Lucha Venegas, academic at Magallanes University, transfeminist activist and survivor of CENAM; Marcella De Monti, survivor of the first protests against sexual diversity in 1973; Barbara Arsena, spokeswoman for the Afrodita Union of Valparaíso; Yesenia Alegre, sociologist, and Juan Carlos Garrido, historian, were panelists of the discussion “The repression that didn’t matter: LGBTIQ+ stories in the dictatorship that Chile never repaired”, which took place in the auditorium of the Faculty of Social Sciences. In the framework of activities commemorating the fifty years of the coup.
The event was organized by the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies on Political Culture, Memory and Human Rights, the School of Psychology and the Doctoral Program in Interdisciplinary Studies on Thought, Culture and Society of the University of Valparaíso, in collaboration with Parque por Peis Vila. Grimaldi.
On this occasion, Gonzalo Lira, director of the School of Psychology, highlighted the importance of the meeting to reflect, analyze and create memory, “an imperative for Chile that we consider as a public institution of higher education “, and review the need given the many forms of violence whose victims and survivors are not a homogeneous group, many of them at present and many of them with existing reparation debts.
Then, the documentary short film “The Repression That Doesn’t Matter” was shown, a record that presents startling testimonies of people who lived traumatic experiences of repression in the context of the coup and whose life stories were made invisible Was.
The conversation then developed, highlighting topics such as transfeminist attitudes, bodies that do not matter and who have been objects of hatred just for being different from the majority, the pathological criminalization of homosexuality, and taxonomic status. , politics that have historically discriminated against the subject, homophobia coming from the left and right, and the work done by groups such as the Aphrodita Union and the Trans Senior Adults Club.
At the time, Pilola Polet, the historical drag queen, was a special greeter for the president of the aforementioned Club of Trans Seniors. She and Valparaíso’s Aphrodita Union spokeswoman Barbara Arsena, with both researchers Yesenia Alegre and Juan Carlos Garrido agreed on the relevance of the work to be done by the Academy, from the point of view that people are not objects of study, from which only information is extracted. , But there must be a commitment to the issues, which is achieved through dialogue and joint reflection. Lucha Venegas finally said, “Our revolution is going to get old.”
