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This week's selection of headlines and articles*:
Justice: Tulsa’s New Mayor Proposes $100-million Trust To "Repair" Impact Of 1921 Race Massacre
The Los Angeles Times (US) reports, "Tulsa’s new mayor on Sunday proposed a $100-million private trust as part of a reparations plan to give descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre scholarships and housing help in a city-backed bid to make amends for one of the worst racial attacks in U.S. history.
The plan by Mayor Monroe Nichols, the first Black mayor of Oklahoma’s second-largest city, would not provide direct cash payments to descendants or the last two centenarian survivors of the attack that killed as many as 300 Black people. He made the announcement at the Greenwood Cultural Center, located in the once-thriving district of North Tulsa that was destroyed by a white mob.
Nichols said he does not use the term reparations, which he calls politically charged, characterizing his sweeping plan instead as a “road to repair.” “For 104 years, the Tulsa Race Massacre has been a stain on our city’s history,” Nichols said Sunday after receiving a standing ovation from several hundred people. “The massacre was hidden from history books, only to be followed by the intentional acts of redlining, a highway built to choke off economic vitality and the perpetual underinvestment of local, state and federal governments.
“Now it’s time to take the next big steps to restore.” Nichols said the proposal wouldn’t require city council approval, although the council would need to authorize the transfer of any city property to the trust, something he said was highly likely.
The private charitable trust would be created with a goal to secure $105 million in assets, with most of the funding either secured or committed by June 1, 2026. Although details would be developed over the next year by an executive director and a board of managers, the plan calls for the bulk of the funding, $60 million, to go toward improving buildings and revitalizing the city’s north side.
“The Greenwood District at its height was a center of commerce,” Nichols said in a telephone interview. “So what was lost was not just something from North Tulsa or the Black community. It actually robbed Tulsa of an economic future that would have rivaled anywhere else in the world.”
Nichols’ proposal follows an executive order he signed earlier this year recognizing June 1 as Tulsa Race Massacre Observance Day, an official city holiday. Events Sunday in the Greenwood District included a picnic for families, worship services and an evening candlelight vigil.
Nichols also realizes the current national political climate, particularly President Trump’s sweeping assault on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, poses challenging political crosswinds. “The fact that this lines up with a broader national conversation is a tough environment,” Nichols admitted, “but it doesn’t change the work we have to do.”
Jacqueline Weary is a granddaughter of massacre survivor John R. Emerson Sr., who owned a hotel and cab company in Greenwood that were destroyed. She acknowledged the political difficulty of giving cash payments to descendants. But at the same time, she wondered how much of her family’s wealth was lost in the violence. “If Greenwood was still there, my grandfather would still have his hotel,” said Weary, 65. “It rightfully was our inheritance, and it was literally taken away.”
Tulsa is not the first U.S. city to explore reparations. The Chicago suburb of Evanston, Ill., was the first U.S. city to make reparations available to its Black residents for past discrimination, offering qualifying households $25,000 for home repairs, down payments on property, and interest or late penalties on property in the city. The funding for the program came from taxes on the sale of recreational marijuana.
Other communities and organizations that have considered providing reparations range from the state of California to cities including Amherst, Mass.; Providence, R.I.; Asheville, N.C.; and Iowa City, Iowa; religious denominations like the Episcopal Church; and prominent colleges like Georgetown University in Washington.
In Tulsa, there are only two living survivors of the massacre, both of whom are 110 years old: Leslie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher. The women, both of whom were in attendance on Sunday, received direct financial compensation from both a Tulsa-based nonprofit and a New York-based philanthropic organization, but have not received any recompense from the city or state.
Damario Solomon-Simmons, an attorney for the survivors and the founder of the Justice for Greenwood Foundation, said earlier this year that any reparations plan should include direct payments to Randle and Fletcher and a victims’ compensation fund for outstanding claims.
A lawsuit filed by Solomon-Simmons on behalf of the survivors was rejected by the Oklahoma Supreme Court last year, dampening racial justice advocates’ hopes that the city would ever make financial amends.
Religion: 200 Miles Of Sublime Pain On A Hindu Pilgrimage in Pakistan
The New York Times (US) reports, "When Amar Faqira’s 3-year-old son abruptly lost movement in his foot last year, doctors offered little hope, and panic gripped his family.
Mr. Faqira made a vow. If his prayers were answered and the boy recovered, he would make a 200-mile pilgrimage through blistering plains and jagged terrain to the Hinglaj Devi temple, a site sacred to Hindus, a tiny minority in Pakistan.
The child regained strength a year later. And true to his word, Mr. Faqira set off in late April on a seven-day walk to the temple, which is nestled deep in the rust-colored mountains of Balochistan, a remote and restive province in Pakistan’s southwest.
