projects in which Latin American LGBTQ+ communities preserve and share their struggles and triumphs. They digitize photos, collect testimonies, and build databases of letters, personal memories, and other items that have survived dictatorships, censorship, and stigma.
Community members scour libraries and newspapers, and dive deep into other, more conventional, archives to show how their identities have been denied. They are also reinventing the idea of a family album, creating alternative ones based on networks of affection. In their hands, technology is used to preserve memory, care for communities, and demand justice even as old prejudices are being reignited with the rise of far-right rhetoric.
In Argentina, trans women like Sofia Beatriz Hernández fight for the rights of their community and to assure it is recognized. Trans Memory Archive of Argentina
Sonia Beatriz Hernández never imagined she would one day be using a computer to digitize memories that included her. A transgender woman and a senior citizen, she learned everything she knows about being an archivist at her current job. Hernández is part of the Trans Memory Archive of Argentina (Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina), an initiative that not only preserves the history of gender and sexual dissidence, but has also inspired others throughout Latin America and the Caribbean to create their own collections.
'The archive was born out of the need to find each other and know that we are alive,' says María Belén Correa, founder and director of the Trans Memory Archive, the largest project of its kind in the region. It's a space that brings together the past struggles and current demands of trans communities.
'Creating an archive is a way of situating ourselves, of showing that we are here, and that we have always been here,' says Queer Memory Archive of Peru's Mere. 'We are not all the same, we are not mere bodies, nor are we an idea imported from abroad. We have been here since the homoerotic huacos [ceramic representations of homosexual intercourse created by the ancient Moche and Chimu cultures of Peru]. We have lived and continue to live through situations that are heartbreaking and that demand justice. Hate crimes must not go unpunished and reparations must be made.'
For Aldri Covarrubias, manager of the Transmasculine Memory Archive of Mexico (Archivo de la Memoria Transmasculina México), this struggle is still ongoing: 'The uniformity that cisheterosexuality seeks to impose is not real. Memory is not a nostalgic aspect of the past; it must serve as a tool in building a path to a place with room for everyone.'
LGBTQ+ archives in Latin America provide glimpses of daily life, from activist efforts to intimate moments. Trans Memory Archive of Argentina
The wave that began in Argentina challenges the very notion of a shared heritage. Those who are exploring new ways of archiving collective memories today are searching to give voice, both privately and publicly, to what has long been silenced or stigmatized. Their efforts break with simplistic and heteronormative representations of gender, reclaim what has been hidden, and denounce the systematic persecution of their identities.
'The vision for the archive began with Claudia Pía Baudracco, who spent her entire life collecting material: letters, film negatives, postcards, and souvenirs from her travels throughout Argentina, the rest of Latin America, and Europe,' recalls María Belén.
Carolina Nastri, the lead archivist of the project, explains that Pía was a pioneering trans activist and a leader in the fight for Argentina's Gender Identity Law. She died months before it was enacted in 2012. Her collection of items capturing personal and collective memories ended up in the hands of Belén, a fellow activist and cofounder of the Association of Transvestites, Transsexuals, and Transgender People of Argentina.
Starting with that box of memories, Belén organized several exhibitions.
'We look to the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo as a model,' María Belén explains. The organization was founded in 1977 to locate children kidnapped during the Argentinian military dictatorship which lasted from 1976 to 1983. 'It began to build an archive in a context where the state had taken it upon itself to destroy all evidence of its crimes. They did so by turning to the memories of those who survived.'
The digitization work of the archives allows stories and images to be shared in different formats and in different countries. Trans Memory Archive of Argentina
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.'
The Trans Memory Archive of Argentina organization receives materials documenting the community's history both as donations and loans. Trans Memory Archive of Argentina
Covarrubias affectionately calls the staff at the Trans Memory Archive his 'Argentinian mothers and grandmothers.' They led him to a realization that since an archive like it didn't exist in Mexico, he'd have to be the one to build it. 'It was essential to find others like us. There are fewer works on transmasculinity than on any other gender identity,' he explains. Tired of only seeing texts from the global north, he decided to look closer to home. This is how the first Transmasculine Memory Archive (Archivo de la Memoria Transmasculina) in Mexico was born.
Two years later, the Spanish-language collection has grown to eight boxes filled with fanzines, flyers, photographs, graphic art, and 50 books. It includes interviews with drag artists, writers, bike messengers, researchers, sex workers, biologists, and retirees.
Covarrubias emphasizes that he understands the limits of the archive. 'We're not going to cover everything,' he says while expressing a desire that the effort doesn't end with the archive he has helped to build. He hopes other local archives will preserve the history of other communities in other parts of the country.
Aldri collects and preserves memorabilia while also always pursuing new opportunities to add more material to the archive. In libraries and other official collections, he searches for 'the unsaid and the overlooked.' When efforts to silence certain stories have spanned decades, it can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. 'We've had more luck at flea markets, gathering oral memories, and talking to survivors,' he says. 'We may not always find something, but it's important that we look.'
