If your mother saw you: Claudia Pía Baudracco activisms and adventures

By María Marta Aversa and Matías Máximo

Los primeros años: una infancia inquieta

- And that goat?I returned that goat!

At twelve, Claudia didn't want to go to Church anymore and designed a strategy as rare as cunning.If a goat was stolen from the temple's flock and took her home to her family, she would feel shame and not send her back to Mass.That explains why an afternoon his mother came from working and met the goat tied to the tree.

–I church suit me.

–I and return it.

-Nope.Tell the priest that I have it, ”said Claudia with the same stubbornness as two years later, I would highlight it among the transvestites of Villa Madero," The Transvestis neighborhood ".

The blackmail of the goat worked.Venado Tuerto, a town of farmers to the south of Rosario with little movement except for the national feast of the seed, it was already a large hell in which nobody wanted to be the issue of conversation.That day the goat disappeared and Claudia did not return to the masses.

This had not been the first encounter with the Church.Nor would it be the last one: the eight had been sent to a pupil school of men where they endured it only a few months.Caro, the sister six years younger than Claudia, remembers the day they called on the phone to ask for an urgent meeting: “According to the priest when they sent her to play the ball my sister climbed the short pants up to the middle of the tail, leavingThe cheeks outside.They said that ‘their exciting ways’ distracted colleagues and mom had to take it out that same day after the meeting.He had started at the Pupilo de Rosario school from the first degree because in Venado it was custom.I went to nuns ".

When she left the pupilage, she was scored in a state school where she lasted little.They said that he had a sapphired vocabulary with which he caused the companions not to accept it.The solution so that it would not be illiterate was for the mother to take home to her house and Claudia only appeared to give the tests.This was until 13, when the family decided to leave the town and try their luck in Buenos Aires.

The documents say that Claudia Pía Baudracco was born in La Carlota, province of Córdoba, on October 22, 1970.When he was two years old who wore five he died from a tumor in the brain and left a mark in the family: that loss, the story of pain told different details according to the passage of time, would be rumbled somewhere in the headof Claudia.A proof of those resonances?At the beginning of her visible gender transition, she chose her name as a tribute: Claudia.

That his birth was in La Carlot.His dad, Carlos Baudracco, sold cars spare parts and that made him travel constantly, while his mother, Estela Gracian.This structure changed from one day to another.Claudia's dad died at 31 and her mother had to go out to look for sustenance outside the home tasks.

It was at that time that Claudia began to spend many hours alone at her home with her young.Claudia took advantage of loneliness to escape: she opened the window of her room that gave the patio, climbed to the roof and left.“He told me‘ he slept that the sister comes now ’.He left and returned to the next day at the time I knew my mother came to see us.I did those crazy things, I didn't tell me where I was going and I never knew it, ”says Caro.

In those hours they had free of adults Claudia used.He had stuffed legs and liked using well -glued pants to the body.While she couldn't dress as she wanted, she tried that in the "men's clothes" that forced her to use there was something that caught the attention that she was not a man.When they made her communion her mother had bought a little little and she refused to use it: she made some tweezers to her favorite gabardina to give her a good calce and put on a shirt also adjusted.

After the death of Claudia's father, the mother formed a new couple and in 1983 she had Facundo, the youngest son of the family.But this relationship lasted little.When the baby turned a year the stepfather began with schizophrenia attacks and had violent starts that no one knew how to control.The home became a spiral of violence, a chain of who blamed who.The mother decided that a cut had to be put to that bond for the good of her children and thought about selling the Tuerto Venado house to start from zero in Buenos Aires, where there were some relatives who could give her a hand.He asked Claudia, who was then twelve years old, if she seemed like a good idea and she was the happiest.The town was small and left was just what he wanted: he had the post that there were people in the city who would help her be a woman.

Upon arriving in Federal Capital, they went to live at an aunt's house, but Pía didn't want to know anything about being there.

Marica, Mariquita, Mariconcito, Putito, Gordito Puto.

His cousins put adjectives to his manners all the time, so much that anything, even the street, promised to be a better place.

In a short.

Escaping from that house hell was a jump towards premature adulthood.Thus he met La Tabi, his first traffic godmother.“She leaves with the Tabi because someone in Venado had told her that they were going to understand her in her change process.La Tabi lived in the Constitution and was already a large transvestite, who understood the street codes and how to drive.He gave him a place and Pía stayed.Sometimes I came to see us, but little, ”recalls Caro.

With thirteen years Claudia began to take the hormones that were recommended from mouth to mouth in the tabi.None knew the doses well, but the feminizing cocktail was a popular knowledge that passed between generations.Nor did they need master recipes to get them, since the pharmacies were marked where they were sold without the bureaucracy of going to an endocrinologist.

Between clothes and hormones Claudia's image began to change quickly.He also left his hair very long and dyed him from a overflowing platinum blonde.It was another: the city got into the body.

When his family left the aunt's house and went to live at a hotel Claudia joined them.His mother was shocked with the change of image, in 1983 it was not common to see those transitions unless you were a rock glam singer.At that time the only visible transvestites appeared in the police section of the newspapers.

- What's what is happening? You have swollen nipples, that yellow tincture that you put what it is, ”said his mother at the hotel in the hotel.

"I want to be a woman," said Claudia.

-Nope puede ser.

-Yes.You will have to accept it because I want.Do you remember everything that happened in school?I want you to understand that I was born a woman.I'm not a man.

-Nope.Can not be.