The goddess “heard me and healed my son,” Mr. Faqira said before the trek, as he gathered with friends and family in his neighborhood in Karachi, a metropolis on the coast of the Arabian Sea. “Why shouldn’t I fulfill my vow and endure a little pain for her joy?”
With that sense of gratitude, Mr. Faqira and two companions, wearing saffron head scarves and carrying a ceremonial flag, joined thousands of others on the grueling journey to Hinglaj Devi, where Pakistan’s largest annual Hindu festival is held.
Along a winding highway and sun-scorched desert paths, groups of resolute pilgrims — mostly men but also women and children — trudged beneath the unforgiving sky, in heat that reached 113 degrees Fahrenheit, or 45 degrees Celsius. Some bore idols of the deity associated with the temple. All chanted “ Jai Mata Di, ” a call meaning “Hail the Mother Goddess.”
The pilgrimage is an act of spiritual devotion and cultural preservation. Pakistan’s Hindus number about 4.4 million and make up less than 2 percent of the country’s population, which is more than 96 percent Muslim. Hindus are often treated as second-class citizens, systemically discriminated against in housing, jobs and access to government welfare.
For many, the pilgrimage to Hinglaj Devi is comparable in significance to the hajj in Islam, a once-in-a-lifetime obligation of faith. The yearning to make the journey is also strong among Hindus in India, especially in the states of Gujarat and Rajasthan, though it has long been very difficult for Indians to receive visas to travel to Pakistan. Those states, which border Pakistan, have deep spiritual links to Hinglaj Devi that are rooted in traditions predating the 1947 partition that divided the two countries.
The three-day festival is traditionally held in mid-April. But it was rescheduled this year to early May because of heightened security concerns, after separatist militants in the region hijacked a passenger train in March. The festival also unfolded amid renewed tensions between Pakistan and India. On April 22, a terrorist attackin Indian-administered Kashmir killed 26 people, all but one of them Hindu tourists.
For much of the 20th century, the Hinglaj Devi temple remained obscure and inaccessible, even to many Pakistani Hindus. The pilgrimage gained momentum only in the 1990s, when efforts by Hindu groups to institutionalize the site began, gradually increasing its visibility.
A transformative shift came in the early 2000s with the construction of the Makran Coastal Highway, which links the rest of Pakistan to the Chinese-operated Gwadar deep-sea port. Cutting through rugged terrain along the Arabian Sea, the highway brought unprecedented access to the temple.
For the first time, it was possible to make the bulk of the journey by car or bus, taking some of the sweat out of the endeavor. “Some of the spiritual intensity has faded — hardship was once central to the sacred experience,” said Jürgen Schaflechner, an academic at Freie Universität Berlin and the author of a book about the temple.
Still, thousands continue to make the journey by foot. They are considered the more spiritually devoted. “The real pilgrimage is in the pain, the feeling,” Mr. Faqira, the devotee from Karachi, said on the fourth day of his trek. “You cannot find it in a vehicle.” One of his two companions collapsed from heat exhaustion after walking nearly 70 miles and had to return home by bus. Mr. Faqira carried on, his feet blistered and bandaged.
Each pilgrim walks with a personal vow. Minakshi, who goes by one name, was part of a group of women dressed in yellow and red. She undertook the journey to ask the goddess for a son after bearing three daughters. Holding her 8-month-old, with her mother-in-law by her side, she shielded the child from the dust and heat. “I believe the goddess will hear me,” she said.
Nearby, 60-year-old Raj Kumari was making her seventh pilgrimage, praying for her grandson’s well-being. Also on the trek was a childless couple, married since 2018, who were hoping for divine intervention in starting a family.
Many pilgrims belong to marginalized lower-caste Hindu groups — landless sharecroppers or daily wage laborers. Those who can afford the $11 fare ride inside a bus. The poorest pay $5 to sit on the roof in the blistering sun.
Maharaj, who goes by one name and is in his 60s, was feeding his grandson beside a river as he recalled making the pilgrimage in the early 1990s — seven punishing weeks across 300 miles of desert, with the “constant fear of bandits and snakes.” “But every painful step brought us closer to the goddess,” he said.
According to Hindu mythology, the Hinglaj Devi temple is one of the sites where the remains of Sati, a goddess of marital devotion and longevity, fell to earth after her self-immolation.
For many of the faithful, the pilgrimage begins at a sacred mud volcano rising from the barren landscape near the Makran Coastal Highway. Pilgrims disembark from buses to undertake a symbolic trek across rocky terrain, marking the spiritual start of their journey.
Newly built steps and pathways make the volcano site more accessible. At the summit, devotees toss coconuts and rose petals into the bubbling crater to seek divine permission to proceed. Many also smear volcanic clay on their faces and bodies, a ritual of purification and spiritual resolve.
