The Archivo de la Memoria Trans (AMT; English: "Trans Memory Archive") is an Argentine trans community archive dedicated to compiling and recovering the history and cultural heritage of transgender, transsexual and travesti people in the country. The Archive aims to act as a collective memory for Argentine trans identities, ensuring that their stories, especially of those who endured and resisted systemic discrimination and violence—frequently silenced or erased by official narratives—are preserved and made widely accessible to the community. The project was conceived by trans activists María Belén Correa and Claudia Pía Baudracco and founded by the former in 2012, shortly after the latter's death. It began as a closed Facebook group created by Correa, focused on sharing personal photographs and anecdotes from Argentine trans women, and over time—with the help of photographer Cecilia Estalles—evolved into a small collective dedicated to the collection, preservation and digitization of materials, adhering to archival standards. The Archive contains more than 25,000 items that document the life of trans people in Argentina—dating from the beginning of the 20th century to the late 1990s—including photographs, films, sound recordings, newspaper and magazine articles, identity documents, letters, postcards, notes and police files. The project's archivists are older transgender women who have, for the first time, gained entry into a professional and labor environment of this nature. A pioneering project in Latin America, the Archive has inspired several initiatives in other countries of the region, including Mexico, Honduras, Cuba, Colombia, Chile and Uruguay, among others. Alongside its preservation mission, the AMT has undertaken several political demonstrations and legal actions seeking historical reparations for the trans community. In 2023, the Archive received the highest Honoris Causa distinction given by the National University of La Plata.
In addition to its preservation and activist efforts, the AMT has set the goal of disseminating its material, which has been showcased both physically and on digital platforms in museums and institutions within the country and abroad, such as the Reina Sofía Museum, Tate Modern and the São Paulo Biennial, giving international recognition to the project. The Archive was also the subject of a documentary series that premiered on the Encuentro channel, produced a podcast and a radionovela, and took part in the documentary film Family Album (2024). After the previous experience of co-editing a photobook in 2020 with Buenos Aires-based publisher Editorial Chaco, in 2022 the AMT founded its own independent publisher, dedicated to promoting transgender authors and topics. The AMT publisher's first book was Si te viera tu madre, released the same year, which focused on Baudracco's life and activism through texts and photos. It was followed by Nuestro códigos in 2023, a book object that includes photos and quotes by trans women that dialogue with documents from other archives, coming from the institutions that were in charge of persecuting the community. In 2024, the AMT published the book Kumas and an updated reprint of the first 2020 photobook, as well as two zines: La abuela y la Travesti and El amor volverá. The work of the AMT also played a fundamental role in a landmark judicial ruling of 27 March 2024, which, for the first time, recognized trans women as victims of the last civic-military dictatorship.
History and mission
The Archivo de la Memoria Trans (AMT; English: "Trans Memory Archive") was conceived by the influential activists Claudia Pía Baudracco and María Belén Correa, who helped kickstart the organized Argentine trans rights movement in the early 1990s. In 2012, the movement for trans rights in the country achieved its greatest victory yet with the passing of the Gender Identity Law, a pioneer law worldwide that allows trans people to be recognized and treated according to their self-perceived identity without pathologizing them, ensuring full healthcare coverage for gender-related treatments across public and private systems. Correa has often stated that the passing of the Gender Identity Law marked the arrival of true democracy for trans people, who, despite the country's return to democracy in 1983, continued to face persecution, violence, and discrimination. Two months before the law's passing, Baudracco, one of the main proponents of the law, died, and Correa decided to found the Archive shortly thereafter. In 2025, she wrote: "The Law was a historic event that changed our lives forever. It marked the end of a policy of persecution and the beginning of a policy of inclusion. In Argentina, where the search for identity has been a constant struggle, democracy only truly arrived for trans people in 2012. In the heat of activism, of defending our lives, we always had to keep looking forward — to the next action, the next mobilization. For me, the Law didn't just mean an ID; it also meant the possibility of looking back, of recovering memory." Correa refers to the struggle of the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo for "Memory, Truth and Justice" on behalf of the victims of state terrorism during the last civic-military dictatorship—an effort she has cited as a fundamental influence in the creation of the AMT.