Three decades would pass for his mother to call Claudia to Claudia.Little by little I accepted her, listened to her stories and was even going Christmas with other transvestites and trans friends.But at all times his mother continued to call her with the male name that he put at the time of giving birth to her.For Caro, on the other hand, the transition was the most natural, something that did not call attention:

- Then I was 8 years old but for me it was the most normal in the world, because I never came to see her as a man.She did effeminate things when I was a girl and when I entered my adolescence she already dressed as a woman.It is not something that has affected me.They asked me and said "my sister".People when we went out shouted all the time "fucking shit"."What's wrong with your mother's shell!", It was my answer.It bothered me a lot to treat her like this.

When they managed to sell the Venado Tuerto house they bought an apartment in eleven where there was total freedom 12 hours a day: their mother had entered the Luis Pasteur Institute of Health as administrative and made a schedule from eight in the morning to eight at night.In these times, the two -room department was Claudia's meeting point and her transvestit and trans friends.They were mounted, shared makeup tricks and imitated Rafaella Carrá and Moria Casán.It was fashionable to dance like the graceful carolos of the Carrá and use the wig like a whip that moved by the head.Pum!It explodes exploded exploded me pum!Explodes, my heart explodes.Moria's body was an ideal where the weaknesses made no sense, everything should be done showing the folding meat, tail, mouth and eyes.It was said that in every body there is something lush, it's just a matter of underline.Regardless of what the day was, the house became a party that took care.

It didn't last long.Those below, those of the side and the above complained with their mother: the parade that got together on the 7th floor lasted a few months and the party had an end.After trying the pleasure of having the desire in the body there was no return.With fourteen years, without wanting to waste time in things that would not be herself, Claudia left her home.

Villa Madero is a humble neighborhood of San Justo, within the Conurbano Party of La Matanza, which limits in the City of Buenos Aires on the Ricchieri and General Paz highways.Constant truck traffic and its periphery place returned from the late 70s an ideal space to offer sex in exchange for money, which in other more urbanized areas was punished with jail for police edicts.One night, at his 14, Claudia was in a dancer and met a friend transvestite.Although he moved challenging at night, no one who spoke two words with her could ignore that it was a half -lost girl.This friend offered her to spend the night in Villa Madero, famous for being "La Villa de las Travestis", and that night lasted two years ...

Nené's box was in the heart of the town.To arrive, the shortcuts had to be difficult for her and in turn gave her that air of strength, because the Nené did not get chance or in the midst of a confusion, to find her you had to have a great desire.Nené was an older partner than Claudia but not so much - he had 30 years - and carried a much larger heart than that lot of six meters for eight, where a sheet and cardboard box with three rooms was built: one for her and her boyfriend, another where Luisa Paz lived (activist and former president of the Association of Transvestites, Transsexuals and Transgeans of Argentina) and her boyfriend, and a third room where there were three cribs.No rent was paid, the light was hooked and the water too.The only thing to ensure was the food, one day each one, except nené who already put the house.

Police had planted an exclusive patrolman, mobile 109, to guard the main entrance of the villa: anyone who left would go, regardless of what he was doing.

“There were strategies to buy in the bakery inside the same villa, taking care that there was no police in the hall because of just passing it took us.In a first time we worked there and we did not have too many problems, but they began to come more and more and it was already too visible: we became 77 transvestites in six blocks and the moving of the cars was impressive.We worked on the side of the villa and it was a notorious recontramil that was working, ”recalls Luisa, who is the only survivor of that group:" They wanted us to exterminate us.It didn't matter if you had a document.The same we didn't have, it was not necessary because they stopped you the same.But if they stopped you from jogging, without painting, because they already knew your face, it was exactly the same as being prostituted.There was no need to have any role, even we luered the names, we gave false data not to accumulate a history, because they had you prey to you 4 or 5 days ”.

At that time Luisa was 18 years old and Claudia, with 14, had been the double title of being the youngest and the lier in the box.A little for girl and a little for the character he had tanned since his childhood, he knew how to protest both the dulce de leche and because someone would not want to pay what corresponded.The look he used to leave at night was always the same: a Jean vest, a Jean Mini skirt and some buccaneras boots that came to him above the knee.In addition to the age of age, his teenage body began to change quickly with the injection and pills cocktail that circulated in the town.

“Pía (Claudia Pía) inflated there.‘La Gaby La Gorda’ came with the story about how the tits were made because he learned how the caty was done.He charged expensive for that moment, about 5 thousand pesos, and for us we were in a situation of violence with the police it was very difficult to get that money.She came with a novelty that closed us, because the silicone was very difficult to arrive.‘This is cheaper, look, I found out, I read, it's the same consistency!’.I had discovered the petroleumatin, ”says Luisa.

By force of sticks and arrests the town caught and did not let out.Those that were encouraged to go beyond the imaginary limits that marked the halls fell prey or were exposed to naturalized violence.One of those atrocities reached all the media of the time.They called him "The Loco of the Route" -although no one can affirm if there were not several who did the same -and ran over those that stopped on the bench of the General Peace Highway.Its shape was to get closer slow, simulating to be a customer, and accelerate suddenly to knock down all the bodies that were possible.

The pharmacy sold them glass jars of a fourth liter that began to accumulate everywhere to save the condiments, the bijouterie and what would enter.In just one week in Nené's box they were inflated.But after beachesting with vaselin every oil was seen with good eyes, although no one imagined what could be the side effects of putting a liquid and that the body would like to expel it.

“The Nené and two other girls put Bardahl plane oil, because in front of the cost of the petroleum jelly was cheaper.It was a matter of getting anything thinking that a similar consistency was going to have the same effect of industrial silicone, there is even one that put Johnson oil.With the pye and the other group we did not get to Bardahl because we saw that before the week they began to be infected: they were pressed and jets and jets of pus came out and ended in the hospital, ”says Luisa.Soon Pía would travel to Europe and know the freedom to walk down the street without being arrested, I would learn to put silicones, become an activist and fight for the rights of their companions.But that is another story, which would be impossible to understand without this.