The next stage takes pilgrims to the Hingol River for a ritual bath, often compared to bathing in the sacred Ganges in India. From there, they continue 28 miles to the Hinglaj Devi temple, set within a natural cave.
The complex houses four shrines, the most revered being the Nani Mandir. Inside, flickering lights, marigold garlands and rhythmic chants create an atmosphere of devotion. Adherents believe that participating in the festival absolves them of all sins.
After reaching the shrines, devotees complete the pilgrimage with an arduous, hourslong trek across seven mountains, before returning to the temple to pray. To escape the blistering heat, some walked at night, lighting the path with mobile phones.
Many attribute the festival’s growing prominence to the influence of large-scale Hindu gatherings in India, including the Kumbh Mela, which is amplified by the widespread reach of social media and Indian religious television streamed online.
“In Pakistan, many Hindus have long been disconnected from their spiritual roots,” said Mahendra Dev, a Pakistani university student from the Thar Desert near the border with India. “Digital platforms have helped us rediscover our heritage.”
For him, the revival is not just spiritual; it is also an act of cultural resistance against attempts to erase Pakistani Hindus’ identity. “It will help in pushing back against decades of efforts, starting with British colonial rule, to convert our poor communities to other faiths, whether Islam, Christianity or Sikhism,” he said.
After making the long pilgrimage, Mr. Faqira reunited with his family, including his young son, who arrived at the temple by bus. “I always dreamed of walking here,” he said. “The pain means nothing. What matters is that the goddess listens to my prayers.”
Green Energy: Most New Cars In Norway Are EVs. How A freezing Country Beat Range Anxiety
The Washington Post (US) reports, "Just a few years ago, almost no one drove electric vehicles up here. In this remote region north of the Arctic Circle — where reindeer outnumber people, avalanches can bury roads in winter and sunlight disappears for weeks — “range anxiety” takes on a new meaning.
Today, however, nearly all new car sales in Norway are electric. That’s true even in Finnmark, the northernmost region in Europe’s northernmost country.
Norway is “an unlikely place for a transportation revolution,” acknowledged Christina Bu, head of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association. At the Skoda dealership in Alta, Finnmark’s largest city, salesman Orjan Dragland marveled at the transformation — how five years ago, every car on the showroom floor had a combustion engine, and now the inventory is all EVs.
In 2024, nearly 90 percent of new passenger cars sold in Norway were fully electric. Of the cars sold last month, the EV share was 97 percent. By comparison, EVs last year accounted for 8 percent of new car sales in the United States, 13 percent in the euro zone and 27 percent in China.
“What happened” in Norway? Dragland said. “The government happened.” Norway has one of the world’s most ambitious climate targets. It is aiming to become carbon neutral by 2030, and cutting emissions from road traffic is an important part of that. While the push for EVs has played to people’s green sensibilities, the real driver, arguably, has been economic: Generous government incentives, supported at least indirectly by the country’s fossil fuel profits, have brought down the cost of owning and operating an EV.
“It’s very cheap to drive,” said Ailo Haetta, 43. He had just driven his sister and her new husband to their wedding — which explained his traditional Sami dress and the “Just Married” sticker on his electric Volkswagen.
More-affordable EVs helped accelerate other aspects of Norway’s effort to decarbonize its car fleet. Private entities became more willing to take the risk of installing charging stations. And as charging stations began to blanket the country, Norwegians grew more comfortable with EVs.
“The Norwegian experience is really about building confidence,” said transportation research scientist Simen Rostad Saether. It has taken 25 years for Norway to get this far. The government began championing EVs in the early 1990s, with the hope of growing a domestic EV industry while cutting carbon emissions.
The Norwegian EV-makers failed. Norway today imports all of its electric vehicles. But Norwegian drivers proved eager to buy EVs souped up by government incentives.
Most significant, the government made EV purchases and leases exempt from a 25 percent value-added tax (VAT) — cutting thousands of dollars from the sticker prices — as well as from import and registration taxes.
As EVs began to outnumber gas-powered cars on the road, the government scaled back some of the perks. VAT is now assessed over a certain purchase price. EV owners no longer get out of paying city parking fees and annual road taxes. Exemptions from highway tolls and ferry fares have been replaced by discounts.
Still, many EVs in Norway are cheaper than or comparable in price to combustion cars — and they cost less to maintain, especially in the context of Europe’s high fuel prices (which in Norway incorporate a carbon tax).
Elsewhere on the continent, gas-powered cars tend to be subject to lower taxes, and EVs often remain the more expensive choice. Felipe Munoz, an automotive expert at JATO Dynamics, noted that the price of compact electric cars averaged 32,700 euros in the euro zone last year, vs. 19,000 euros for gas ones. “When you have these big gaps, you understand why people make the decisions they do,” he said.
