Argentina once led on LGBTQ rights. After 4 lesbians are set on fire, critics blame rising intolerance on Milei’s government

Critics blame rising levels of intolerance on the government of the right-wing president.

It was an attack that sent shockwaves through a country long considered a pioneer in LGBTQ rights. In the early hours of May 6, four lesbian women were set on fire in Argentina. Only one of them survived. It happened at a boarding house in the Barracas neighborhood of Buenos Aires, where Pamela Fabiana Cobas, Mercedes Roxana Figueroa, Andrea Amarante and Sofía Castro Riglo were sharing a room. Witnesses say a man broke in and threw an incendiary device that set the women on fire. Pamela died soon after. Her partner Roxana died days later of organ failure. Andrea died on May 12 in a hospital. Andrea’s partner Sofía was the sole survivor. She spent weeks recovering in hospital and is alive today only because Andrea threw herself on top of her to shield her from the flames, Sofia’s attorney Gabriela Conder told CNN. “Her partner saved her,” Conder said. Local LGBTQ rights advocates condemned the attack as a hate crime and lesbicide, saying the women were targeted because of their sexual identity. Police have arrested a 62-year-old man who lived in the building but, according to Conder, aren’t currently treating the incident as a hate crime as they say the motive is still unclear. For Argentina’s LGBTQ groups – many of whom are planning to commemorate the four women with a rally this weekend – the attack represents an extreme manifestation of what they consider a growing wave of hostility against them. Those they blame most for this rising intolerance are the people in power. Chief among them, they say, is the country’s new far-right leader Javier Milei.