Queer Artivismo Is Community Care

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In a quiet gas station in Boedo, Buenos Aires, Agus, one of my closest friends in Argentina and my folklore dance instructor, sat down and immediately said:

“You know, my Virgo, the homophobic attack against Pamela, Roxana, Andrea, and Sofia is no coincidence. It reflects the politics and views of the chainsaw men, the men we have as president. How can we heal from these acts without going mad? What can we do with our accumulated anger? How can we be just? We are the answer. We take care of each other, embrace, dance, and protest when the state won’t take care of us.”

Agus, a trans feminist multifaceted artivista, posed the critical questions that had resonated in her heart and mind, as well as those of multiple queer and feminist communities across Argentina after the triple lesbicidio (murder of lesbian women) in Barracas, Buenos Aires. 

Since the announcement of Javier Milei’s candidacy for the presidency, there has been an increase in material, symbolic, and everyday violence against gender and sexual minorities. By winning the presidency, he gained a national platform to propel and establish an anti-queer and misogynistic climate both through the media and policy: from the closing of the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Racism (INADI) to the massive firing of trans, travesti, and non-binary people. 

As Agus alludes, when the state abandons its duty of care, queer artivistas (activists who center political art) step in to fill this void. Their work goes beyond mere protest—through art, they create spaces of joy, cariño, and mutual support that serve as vital infrastructure for community care. This care takes multiple forms: emotional support, resource sharing, physical safety, and the preservation of cultural memory.

In response to state-sanctioned violence, queer artivistas are reimagining what community care looks like, particularly after the Barracas attack, by forming artistic and activist spaces to come together and alleviate their communities’ pain. Queer artivistas create spaces that intentionally center webs of communal enjoyment, and social justice, many times queering individualist normative neoliberal understandings of (self-)care. 

Collectives like Lesbianas Autoconvocadas have been employing artivismo to create political consciousness around lived intersectional oppressions, forming webs of solidarity through activist spaces in collaboration with traditional protest workers. They prioritize the collective material and physiological needs of those queer and trans communities most at the margins of the heteropatriarchy. I encountered these events as part of my journey as a queer Uruguayan researching queer well-being, art, and activism in Montevideo, Uruguay, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2024. 

Emotional Healing and Shared Mourning at the Queer Folkloric Varieté

Three days after the Barracas attack, the Minga Centro Cultural opened their doors to a Queer Varieté Folk. At about 10:30 pm, I crossed the big wooden doors of Minga and went straight into the main concert room with about 30 people sitting attentively listening to Macu’s music. Macu, a lesbian musician, performed some of her original pop-rock fusion music, and after finishing her solo set, she spoke of the Barracas attack. “Tonight, our anger brings us together, calls us to action, and reunites us, and even though I’m trying to be strong, I am afraid something might happen to me, to my friends,” said Macu. This phrase resonated with the audience, which was predominantly queer and female, speaking to the vulnerability of their existence under the hetero-patriarchy, but also their drive to come together, to continue fighting for their right to exist. 

During that night, patrons and performers alike held each other, cried, and mourned the deaths of Pamela, Roxana, and Andrea. The microphone hosted a multitude of people extending invitations to continue their activism and mourning for the Barracas women, to attend other artivista spaces, and to go to the multiple protests happening in the upcoming days. 

During the night, queer patrons at Minga mourned the Barracas attack through a celebration of life. “We hug each other and dance Chacarera in times of turmoil and violence,” Dany Vila, a queer folklore musician, would say. While the Somos Mink’a queer folkloric band was playing, we stood up and started dancing Chacarera, a folkloric dance that is usually danced in couples. But this time, in queer fashion, it was danced as one big group in a circle, all facing inward. In some of my fellow patrons’ faces and eyes, red from so much crying, I started seeing the biggest smiles of joy brought by our collective movement. Now, reflecting on this event, I understand they were not “moving away” from the collective sadness, but rather this too was part of their mourning, a queer way of celebrating life by tightly holding each other in a folkloric dancing circle.

This queer folkloric varieté embodied core aspects of queer artivismo, such as the political commitment to create awareness of shared struggles through varied performances and speeches. Queer artivismo also centered art as a medium for embodying the political radicality of shared joy and mourning, particularly considering the increasing anti-queer hatred and violence encountered in those days. 

Drag Battles and the (Re)creation of Queer Artistic Traditions and Collective History 

“Our biggest vengeance will be our happiness,” said Escenarie from the top of their lungs that cold Wednesday night while receiving the winning crown from the drag battle competition at Feliza. 

Like most Wednesday nights, Feliza hosted, after their queer boxing class, a well-attended drag battle, in which multiple drag performers compete by having acting challenges, individual performances, and lip-syncs. That Wednesday night in Buenos Aires in the following week after the Barracas attack, was the final dragatalla for that season. I went there to support two of my performer friends, Luno Karma and Escenarie, who both became winners that night. 

