Lucila Pellettieri, GPJ Argentina
Members of Puerta Abierta a la Diversidad meet in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for a weekly reflection workshop.
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA — Homemade chocolate cake rests on a coffee table surrounded by chairs. The clock strikes 7:00, the doorbell rings, and seven women trail in from the hallway, laughing. All over the age of 60, they chat about their lives while awaiting the start of their reflection group.
“Many women tell me, ‘I’ve been waiting all week for it to be Thursday because this is the only place where I’m really me.’ It’s hard,” says Graciela Balestra with a sad smile. She is the founder of Puerta Abierta a la Diversidad (Open Door to Diversity), where she’s spent the last 24 years organizing weekly activities for older lesbian women.
While there is a wide variety of spaces and organizations for the LGBT community in Argentina and especially in Buenos Aires, Puerta Abierta, as the association is known, is the only one aimed at this age group, which has lived the transition from police persecution due to their sexual orientation to the institutional recognition of their rights. For those who participate, it’s also a family and a supportive space to express their identity, make friends and even meet future partners. These bonds help them navigate uncertainty in the face of the country’s recent rise in hate crimes and hate speech.
“We’re like a network, a chosen family where we accept each other as we are. We can be free and express ourselves freely. This is especially important for older adults,” says Balestra, 61.
The association includes women who, in a context of stigmatization and little knowledge about sexual diversity and identity, had to keep their sexual orientation hidden for decades. Some women arrive to the association having lived 50 or 70 years in silence, believing that they were sick or that they were the only ones like them in the world, Balestra says. Now that there’s more awareness about sexual and identity diversity, young people today have a very different experience.
Mercedes Caracciolo, 78, identifies as a visible lesbian woman — one who lives her identity openly — and has participated intermittently in Puerta Abierta activities since 2000. She thinks having a place to gather and talk with her peers is irreplaceable.
“I feel the need to have friends I can talk to about certain things that happen to us as lesbian women. There are things you can’t share with a [heterosexual] friend, even if you’ve been friends your whole life,” she says.
Caracciolo says there is a lack of sites focused on LGBT seniors, as many centers focus on youth. Sebastián Amaro, a sociologist specializing in gerontology and an activist, agrees, calling for greater awareness of the needs of the community’s older members.
“There is a need to keep strengthening the bridges between both worlds,” says Amaro, who identifies himself as “puto,” a pejorative term for a gay man that the community has reappropriated. “There are older people with diverse sexualities everywhere; the question is if they can inhabit their identity openly in those spaces.”
The sociologist explains that the older generation has lived through a history of persecution because of their sexual and gender identity. This persecution reached a pivotal point in 1976, with the start of Argentina’s last civic-military dictatorship. Through 2000, harassment continued through political edicts that enabled police to detain gay, lesbian and cross-dressing people for scandalous behavior, inciting sex acts and wearing clothes of the opposite sex. That’s why, Amaro says, different spaces need to promote inclusive messaging.
“I think it’s essential because if lots of people had to live their lives more internally, staying invisible or being afraid, then old age should be a time [for them] to live as fully as possible,” he says.
In the past months, Puerta Abierta has become a crucial space in an environment that has become increasingly hostile toward the LGBT community. In May, four lesbian women were attacked in their shared home. Three died. Federación Argentina LGBT called the attack “one of the cruelest hate crimes in recent years.”
A federal organization that specializes in LGBT hate crimes, Observatorio Nacional de Crímenes de Odio LGBT, reports that since 2019, there has been a rise in the number and mortality of hate crimes. Last year, there were 133.
“I think [we] have to start being careful. Honestly, it’s frightening,” says Mirta Alterman, 78, who began having relationships with women nearly three decades ago. “I don’t remember being personally affected by a moment like this.”
Amid the growing climate of hatred, Puerta Abierta is strengthening its community. Balestra, its founder, dreams of creating community housing for her and fellow women in their later years.
“[Puerta Abierta] changed my life,” she says, brimming with emotion. “For me, it’s also important to keep my door open. I’m also not alone.”
