María Belén Correa

María Belén Correa, Director and Founder, Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina (Argentinian Trans Memory Archive), Hanover, Germany

María Belén Correa (Olivera, 1973) is a well-known Argentinian trans activist for the rights of sexual minorities, LGBTI people and especially trans-sexual people. On 25 June 1993, together with Claudia Pía Baudracco and other activists, she founded the Asociación de Travestis de Argentina [Association of Transvestites of Argentina], of which she was president between 1995 and 2001, later renamed the Asociación de Travestis, Transexuales y Transgénero de Argentina [Association of Argentinian Travestis, Transsexuals and Transgender] (ATTTA). During her exile in New York, she founded the Red Latinoamericana y del Caribe de Personas Trans [Latin American and Caribbean Network of Trans People] (REDLACTRANS) in 2004 with Paty Betancourt and, in the same year, collaborated in the creation of the Santamaria Fundación, Colombia, an LGBTI foundation of which she is seen as the godmother. In 2005, she created the TransEmpowerment NY project, reliant on the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center, a day centre for drug-dependent LGBTI people in south Manhattan, and, in 2006, Mateando, the first New York group for LGBTI people from Argentina and Uruguay, as part of the Latino Commission on AIDS and the SOMOS programme. In memory of the high number of trans-sexual companions murdered or dying from HIV/AIDS complications, the application of liquid silicones, lack of access to health and abandonment by the state, in 2012, she created the Argentinian Trans Memory Archive, with the intention of recovering and preserving the historical memory of the transexual community. In 2019, she founded Cosmopolitrans, a group working to help migrant trans people in Germany.