Lisandro Andres Mendieta

The project examines how individuals we would now understand as transmasculine negotiated existence, belonging, and survival in fin-de-siècle Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil—a time marked by war and the creation of modern nation-states, when the meanings of both masculinity and citizenship were being redefined. Moving beyond medico-legal frameworks that have traditionally shaped trans historiography, it turns to everyday archives (press, literature, and photography) to trace how these lives were recorded, imagined, and contested. In collaboration with transmasculine memory archives across South America, it develops collective reading practices and archival interventions that link fin-de-siècle archives to contemporary trans memory, reframing the archive as a living space of knowledge.