'I'm not an archivist or a historian,' says Mere of the Queer Memory Archive of Peru. It is a sentiment repeated by many who are involved with these archives. It is said not as a humble excuse, but instead as part of a call to imagine what a different approach, free from the limitations of academia, might look like. They are asking fundamental questions: What is archiving? Who is doing the archiving? For whom is the archive being created? Mere shares that he, too, was inspired by the work of the archive in Argentina.
At the archive in Argentina, publications are created so members of the community can share their memories while helping to finance the project. Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina
Peru's archive began with official documents about LGBTQ+ life that Mere had gathered. He then wrote to his friends asking them to share items they had published. Today, they have books, flyers, posters, leaflets, pins, booklets, embroidery, and works by queer artists such as Javi Vargas, which address HIV, power, and authority. They also have preserved costumes from a short film and memorabilia from a festival with the slogan 'Make Peru Gay Again.'
Mere directs the archive, while Fernando Correa coordinates the research and oversees the methodology of interviews they have conducted to document certain places and moments in the history of the community.
'Talking about memories can be a sensitive topic in communities like ours, which are often impacted by violence. Many memories revolve around the violence we have experienced and continue to experience, from discrimination and murders to misrepresentations in the media, but our memories are also our relationships, the bonds of our communities, and our actions caring for one another,' says Mere.
At Argentina's Trans Memory Archive, the work of the trans women who catalog its materials grows every day. The items are varied: Some are virtual, some physical, and some hybrid. All of them are centered on a collective memory, including interviews with trans people in different formats.
'The landscape begins to change when we have access to archival tools and then train people to create other similar spaces throughout Latin America,' Belén says.
At times when dissenting voices have been silenced, the archive preserves them for future generations. Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina
From another part of the southern end of South America, other artistic exercises in memory are emerging, such as Felipe Rivas San Martín's The Inexistent Archive ( Archivo Inexistente ). The Chilean artist used artificial intelligence to construct a speculative album of LGBTQ+ couples from the working class of Abya Yala (an indigenous name for the Americas) using fiction to highlight and overcome the challenges created by the lack of records at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Queer Memory Archive of Peru, together with WikiAcción Perú, organized training sessions about using Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons to create entries and upload images of marches, role models, and community events. It also works with the organization Ruta Colectiva on a long-term pride mapping project: a map of community centers, nightclubs, hospitals, churches, and other spaces that are or have been significant to the community. A similar initiative is hosted on the website of Brazil's Bajubá Museum where a collaborative map highlights locations related to LGBTQ+ cultural heritage.
But it is in disseminating the research they have collected that technological advances are more important in this new archival wave. This was clear at the First Latin American Trans Archives Congress, which brought together 21 self-managed projects from 14 countries in the region.
Many projects use social media to share materials, events, and profiles, as well as to showcase their processes, social demands, and achievements. At the same time, harassment and censorship also occur on social media. It is more common, Covarrubias adds, for transmasculine bodies to be censored than cisgender bodies.
Materials from the archive were used to create a book that resembles a family photo album. Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina
Beyond the collection of archival material and the use of new technology to preserve and share personal stories, the archives understand their place in the context of daily life. Sometimes it's more necessary to focus on material needs—rent, a surgery, hormones for a friend—than it is to buy a book.
Nastri shares that in Argentina, there are demands for legislation to provide reparations to transgender people, granting them the right to comprehensive healthcare so they can age with dignity. 'For many years, even under democratic rule, they did not have the same rights as the rest of the population,' Nastri says. 'They couldn't go to school under the names they identified with, they couldn't work, they were displaced, and they had to find ways to survive in the face of state persecution.'
'They explain that certain aspects of the current repression and censorship that these communities face recall ones that they experienced when they were younger,' she adds.
Covarrubias points out that 'in many contexts there is a need to fight for social, restorative, epistemological, and communicative justice. Fascist discourses are resurfacing around the world, and they aren't always as transparent about their goals as the Proud Boys. Fascism often takes on subtle forms.'
No matter how small the effort, these organizations' commitment to visibility and recording the history of their communities is inextricably tied to demands for justice. In the last three years, the organization Letra S reported that there were 233 murders of people of diverse sexual and gender identities in Mexico: 87 in 2022, 66 in 2023, and 80 in 2024.
In Peru the situation is also dire. The feminist lesbian organization LIFS has documented 78 murders of LGBTQ+ people in that country between 2014 and 2020. Currently, Peru doesn't recognize same-sex marriage. 'The case of Las Gardenias [an LGBTQ+ bar where eight patrons were assassinated in 1989] which took place during Peru's long war against leftist guerillas, is the only one addressed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but it was not the only violent attack from that period,' Mere notes. 'People had to flee, change their identities, leave their families, and reimagine their lives. That is a type of violence to which we have been exposed and for which we have not received any kind of redress.'
'If a place to record our collective memories becomes a museum that merely stores things that belonged to us, but it doesn't share them and it isn't proactive in terms of shaping public policy for these vulnerable communities, then it's just an empty monument,' Mere says.
This article was originally published by Wired en Español . It was translated by John Newton.