Buenos Aires names subway station for LGBT activist Carlos Jauregui
The city of Buenos Aires recently opened its newly inaugurated Carlos Jauregui subway station in honor of the LGBT activist last week.
The naming of the station, previously called the Santa Fe stop on the H line, is a landmark step for the LGBT community in Argentina as it’s the first station in the world to be named for an LGBT activist/AIDS advocate.
Likewise, the move by the city represents both the best and worst facing the LGBT community worldwide.
Currently, Buenos Aires is one of the top destinations in Latin America for the international LGBT community and was the first city in the world to legalize gay marriage.
However, there are still reports of discrimination and LGBT violence in the country– which were the things that Jauregui fought against.
Naming a station for LGBT activist Carlos Jauregui
The move to name the station for Jauregui was made by the Undersecretariat for Human Rights and Cultural Pluralism, together with Buenos Aires and Subterranean lawmakers from the Buenos Aires State Society (SBASE).
The task to design the look of the station was given to artist Daniel Arzola, who included portraits of characters advocating LGBT rights and achievements, as well as the pride flag on the stairs.
The station was named for the LGBT activist in recognition of– and to create a space for– the LGBT community as well as to celebrate inclusion, coexistence, and non-discrimination.
As GayStarNews described it, the new station– located at the corner of Avenida Santa Fe and Pueyrredón– is the “gayest station” that you’ll find in Argentina.
Carlos Jauregui: Fighting for Argentinean LGBT rights
The station itself was named for Jauregui, founder and the first president of the Argentine Homosexual Community (CHA) who fought to ensure that LGBT rights would be recognized in Argentina.
“If being gay were to affect those who are, it is because of the lack of rights, discrimination, and marginalization to which we are exposed to unfairly. All discrimination, which to me have touched me in particular is the legal helplessness,” Jauregui once wrote in the 1990s.
Jauregui ensured that the LGBT community would have a legal recourse in the fight for equality. He also helped organize Argentina’s first gay pride parade.
Likewise, he suffered a number of losses, like his brother Roberto and his partner Pablo Azcona to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. After his partner died, Jauregui was evicted from the apartment he shared with Azcona by the latter’s family.
As Adam Corl wrote in The Bubble, “The naming of a subway station might appear from the outside as a nice, if bureaucratic gesture to a notable person from a not so distant part of Argentine history.”
“In this case however, it is an act that demonstrates that Carlos, and the people finding themselves facing his same hardships existed,” he added, a recognition for social justice sorely needed.