An Argentinean Writer and the Movement for Women’s Rights

Argentina was already a leader in gender-equality legislation—it was the first nation in Latin America to pass same-sex-marriage laws, and the first in the world to identify trans rights as human rights. But Ni Una Menos spurred further government action, including budget allocations to support victims of gender violence; the creation of an official record to track femicides across the country; the provision of government-sponsored, free legal assistance to individuals experiencing domestic violence or sexual abuse; educational efforts to bring gender-equality awareness to public schools; and, in December, 2020, in a historic victory for women’s rights in a majority-Catholic country—one that produced the sitting Pope—legalized abortion.

Since the advent of the movement, hundreds of thousands of women have marched to the Palace of Congress, many of them wearing green kerchiefs, the symbol of the movement. (This gesture was an homage to the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, who wore white kerchiefs starting in the nineteen-seventies, when they began protesting the disappearance of their children under the country’s military dictatorship.) For Argentineans like me, the sense of relief when the abortion law was passed is hard to describe. On the morning that the Chamber of Deputies (the equivalent of the House of Representatives) approved it, I was sitting outside a coffee shop in Harlem, and I happened to be wearing a green dress. Moments after I received a phone notification about the vote, a woman dashed out of the building next door. She was Argentinean, and the news had so astonished her that she was looking for someone with whom to share the moment. She saw my green dress and assumed that I was a fellow-countrywoman. “It passed!” she cried, and embraced me tightly.

The legalization of abortion felt like the culmination of the movement’s efforts—as if something had changed in Argentina and there was no going back. But even at the time Almada had her doubts. “I travel a lot around the country, and I had the feeling that things weren’t as joyful as they seemed from Buenos Aires,” she told me. “Not all the girls wore the green kerchief, nor were all the boys beginning to deconstruct themselves.” She found resistance among evangelical Christians, and the deeper she went into the country the more she felt that “something was brewing that could explode at any moment. And it exploded.”

In January, 2024, a month after assuming office, Javier Milei, in his first appearance at the Davos summit as President, said, “The only thing this radical feminist agenda has led to is greater state intervention to hinder the economic process, creating jobs for bureaucrats who contribute nothing to society, whether in the form of ministries for women or international organizations dedicated to promoting this agenda.”

Milei is personally against abortion and has called it “aggravated murder.” He has already dismantled the Ministry of Women, Genders, and Diversity, and has defunded programs that combat gender violence. “There is now no active policy in place to guarantee the rights of girls, women, or L.G.B.T. individuals,” Ana Correa, a lawyer and activist who is part of Ni Una Menos, told me. In November, during a hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Argentinean human-rights organizations argued that the decisions of the Milei administration “consolidated a severe setback, putting the lives of thousands of girls, teen-agers, women, and queer and trans individuals at risk.”

And, as the administration’s first year in office was coming to an end, it launched a campaign against women writers whose books had been suggested reading in public high schools in Buenos Aires Province. It targeted, in particular, four books that contained sex scenes. Milei’s Vice-President, Victoria Villarruel, tweeted, “Stop sexualizing our children, remove from the classrooms those who promote these harmful agendas, and respect the innocence of children.” Villarruel was most incensed by a passage in a novel by Dolores Reyes, “Cometierra” (“Eartheater”), which features a teen-ager who, by eating dirt, can locate missing girls and women; in one scene, the book describes oral sex. Reyes received hundreds of insulting messages and death threats. “We will burn you and your book,” one read. The reaction seemed “so out of step with the times,” Almada told me. “For a high-school student not to be able to read those books when they’ve had a cell phone in their hand since they were six years old, is absurd.” However, something “very positive came out of it,” she added. In late November, more than a hundred and twenty writers staged a public reading of the books in a Buenos Aires theatre—and “Cometierra” became a national best-seller.

In the epilogue of “Dead Girls,” Almada tells the story of another girl—one who survived. She was walking in a cornfield not far from her home, during siesta time, when her cousin, who was much older, suddenly appeared. He grabbed hold of her arms and began dragging her into the field. He was drunk and wouldn’t let go of her. She was terrified but gathered the strength to break free and escape. That girl was Almada’s aunt, and in the epilogue she walks with Almada through the same cornfield, telling her the story. That’s where the book ends, with this sentence: “The north wind made the rough leaves of the corn rub together and the stems sway from side to side, producing a menacing sound that, if you listened closely, could also be the music of a small victory.” ♦