“Trans are still second citizens”

Learned to survive in full childhood and in his family home in San Nicolás, north of the province of Buenos Aires. If at home, the first place of protection that is needed, He received neglect and contempt, He understood that outside he would not have much to lose. So in adolescence he went to Rosario and near his 20 left everything to go to Buenos Aires. Upon arrival, He changed his male name of the ID for the chosen one, Barbara, “made the street” in Palermo, spent scares, he met friends, moved to a shared room, mete foods Because there was no split weight to the middle, he rented another room to live alone. Today, Barbara Di Rocco (writer, artist, producer and trans activist) faces life from that experience.

“Going from male to trans was to lose all kinds of privileges. That you laugh with laughter to go for rent until you get a laburo. That they do not take you seriously … or you are a joke, or you are to take, or you are ordinary, or you are … And that I grew up in democracy, and that the work quota was achieved and that we advanced with the Gender Identity Law. But unfortunately we are still second citizens. Like the parody of society, ”he releases.

While self -producing his personal change, he wrote. And at the same time He worked as an escort, he traveled and, instead of living the crazy life, he saved everything he could. With his monumental body and his face Barbie mode, he got on theatrical stages (among others, in the work Sexby José María Muscari), enough to disenchant with the atmosphere of lights and brightness. “Envy kills,” he laughs. But at the same time he had fun, and much, streaming with the great Moria Casán, with whom before the pandemic he had started as a panelist in a television program.

He drove parties in dance bowls, continued on TV and radio. He even achieved the dream of his own house. But he never forgot his past: “Not all transvestites can buy the house. I could, but there are a lot that do not reach two daily meals. If anyone has a hard time getting something, imagine a trans”.

Born in 1988, Barbara Di Rocco has published three children’s books: Tabby; Juana, the brave; y Ramona, La Patona. Stories related to gender change, health care and discrimination. At the same time it stands out as trans activist. He usually gives free talks in schools and, in social networks, denounces abuse, discrimination and asks for help for companions who are having a bad time.

With his current quiet life and with savings, He faced a project as necessary as ambitious: a great documentary (¡How barbaric!) To tell the trans history in Argentina. Promises glamor, brightness, images from a drone, black and white photos and unknown aspects. He traveled through the country and the world to interview the few pioneers that are alive and the testimonies will be seen in the film. He understands that it is essential that the story is told by those who lived it.

To produce it, spent and spend a lot of time in libraries, at the Museum of Cinema and in the trans archive of the trans memory. It is usually seen in the National Library, where a library friend gives her a hand. YoI don’t have a card as a researcher.

Check media files that approached transvestism with scandal and almost always on police pages, but sometimes minimizing it in the show section.

“There is so much hypocrisy,” he resigns by reminding exemplary parents, athletes (“well males”) or gallants who succumb (and succumb) to the intimate secret of the transvestites.

“Everything derives, always, on the destroy. That’s why I want to hurry to tell the story. That, I hope, you are interested in a platform, ”he says.

It shows that Barbara has a street, which has readings, which has common sense. But it is hard for him to let go. Sometimes it is released and suddenly stops, when you understand that it does not mean what it says. Others ask that such a thing is not published.

Fears hate. Above all, the one that originates from the national authorities and their followers that replicate on social networks.

“They are hate messages that have been installed for years. From the news onwards, but now they increased”, He says. In his Instagram account, for example, an example of abuse appears: he has just uploaded a bikini image. The aggressions are irreproducible. The most nimias, but no less painful, are those in which they treat her as a male or write to her “pay the hormones with your money, friend.”

“Our treatments are paid with our money. What happens is that there is a wrong message that the therapies with people’s taxes and that we are gnocchi, and that misinformation generates hatred, ”he says.

Something more loose, begins to smile. And even laughs. He says he learned that “it is always better to tell the beautiful.” And locks: companions who graduate, companions who study, companions who reach unthinkable places. He laughs when he remembered his days in streaming with Moria Casán: “You have to have a spark, grace, but with elegance. Because, if not, you feed the people who think we are ordinary. Think that we are judging us all the time. ” And smile again.

Bárbara changed clothes several times for photos production, he made enough makeup like “to get beautiful.” A skirt is on the bed. He points and clarifies:

“It was Vanessa Show, who had inherited her from Juanita Martínez (Vedette and wife of the comedian José Marrone, who died in 2001). He gave it to me, among so many dresses that he also gave me, ”he tells and his eyes wet.

Vanessa was a pioneer in the transvestite artistic world and were together when he died, in September 2023. She inherited costumes and other belongings. And also the idea of ​​making the documentary that allows to rescue the history of Argentine transvestism.

“She was a completely abandoned 77 -year -old lady. And I saw myself perhaps at that age, also abandoned. But I understood that lives can be colorful, ”explains Barbara.

They became quarantine friends. “I called her, I told her that I loved her life, that I had read her in a biography, and we became very companions. His advice changed my life. It was like my mother or my grandmother. She was a super cultured woman, who spoke five or six languages ​​with a ease and with a unique speed. What happens is that only its television appearances are known. ”

Together they planned to make a sample with Vanessa’s belongings. The motivation was the same as the documentary: “That people know the pioneers.”

Barbara dreams that her work serves to know what happened to the transvestites in the past. The French Coccinelle and her self -confidence in Argentina, Evelyn Pérez as the first vedette of Gerardo Sofovich, the transcution and transfers in the dictatorship, the mythical Ana Lupez (today of 80 years).

“I don’t want to interview a transvestite and ask how many times they raped her at the police station. I want to know what the enjoyment was, What happened in the dressing rooms, what they had fun, what they ate when they left the theater. And get excited remembering their friends, ”he says. The documentary will continue a book with the anecdotal material that is outside.

Soon it will be seen – if it finally comes out – with a “quite erotic” role in the film version of Thesis on a domestication, Based on the homonymous book of her friend and writer Cordoba Camila Sosa Villada. And recently wrote for the Cris Miró series (My name is Cris): “I contributed my gaze, because these things cannot be told by a fag. A transvestite has to tell them. After all that I worked, they did what they wanted. A pity, because anything came out. ”

All this intimate reinvenue did, in part, thanks to the therapy. That also speaks from the chair in which, scattering, he relaxes although without lowering his guard. Behind him, a library with books by Manuel Puig and a biography of Anna Nicole Smith, the bunny of Playboy who died in 2007 for an overdose of sleeping pills. “I am her fan,” he confesses.

Asked about how she believes that she will be her old age, she says: “I imagine living in Rio Janeiro, with a restraint, sunbathing and with some caipirinhas … If I arrive, of course. ” And laughs out loud.