Following Baudracco's death, Correa inherited a box in which she had collected her memories—comprising six thousand items, including photographs, documents, and various other materials chronicling her life and activism, as well as that of other trans companions; that box became the first archival collection of the AMT. The mission of the Archive is to compile and recover the history and cultural heritage of transgender, transsexual, and travesti people in the country, with the aim of serving as a collective memory for Argentine trans identities. It seeks to ensure that the stories of those who endured and resisted systemic discrimination and violence—often silenced or erased by official narratives—are preserved and made widely accessible to the community. In its early stages, the project began as a private Facebook group created by Correa, where trans survivors could reconnect and share memories and, in Correa's words, "first and foremost, to know that we were alive." Writing in 2025, she recalled: "Over time, we began to build a collection that was considered a treasure. It is no exaggeration to apply that term to each of our photos and belongings, however small or blurred they might be: for a long time, in our country—and in many others across Latin America—our histories were erased, even completely wiped out. (...) Our families, many consumed by shame and rejection, silenced us, tried to change us, or expelled us from our homes. (...) Despite so much death, and in so many forms, with each recovered photo, our lives became even more intense, more brilliant. (...) Our shared need, expressed in the messages exchanged in our private Facebook group, was to tell and preserve these stories, and to embrace each other again. (...) These photographs began to bear witness to our 'activism before activism,' to our existence as resistance."
In 2014, Correa came into contact with photographer Cecilia Estalles, who would bring a new perspective to the project. With Estalles' incorporation, the Archive expanded its work of collecting and preserving materials, sourcing them through contacts made in the Facebook group, and gradually took shape as both a physical archive and a digital collection, utilizing professional preservation techniques. Furthermore, Estalles promoted within the group the idea that the materials should be disseminated to make the history and struggle of the community visible, challenging established perspectives and ensuring they were known to society at large. In Correa's own words: "At first, I didn’t think our archive needed to be visible, as it consisted of personal photos and memories, mostly intimate. But Estalles' perspective made me rethink this: visibility, now decided by us, could break many of the burdens society had imposed on us, especially in the mass media. (...) By making our most personal memories visible, we managed to disrupt, for example, Google's algorithm: until we shared our material firsthand, searching for a photo of an Argentine travesti/trans woman would bring up images of crossdressers or sensationalist press photos that harmed our community, defaming our identities, telling our stories from false perspectives, and using degrading adjectives for many years." This led to two small exhibitions, primarily aimed at the LGBTQ community, held at a branch of the Federación Argentina de Lesbianas, Gays, Bisexuales y Trans (FALGBT; English: "Argentine Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Trans People"). In 2017, with a more established team, the AMT designed its first exhibition at the Centro Cultural de la Memoria Haroldo Conti—a highly symbolic venue, as it is located in the former clandestine detention center ESMA—and from there, the AMT gained greater recognition and expanded the circulation of its material.
In 2018, the AMT received the Ibermemoria award, granted by the Ibero-American General Secretariat, which provided training in documentation and archive management. This enabled the project to adopt professional archiving standards, moving beyond the "intuitive" methods previously guided by Estalles' expertise in photography. In addition, the AMT obtained legal status, which allowed it to apply for grants and subsidies, secure a workspace, and pay and receive professional fees. One of the AMT's goals has been to become a source of employment for older trans individuals, most of whom lack access to retirement benefits and have been excluded from state institutions; its team is made up of older trans women who, for the first time, have gained access to professional development opportunities that had once seemed out of reach. The Archive also offers training in image digitization, contemporary photography and creative writing for the trans individuals who work there. The following years marked a period of significant growth and international recognition for the project, with invitations to participate in international conferences on archiving and sexual diversity activism, and appearances in exhibitions at venues including Tate Modern's website, the Virreina Palace and Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Moreira Salles Institute in São Paulo and the 35th São Paulo Art Biennial, as well as in numerous well-known museums and institutions across Argentina. The AMT was the subject of a 2021 documentary series that premiered on the Encuentro channel, produced a podcast and a radionovela, and took part in the documentary film Family Album (2024).