by Pamela Cobbas and her partner, Mercedes Roxana Figueroa, They were sleeping in a double bed when they woke up with fire on their bodies. They couldn’t do much given the speed of the flames. They tried to leave the hotel room they had been living in for more than a year, but Justo Fernando Barrientos hit them and pushed them inside from the room where the fire was still burning. They were there too Sofia Castro Riglos and Andrea Amarantewho were also victims of the fire.
At midnight on Monday, room 14 of the family hotel at Olavarría 1621, in Barracas, was the place where Justo Fernando Barrientos, 68, decided to burn the women. He slept in the other room. He filled a bottle with fuel and lit the fire. Faced with the screams, neighbors from other floors ran with two fire extinguishers to try to put out the flames, but they couldn’t. The bodies were still burning, they dragged them to the bathroom in search of water,
That same morning, Pamela Cobbas, 52, who according to her social networks had a son in Misiones, died. Not much is known about her, no family member came to the hospital to claim her body. Two days later, on Wednesday, Mercedes Figueroa died, with 90% of her body burned. There are no relatives who claim her either. According to the records of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires they had been homeless and asked for a subsidy. Sofía Castro Riglos, 49, and Andrea Amarante, 42, remain hospitalized at the Penna Hospital. Andrea, who is in intensive care with 75% of her body burned, is a survivor of the Cro-Magnon tragedy.
Barrientos is detained, accused of homicide and serious injuries in the National Criminal and Correctional Court No. 14, in charge of Edmundo Rabbione. According to testimonies from neighbors to Agencia Presentes, the man had threatened them at Christmas and arguments were frequent. He was bothered by his gender identity and called them ‘monsters’, ‘cakes’ or ‘dirty fat woman’.” After the attack, Barrientos tried to commit suicide by cutting his neck with a knife and then tried to escape through the terrace.
“This situation of internalized violence in many people becomes easier when those who are in the Executive, Legislative, Judicial Branch or those who have access to the mass media speak with total impunity from hatred.. These speeches facilitate the manifestation of hatred towards people who are in the plain. They manifest themselves in filling a bottle with fuel, setting it on fire and throwing it into bed on people who were resting,” he told elDiarioAR María Laura Olivier, General Secretary of the Argentine Homosexual Community (CHA), who accompanies the women affected in the Barracas fire. The event occurs in a context of growing hate speech towards sexual and gender diversities that increased with the arrival to power of Javier Milei.
The President and several of his officials have openly discriminatory positions that enable these speeches in society. It’s not just verbal, it’s about concrete repercussions. That’s how he understands it the national representative for Santa Fe of the Socialist Party and activist of sexual diversity, Esteban Paulon. “There are different degrees of responsibility but when hate speech is legitimized from the highest levels of power, it quickly transforms into hateful attitudes, into facts with concrete consequences. They are not harmless. If a leader, official or someone with a position of power in a media outlet proposes a disqualification of a person or idea that undermines, discriminates or singles out a group, there will be someone in the community who feels they should do something about it. . That usually ends in violent action,” he said in dialogue with this medium.
Days ago, the biographer and friend of the president, Nicolás Márquez referred to homosexuality as “insane and self-destructive behavior.” and gave false figures about the quality of life of the people in the community. “There are objectively healthy behaviors and objectively unhealthy behaviors. So, when the State promotes, encourages and finances homosexuality, as it has done until the appearance of Javier Milei on the scene, it is encouraging self-destructive behavior,” he stated in a interview with Ernesto Tenembaum on Radio con Vos. The statements sparked a wave of criticism and rejection from public figures.
María Rachid, member of the Board of Directors of the Argentine Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Trans (FALGBT), spoke about the risk of giving visibility to these expressions. “In recent months these messages have deepened, they have to do with the National Government expressing these hate speech through its officials and that empowers other minority sectors, resulting in more discrimination, attacks, even murders that are being endorsed.” or sustained by these hate speeches,” he told elDiarioAR.
But the responsibility is not only placed on the officials but also on the media that allow the circulation of these messages. That’s what he talks about Lucas ‘Fauno’ Gutiérrez, activist and journalist from Agencia Presentes. “This week the debate arose about whether to invite fachos to the news desks. I think it does have to be done, but when you have the back to respond and dismantle their hate messages, because if all you do is get outraged so that your audience sees how outraged you are at that, it’s no use. That happens when there is no representation of diversities on the news table, the discourse is not dismantled but rather filtered,” he explained.
Gutiérrez also stressed the responsibility of the political opposition. “The responsibility lies with the entire government, it includes the opposition. We have to ask ourselves: What voices of diversity are there in your parties? How much space do they give it? The responsibility lies entirely with our political representatives because if we are not part of this debate, if we are made invisible, if we are silent, what can you do when everything triggers hate crime? At the end of the day, it is a consequence of a chain of microaggressions, of speeches, of invisibilizations,” he described.
“We have to see how the exposition of these speeches does not end up being functional to amplify them in terms of propaganda but rather serves to amplify them in terms of warning. They must be put on the table to reverse it and have a social debate. I do not agree with the culture of cancellation, if there is something that seems harmful to us, what we have to do is refute it,” explained Paulón.
Microaggressions or media expressions such as that of Foreign Minister Diana Mondino who spoke of homosexuals as “louses”, hatred towards diversities is always present in societies, the difference is in the qualification, in the empowerment to express it without consequences.
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