This article aims to deepen the understanding of historical‐discursive formations within specific fields of power/knowledge that render certain trans* experiences intelligible. Operating as a backdrop is the overarching hypothesis that, by critically suspending categorical separations, it is possible to reinscribe trans* ways of life in relation to the concept of unintelligibility as a key to unlocking local memory. This study traces unintelligibility through a critical framework that employs key terms such as name, testimony, and clothing to contribute to a transvestite‐trans* theoretical approach that critically engages with the coloniality of gender. Assuming that documentary evidence serves as a basis for the circulation of narratives intelligible to the judicial case's contemporaries and, to a lesser extent, to modern audiences, it is relevant to examine which practices were pursued or condemned by colonial authorities. Additionally, what conditions and effects may be implied by the emergence of a “hermaphrodite Indian thief” recorded in judicial file 34‐1‐12‐29 of the Criminal Court, dated 1784, and preserved in the Ricardo Levenne Historical Archive of the Province of Buenos Aires, in the City of La Plata, Argentina?

Mag De Santo; Tania Libertad Balderas. TSQ (2026) 13 (1): 14–26. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-12225977

Marlene Wayar is an internationally recognized and leading figure in the Latin American travesti-trans activist movement with over forty years of experience in the TTTLGBI community. Since the 1990s and the movement's emergence in Argentina, she has confronted the federal police and, alongside Nadia Echazú and Lohana Berkins, formed part of this foundational activist trio in the Argentine travesti struggle. 

Wayar, Marlene and Balderas, Tania Libertad. “In My Mind There Is a Cemetery/Tengo un cementerio en la cabeza”. Transgender Studies Quarterly. 1 February 2024; 11(1): 135–140. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-11131741

These selected photographs serve as a representation of the activist work carried out by documentary photographer Eugenia Azar, who accompanies the struggle of the travesti trans collective Las Históricas Argentinas (The Historic Trans Femininities and Travestis). Las Históricas are at the forefront of the fight for historic reparations as victims of a genocidal state whose organization is designed to systematically eliminate them.

Azar, Eugenia Cabrera, Pili, Wayar, Marlene and Balderas, Tania Libertad. “To Exist and Resist: A Photographic Essay”. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 1 February 2024; 11 (1): 141–148. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-11131754

In the Spring of 2020, the onset of the global pandemic intensified existing inequalities, but also accelerated organizing within some of the most precarious economic sectors. The neoliberal university was no exception to this general trend, and from 2020 until 2022, student workers organized for union contracts, just pandemic responses, independent arbitration for harassment and improved conditions at their workplaces. In those years, while neoliberal universities issued empty calls for “community,” and a prompt return to normalcy, student workers mobilized themselves and won unprecedented gains from their institutions, rejecting administrative pleas for the defense of the status quo. The following “Report from the Field,” details the struggle of student workers organizing from 2020 to 2022 at the University of New Mexico, the University of Michigan, New York University, and Columbia University, and offers a collectively authored reflection on the challenges, victories and future concerns of its respective movements.

Solis, G., Balderas, T., Pereira, I., Cooney, S., Gao, C., Helps, D., . . . Whitmer, L. (2023). “Against ‘Normalcy’: A Collective Testimony of Student Workers Organizing During the Pandemic.” International Labor and Working-Class History, 1-15. doi:10.1017/S0147547923000108 

Xicanista Radicalisms Zine (April 2021)