Marcelo Benítez Argentinian, 1951-2022

Marcelo BENÍTEZ (b. 1951, Buenos Aires – d. 2022, Buenos Aires) was an Argentine artist, poet, psychologist, and pioneering LGBTQ+ activist. Born in Buenos Aires City but raised and based in Avellaneda City in Buenos Aires, Benítez became deeply involved in political activism from a young age. Initially aligned with the Trotskyist left, he left the movement due to its homophobia and joined the Homosexual Liberation Front (FLH) in 1972, becoming a key member of its Eros Group alongside his close friend, the poet and activist Néstor Perlongher.

Benítez offered his home as a clandestine centre for FLH activities and for the production of Somos, an underground LGBTQ+ bulletin. Under the alias “Natalia”, he contributed illustrations, articles, and poems—often signed with his initials, MMB. Following the group’s dissolution during the 1976 military dictatorship, Benítez continued to write and draw in secret.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he remained active in every major Argentine gay rights organisation, contributing essays and artwork to progressive publications. Despite being rejected by mainstream art spaces, Benítez continued to express himself through both activism and art. His later writings, influenced by Michel Foucault, explored issues of gender, sexuality, and cultural repression. His only published novel, La Penumbra (2019), was released by the University of Avellaneda, which had previously hosted an exhibition of his visual work in 2017.  Archival materials documenting his political activism on behalf of the LGBTQ+ movement in Argentina were exhibited by Archivos Desviados at ¡Afuera! Publishing Queer Liberation at Printed Matter, New York in 2025 and; Histórias LGBTQIA+ exhibition at the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) in 2024, curated by Adriano Pedrosa and Julia Bryan-Wilson.

Though he lived much of his life in anonymity, Benítez was a true pioneer of the homosexual struggle in Argentina. He continued working as a psychologist in Avellaneda, where he died in 2022, in the same house where he had lived most of his life.