Ephemera and the Politics of Memory in Argentina’s Archivo de la Memoria Trans

The 1970s and 1980s in Argentina, under the dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla, posed a major challenge for members of the queer community, especially trans women, as they were exiled, disappeared, and abused. When Argentina began to democratize, it became a goal of trans activists to provide visibility and education surrounding the trans community in Argentina in order to combat the legacy of marginalization. As a result, the Archivo de la Memoria Trans was created by two trans activists. This digital archive strives to vindicate the memory of the trans women affected by the dictatorship. This paper addresses the question of what methods this archive uses and how its digital format differentiates it from other physical archives. This paper investigated this question through a close reading of many of the artifacts in the archive. The research found that the archive uses the conceptual tool of ephemera, which describes what remains after a physical act has passed, in order to promote its goals of visibility and education. It finds that the archive uses ephemera as a tool to demonstrate public intimacy and vernacular photography through digital media, and subsequently provide visibility to the everyday lives of trans women. This paper shows the value of digital archival resources in order to advocate for marginalized groups such as trans women in Argentina through its investigation of ephemera in the Archivo de la Memoria Trans de Argentina