Travel: Tour de Fierce

Tour de Fierce

First Ever in Argentina: The Queer History Tour of Buenos Aires is a tour de force to be experienced.

BY FRED W. WRIGHT JR.

Visitors to Buenos Aires may feel overwhelmed in Argentina’s largest city of 13-million, with a great range of places to see, venues to explore, sounds to hear, food and drink to sample. And a member of the LGBTQ community may feel slightly shy in this predominantly Catholic and traditionally conservative South American country.

Fortunately, Lunfarda Travel, a boutique agency offering niche tours for more than 10 years, now offers the first and only Queer History Tour of Buenos Aires. The 5-hour leisurely tour covers the story of the emerging LGBTQ community from pre-Colonial days to now.

Since early in this century, Argentina has legalized egalitarian marriage, non-binary IDs, state-paid gender-affirming surgeries, and in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments.

So how did this country get so far in just a couple of decades? The Queer History Tour explores just that with stops at the Evita Peron Museum, state government building, the Carlos Jáuregui subway station, the Rose Gardens, the Queer Cultural Center, LGBTQ-focused community centers, a café or two and other venues, all narrated in English (with options for French, Portuguese and, of course Spanish, if desired).

This first-ever tour involves both history, culture, and community as it builds up to the current state of LGBTQ life in Buenos Aires and last year’s massive Pride demonstrations.

The tour was created by the founder of the agency, Mariana Radisic Koliren, who said, “I wanted to tell people from other countries that there is a path forward. It’s a story of resilience and pride and it has literally transformed our lives: it needs to be out there to inspire people around the world. To me, it’s important to share this story.”

The tour starts at Plaza de Mayo, a city square and mall that serves as the foundational block of the city, where a member of the local LGBTQ community explains how different indigenous peoples perceived gender and sexual orientation, and how all of that was erased to favor hetero-conformity after the arrival of the Spanish Conquista. That same square would eventually become the gathering spot for Pride demonstrations, attended by hundreds of thousands of Argentineans.

The tour explores the time periods, events, landmarks and people that helped forge Buenos Aires into the inclusive community it is today, according to a Lunfarda Travel spokesperson.

Some of the principal players throughout history may seem surprising. One of those is Eva “Evita” Peron, the second wife of former Argentina dictator Juan Peron. The Evita Peron Museum tells the story in film, photographs and memorabilia collections of the couple’s impact on Argentina society and long-established caste system. The tour also visits the first subway station to commemorate a Gay Rights activist and invites a bit of awe at the National Congress, the

place where members of the Argentina LGBTQ community “cemented our rights for future generations,” the spokesperson said. “In this tour, you’ll also get to visit a community center to have drinks, make new friends and check out some of the cool artwork and culture led by locals.

“Evita is a fascinating historic character who had a great relationship with Queerness, but it’s an aspect of her life people never discuss. We talk about her queer friends Paco Jamandreu, Pierina Dealessi and others, and how Peronism related to queerness beyond Evita herself.”

Lunfarda Travel specializes in shedding light on the previously untold stories of Buenos Aires through an intersectional scope. The boutique incoming agency is proudly made of over 75 percent of women, people of color (POC) and members of the (LGBTQ) community, and “has a commitment to fair trade wages and environment preservation. Join Lunfarda Travel for the only tours in the city of Black History or on its Jewish Heritage Walks, Graffiti and Foodie Outings and family friendly tours. The agency also organizes tailor-made itineraries across Argentina, and actively welcomes all human beings,” the agency states on its website.

the trans and binary communities,” Koliren said. “This tour is honoring our past and more importantly, how we can change the future.”

As an inbound agency, Lunfarda Travel provides a great deal of information for out-ofcountry visitors on how to manage the country’s currency-exchange rules to recommendations for gay-friend hotels as well as many of the traditional points of interest in Buenos Aires.

There are many other LGBTQ Argentina touchstones to explore in Buenos Aires before or after The Queer History Tour. Among them are such iconic areas as La Boca, considered by some

the birthplace of the tango and its artistic and multi-cultural history. This city neighborhood, noted for its colorful homes, can often provide a few moments of spontaneous music and dance.

Elsewhere, Maricafe, a LGBTQ-friendly bar and bookstore, invites visitors to pause and read. It’s a venue with an eclectic menu of activities, from Tarot card readings to a RuPaul style drag show. And a “Rainbow Cake” is always on the menu.

The Queer History Tour also includes local events that reflect the contemporary LGBTQ community. The annual Pride festivities each November are an example of the city’s celebration for diversity, culminating with the Pride Parade on a Saturday. Last year’s Pride Parade drew an estimated 100,000 people from all over the world.

And many local clubs and bars have their own Pride events.

“Many of us in Lunfarda are Queer and proud of what our country has achieved through our activism,” a Lunfarda staffer said. “Let us share it with you. We are the first ones in the continent to run a ‘gay tour’ that...explores the history of Queer activism from a multiple perspective.”

Cost of The Queer History Tour is $320 in U.S. dollars per person. Ten percent of the profits go to Mocha Celis, a school in Buenos Aires that caters to trans and gender non-conforming people.

About the Author: Fred. W. Wright Jr. Is a full-time freelance writer based in Seminole, Fla. A generalist, Fred writes about a wide range of subjects, from business to film, health to stress, history to senior citizens. Travel makes up about 75 percent of what he writes. His work has been published in numerous newspapers and magazines, including Tampa Bay Times (formerly St. Petersburg Times), National Geographic Traveler, Variety, Florida Trend, Bed & Breakfast Quarterly, and AAA Southern Traveler. He is a member of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW).