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  "path": "/2026/05/12/the-girls-in-the-photo-recovering-stories-20-years-after-a-flood-in-argentina/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-12T16:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://diff.wikimedia.org",
  "tags": [
    "Flood Archive",
    "WikiActivistas del Litoral",
    "The\nshapes of memory",
    "the photographs during May and\nJune 2003",
    "Periódicas",
    "The\ngirls with the food,’ a photo of the flood",
    "web site",
    "social media\npages",
    "the category on\nWikiCommons",
    "the project page on\nWikiCommons"
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  "textContent": "> _**A story about how the effort to fill gaps in an archive can also be a reparative act.**_\n\nIn the end of April in Santa Fe (Argentina), time seems to stand suspended. Autumn in this part of the southern hemisphere usually brings rain, and with it, painful memories of the 2003 flood, one of the greatest avoidable socio-environmental disasters in Argentina’s recent history.\n\nMore than two decades ago, the western outskirts of the city were devastated by the Salado River, forcing more than 135,000 people—a third of the population—to leave their homes. Throughout April, those who live in these neighbourhoods travel on a kind of pilgrimage through their memories. Some have transformed them into social activism and express them in public demonstrations; others seek to heal them collectively through intergenerational ceremonies; and there are also those who revisit their memories in silence, in the privacy of their homes, in the company of their families or in the presence of their absences.\n\nSince 2023, the **Flood Archive** has been part of some of these rituals. Adopting an open-source approach, \nWikiActivistas del Litoral has been developing a methodology to recover and share personal, family, activist group and social organisation records. Following this strategy and through the networks that have been built, it has been present at demonstrations, has helped to organise activities in the affected neighbourhoods or at key institutions, and has also proposed social frameworks for remembrance, where certain words are spoken aloud for the first time after more than two decades of silence. One of these stories is worth sharing.\n\n> The\nshapes of memory\n\n## **A school archive with a photo with no names**\n\nIn May 2025, the Flood Archive gained access to the photographic records from 2003 held in the library of the Colegio Nacional Simón de Iriondo in Santa Fe, a century-old institution which, from 29 April onwards and throughout the emergency until mid-June 2003, provided shelter to 800 evacuees. As is often the case, knowledge of the existence of a collection of this kind comes via someone close to the archive who confirms a detail and facilitates access. In this instance, it was a history teacher working at the school: Jorgelina Maillard.\n\nThrough this initiative, the necessary permissions were sought to enable a Wikimedian in Residence to access and digitise 54 photographs measuring 10 x 15 cm, of which 44 were curated and selected for inclusion in the collaborative collection of the Flood Archive.\n\n> View this post on Instagram\n\nThe sharing of the digitization process on social media brought new perspectives to light, and it was not until March 2026 that an interview could be arranged with Roberto Trucco, a former drama teacher at the institution who had volunteered during the emergency. Roberto helped to describe some of the scenes depicted in more detail, cross-checked probable dates, and identified some of the people in the photographs. In particular, he revealed the author of the photos: Carlos Corti, allowing us to correct the attribution listed as ‘Unknown’ on Wikimedia Commons. Carlos passed away a few years ago and was head of tutors at the time. He had taken the photographs during May and\nJune 2003.\n\nThe 44 images feature many faces, but there was one photo in particular where some details were missing: a portrait of two trans women pushing a food trolley. That scene was a daily occurrence at the centre, when it was time to hand out rations to all the evacuees. Who were they? There were no names, only their role as kitchen helpers. Immediately afterwards, new questions arose: What is their story? Are they alive? From which neighbourhoods had they been displaced? Do they know that there is a photograph of them from that period, when they were volunteers and evacuees at the same time?\n\n## **A mission to find a name**\n\nWith another anniversary of the flood fast approaching, the idea to recover the story behind that photograph emerged. But this was not a solo initiative; it was carried out in collaboration with **Periódicas** , a local digital media organization with a transfeminist perspective. This made it possible to reach a wider audience, but above all, it activated a militant mission: the people who helped spread the word or contributed information understood the importance of recognising those faces, putting names to them, connecting their stories and getting the photograph to the women in it.\n\nThe message was written collaboratively and highlighted the importance of caring networks during the emergency; it spoke of photographs as evidence of having been there, and of the loss of such records as a source of pain for many families. It also emphasised the right to be recognised, to be rescued from oblivion, and to be named as part of Santa Fe’s history.\n\n> View this post on Instagram\n\nThe Instagram post received over 24,000 views, more than 1,000 interactions and was shared around 200 times. Many messages were received offering clues, recalling them, recognising them at the evacuation centre, but also in the years that followed. Some were hopeful, whilst others mentioned possible tragic outcomes—something that is often part of daily life in the trans community, where in Argentina (and in many countries in Latin America) the average life expectancy is 35–40 years.\n\nThe first name mentioned was Andrea Grandoli, who is pictured in the foreground. She was evacuated to the school and, after the flood, was able to return to her home in the Santa Rosa de Lima neighbourhood. Sadly, we were too late; she passed away in 2011.\n\nThe information about Claudia Arrieta came later, from the Santa Fe LGBTIQ+ Centre: “The girls from the radio workshop say it’s her.” The WhatsApp audio message featuring her voice confirmed it: “Yes, that’s me in the photo. We can meet up to talk whenever you like… It makes me happy and proud to know there’s a photo of me from when I was a young girl.”\n\n## **The stories behind a photo**\n\nThe next step was to organise the meeting for the interview: booking a classroom at the same school where Claudia had been evacuated, coming up with questions, filming both still and moving images, and turning that raw footage into media content. The team included staff members from Periódicas and WikiActivistas del Litoral: Gise Curioni (graphic design), Carolina Robaina (production and camerawork), Priscila Pereyra (camerawork and editing), Victoria Stéfano (interview, journalistic research and writing of ‘** _The\ngirls with the food,’ a photo of the flood_**), Titi Nicola (social media content) and Berna Otarán (research and digitisation of archives, photography and camera). Jorgelina Maillard once again acted as the point of contact with the Colegio Nacional Simón de Iriondo.\n\nDuring her conversation with Victoria Stéfano, Claudia became emotional on several occasions: as soon as she entered the classroom – she hadn’t been back to school since then –; when she acknowledged that she was a survivor and described what they had lost in the flood; when she recounted how she and her mother and sister had spent those first few days in an evacuation centre; when she spoke of the general fear and the crying that could be heard at night, and when she described what it meant for two trans girls to be accepted and recognised by other evacuees. She made us laugh when she described Andrea as the legendary ‘Llorona’, because of a long black coat she wore every day, which she had found in the pile of donated clothes. She became emotional again when she heard the break bell, the same one she and Andrea used to ring to signal that lunch was ready.\n\nTowards the end, he told us something that sums up the reparative function of the archive: he had never told his story before and was doing so for the first time.\n\n– _Never, never, never_ – she emphasised. – _Today I found myself revisiting that memory from some twenty-odd years ago. I never imagined I’d feel this way. I’m just letting it all out… I feel relieved now, but those were sad days_.\n\nThis is the story of Claudia Arrieta and Andrea Grandoli, the girls in the photo, two survivors of the flood.\n\n* * *\n\nℹ️ You can visit the **web site** , the community archive’s **social media\npages** , the category on\nWikiCommons and **the project page on\nWikiCommons**.",
  "title": "The girls in the photo: Recovering stories 20 years after a flood\nin Argentina"
}