In Argentina, Lesbian Visibility Day is commemorated on March 7 in memory of the murder of Natalia “Pepa” Gaitán in Córdoba. Sixteen years later, hate speech in society has once again become an institutional problem. Therefore, the Argentine Homosexual Community (CHA) stated: “We cannot allow them to keep killing us.”
In an interview with the Argentine News Agency, CHA Secretary María Laura Oliver said: “We have to lament how, in the last three years, violence against our identities, lifestyles, and rights has resurfaced.” “We cannot stop thinking about the three comrades who were set on fire while they slept. The case still has no trial date, and until a few months ago, Judge Edmundo Rabbione did not consider it gender-based violence or a hate crime.”
The massacre began when Justo Barrientos threw a Molotov cocktail into the room where four lesbian women were sleeping. He killed Roxana Castro, Andrea Amarante, and Pamela Cobbas, and caused severe burns to Sofía Castro Riglos.
The latest report from the National Observatory of LGBT+ Hate Crimes reported that during the first half of 2025, hate crimes increased by 70%, with a total of 102 cases where the victims' sexual orientation, identity, and/or gender expression were used as a discriminatory pretext.
Last February, the Pride and Struggle Front, made up of organizations representing Argentina's LGBT community, demanded that President Javier Milei retract his “homophobic” statements made at the 2025 Davos Economic Forum, as the anniversary of that speech approached and with his next participation in that international meeting in mind.
Milei called for “eradicating” what he defined as a supposed “cancer,” referring to LGBT+ people, feminists, left-wing activists, and various forms of political and ideological dissent, which generated broad social and political repudiation.
From the Pride and Struggle Front, they warned that after the first mobilization against the speech, the Government “deepened the path of attacking human rights” by signing decrees of necessity and urgency 61 and 62/25, which advance on rights enshrined in the Gender Identity Law, including the prohibition of accessing hormone therapies for trans and travesti minors, even with the consent of their parents.
Lesbian Visibility Day seeks to highlight the need to continue the fight for the community's rights. While equity is the goal, there are specific rights that are constantly at risk of being violated. Gaitán was 27 years old when her girlfriend's stepfather shot her in the back, and it became an emblematic case of lesbophobic violence in Argentina.
“Not one life is superfluous.”
