Friday December 30, 2022 | 8:15 a.m.
Victoria Donda Pérez ceased to be the controller of the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (INADI). The now former official confirmed her departure from that position this Thursday, December 29, after three years in office, being one of the officials who accompanied the management of President Alberto Fernández since the beginning of his term, in December 2019.
In a harsh statement explaining her departure, the former official used a critical tone with the national management. “Today I write these lines moving away from my institutional role as head of INADI, rightly convinced that it stopped listening where it should be done the most.” Donda’s designation at the head of the organization had been extended by a presidential decree on October 13, 2022 and was valid until December 31.
In the same sense, evidencing a rupture, she maintained: “Strongly aggravating the foregoing, due to the fact that I am a woman and cannot find a legitimate space in the national government for our voices to be properly heard, a few minutes ago I found out through Juan Manuel Olmos, Chief of Advisers to the Presidency, on the possibility of my removal from INADI, mainly as a consequence -according to what I was informed- of my political position regarding the current stage, an element that I repeatedly made visible in my public speech”.
In her farewell text, the former head of INADI praised Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner by assuring that dealing with her during her time in government allowed her to discover “a person of flesh and blood, totally determined to develop her practice politics without quotas of resentment and custodian of a substantial attribute: listening”.
On the other hand, he questioned the leadership at the Casa Rosada, stating that “the voices that for a long time have been insisting on the need to establish instances to reach a necessary synthesis in the midst of a national management that increasingly it was leaving with a more bitter taste and without the capacity to respond to growing and complex demands for a society that expects more from us”.
The Identity leader assured that with the passage of time, the administration headed by President Alberto Fernández was “disillusioning her by moving away from what I believed was her most intimate essence – improving the material and symbolic conditions of the millions who voted for us full of hopes in 2019.” For this reason, and given the cited versions, Donda explained, he decided to leave his post “indeclinably.”
In a review of her performance in the national body, the leader listed some milestones that she considered necessary to highlight after her departure from office. “We formed and strengthened delegations throughout the country, so that in each of the provinces the awareness process can be carried out. We gave impetus to 168, a simple and effective telephone line for inquiries or complaints about episodes of discrimination. We also created the Commission for the Historical Recognition of the Afro-Argentine Community, with which we held the first and second National Meeting of Organizations of the Afro-Argentine Community, a milestone in the visibility of the Afro-Argentine community in the country. We carry out the campaigns of Schools without Discrimination and the Federal Campaign for a sport free of discrimination and violence, summoning groups of civil society, ”she said.
In closing, the leader once again expressed a veiled criticism of the Casa Rosada, stressing the need to “listen” to avoid “marches and counter-marches.” “Only by listening, knowing and interpreting our people, we can contribute to have the free, just and egalitarian society that we dream of but, above all, we deserve without further delays, hesitations or marches and counter-marches”, she affirmed.
The movement in the leadership of INADI broke out surprisingly in the last hours, to the point that in the afternoon the organization had released a management report that made a kind of balance of 2022 with projections for the coming year. There, the reception of 2,542 complaints throughout the period was highlighted, with gender violence being the main problem for which people come to the agency. Discrimination in the workplace, particularly towards women, follows as the main topic among the concerns of the complainants.
According to the INADI survey, 50% of the statements were made by people of the female cis gender, 42% by male cis people, while 3.15% were reported by female trans people, 1.57% by non-binary gender , 1.55% legal persons and 1.14% trans masculine, all according to the categorization carried out by the organization itself.
“There are almost 6% of trans and non-binary people who made complaints, which is a higher percentage than what there is in society, they are overdiscriminated,” agency officials told the Télam agency.