Boom, boom, boom was the constant beating of a drum projected by Feliza speakers. The tightly squeezed crowd became silent to the drums and moved their attention to the back entrance of the stage, where Escenarie made their entrance dressed in a red and black gown, with a crucifix, an arrow stuck to their body, and a feather crown. As soon as the drum stopped, Escenarie spoke of the impacts of colonization on their communities back home in Chile and proceeded to recite “Canción Con Todos” (Song with All) by César Isella. This famous Argentinian song speaks of the beauty and strength found in Latin America’s vast diversity of cultures and nature. This song also speaks of the resilience of Latin Americans in the face of the civic-military dictatorship of the Condor Plan (starting in the 1960s). That night in Feliza, it spoke to us relating to the recent Barracas attack. Escenarie, as they would tell me later, likes to push the lines of what is expected from drag, and add further political messaging to their art by infusing it with Latin American music, imagery, and symbols. 

Escenarie liked to “poner la cuerpa” (embody) in their artivismo, making their body an artistic terrain for their queer experience of Latin American belonging and resistance. For Escenarie, and other queer artivistas, as we saw with the queer varieté, mixing elements such as drag with folkloric music, dance, and other traditional forms of culture was also a form of activism. For them, the political content becomes essential, alongside having an artistic medium that generates symbolic and creative spaces for their queer Latin identities. Having queer art that feels authentic and local for them is part of activism, particularly when facing constant erasure from the media, at school, in workplaces, and in other public and private spaces. The night ended with an incredible lip-sync between Escenarie and Luno Karma and, afterward, a heartwarming conversation on stage between the mentioned drag performers and the organizers of the event.            

“Always with the hoes, never with the police!”

“Pamela, Roxana, Andrea and Sofia. Present!” 

These chants were followed in unison in support of the speakers. 

Escenarie’s speech importantly mentioned the significance of saying the Barrcas women’s names, the healing powers of art, and the importance of coming together. It emphasized that we should not forget the past violence during the dictatorship against queer, trans, and travesti people. Feliza became not only a place of queer artivismo, resistance, and joy but also a battleground for the contested memory of the previous anti-queer violence and general atrocities from the dictatorship, and the legacy of that violence to the present. 

Queer Art as the Medium for Mutual Aid and Other Forms of Collective Care 

Casa Brandon, one of the first queer cultural centers in Buenos Aires, opened its doors for an “acción cultural, unides x Barracas” (cultural action, united for Barracas). At about 9:00 pm outside the door, there was a block-long queue to enter. My friends and I waited outside for an hour and a half because it was so beautifully crowded. This event, organized by Autoconvocades Lesbianes Organizades (self-convoked organized lesbians in English), aimed to bring queer musicians of tango, folklore, and pop together to raise money for the families of the Barracas women and to cover funeral expenses, among other things. Music, dance, protest chants, and speeches became the social glue of the evening centered around mutual aid support. 

In between the artistic performance, speeches would paint away with broad strokes of pain the reality for many queer and female communities across Buenos Aires, and Argentina broadly. “The state is responsible for the death of the Barracas girls, their hate speech and policy were the trigger for the Molotov bomb that killed them. We’ve seen aggression rise not only against the lesbian women, but also our trava friends who are losing their jobs, and now they are even coming for the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo,” said one of the presenters. Her poetic sharp words cut across the audience and reminded them that while caring is a task they have been burdened to do within their communities, the state should be held accountable for the violence inflicted and neglect. 

As I heard Ferni de Gyldenfeldt, a trans woman singer, perform a folkloric lullaby while all the patrons hugged each other, I thought about how this space, like many others, was creating something else beyond “just” resistance. Queer artivism was more than a tool for queer resistance to the faced violence; it was world-building, joy-creating, and soul-moving. It was about the community coming together to support each other emotionally and with resources, a deep form of sustained community care. While violence and resistance might be key aspects in the lived experiences of people, “so are reciprocity, altruism, and the creative power of the imagination,” as Michael Brown in “On Resisting Resistance” states. Artivismo, as an expression of queer sociality and care, is beyond resistance to increasing violence; it is about alternative forms of being with each other, of care, of reimagining the current anti-queer political economy of hate. 

Events like acción cultural x Barracas that had an artivista framework encouraged the construction and consolidation of further networks of queer and feminist activism more broadly. People had a space to learn about current issues, support critical causes, and connect with members of different communities, while also not having the potential risks of police brutality and legal violence of traditional protest and militancy work. Queer artivista spaces form webs of queer and feminist care and connection, often without having to expose some of the most marginalized members of the community, such as trans and travesti people, to protest “on the streets.” However, queer artivistas also engage in protest work, but those spaces they form are both an addition and an alternative to protesting. 

Queer Artivismo Is Queer Community Care 

Returning to Agus’s questions in that quiet gas station—how to heal, what to do with our anger, how to achieve justice—queer artivismo offers a powerful answer. It shows how community care can be both a response to violence and a proactive creation of alternative worlds. Through artivismo, Argentina’s queer community has developed a distinctive framework for care that operates on multiple levels: emotional (through shared joy and mourning), material (through mutual aid), cultural (through the queering of traditional arts), and political (through creative forms of resistance). It’s about “poner la cuerpa” (embodying), an alternative way of being and constructing community care at the margins of the violent standards set by Milei’s neoliberal state.