Norway’s EV experiment has been made possible by something of a paradox: The country is Europe’s largest oil and gas producer, which helps support Norwegians’ aspiration to live green. Norway has invested its fossil fuel profits into what has become the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, a nest egg worth $1.7 trillion. Returns from that fund help cover government expenses, which in turn makes it easier to accommodate climate-friendly tax exemptions.
The government estimates that between 2007 and 2025, it will have forgone approximately 640 billion kroner (about $62 billion) in various vehicle-related taxes, mostly because of EVs. Norway’s wealth means its EV model may not be easy to replicate everywhere. But countries seeking to boost EV adoption wouldn’t have to spend as much now, said Rostad Sæther, who is part of the SINTEF research institute. With EV prices dropping globally, he said, other countries could focus less on the cost of cars and more on encouraging infrastructure and trust.
Gjermund Pleym Wik is such an evangelizer for EVs that he has organized electric-car convoys through remote, mountainous areas in the far north to ease people’s range concerns. “Yes, you need to stop and recharge, but it works,” he said, jabbing his finger at a map on a blue display board at Alta’s largest charging station.
Norway is a long, narrow country with 60,000 miles of roads that snake around fjords and mountainous terrain. Wik, who works in public health, admits that he once miscalculated the distance of a trip and had to unplug a stranger’s Christmas lights to recharge. But EV fans say that shouldn’t be any more of a deterrent than the prospect of running out of gas.
Norway has worked to ensure that drivers are never far from a charging point. Most people charge their EVs at home, and a legal “right to charge” guarantees access for apartment dwellers. The country also has an extensive charging network — powered almost entirely by renewables — with 9,771 fast chargers in 1,684 locations, according to Lars Lund Godbolt, who maintains the government’s database.
Godbolt said the longest distance between two fast-charging stations in Finnmark is about 80 miles, and officials say Norway easily bests the European Union target of 60 km (37 miles) between fast chargers on major roads. In one sense, that might not be so hard to achieve in a nation the size of New Mexico. But consider that New Mexico has only 419 fast charging ports, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
In terms of population numbers, Norway is close to South Carolina. But when it comes to fast EV chargers, the gap is yawning: South Carolina has 633 fast charging ports, according to the federal database — around 11 per 100,000 people. Norway, on the other hand, boasts 174 fast chargers per 100,000.
The lack of charging infrastructure remains a major barrier to EV adoption in the United States. And that hesitancy, in turn, is deterring private investment in infrastructure to support EVs. Building and maintaining chargers is expensive, and in many areas, there isn’t enough driver demand to make stations profitable.
To speed up deployment, the Biden administration launched the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program, allocating $5 billion to help states build chargers along key highway corridors, with the goal of reaching 500,000 stations by 2030. The Trump administration, which opposes federal support for electric vehicles, has frozen funding for the program — a freeze that remains in effect although the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has said withholding the funds approved by Congress is unlawful.
In Norway, the government played an active role in initially establishing the charging network. In some cases, to ensure that chargers were placed at regular intervals on main roads, it subsidized up to 100 percent of the installation costs through competitive tenders from “charging operators.” But since June 2022, new passenger EV charging stations have been built entirely on a commercial basis. (The government continues to support the charging infrastructure for heavy-duty vehicles.)
As more charging stations appeared, consumer confidence grew. And as EV ownership expanded, more private entities were willing to take on the risk of building stations. With so many people driving EVs, charging operators could count on a healthy level of business.
Some of the stations The Washington Post visited in Oslo offered WiFi and hot food in a small cafe — a place where customers charging their EVs could spend time, and money. In 2017, Norway set a goal that by 2025 it would have 100 percent zero-emission new car sales. It is close but may fall a few percentage points short.
Some climate advocates argue for a ban on imports of fossil fuel cars, like the one Ethiopia introduced last year. Others say reaching a percentage in the high 90s is good enough.“There’s a lot of debate over: ‘Do we really need the last 2 or 3 percent? Could those people have a hybrid? Should we use our energy to fight the last percent?’” Rostad Sæther said.
Norway still has a ways to go in transitioning its fleet of vehicles on the roads. Last year, it became the first country where EVs outnumber gas cars. But as a result of past encouragement of diesel as a transition fuel, diesel vehicles account for about a third of all cars and trucks — and those may last for years.
Some Norwegians have bought an EV not as a replacement but as a second car — to test it out. Askill Halse, an economist at TØI, a transportation research center, said Norway has seen a “big increase” in car ownership and a modest uptick in overall traffic, despite other policies aimed at reducing driving. Environmentalists argue that the goal should not be more electric cars, but simply fewer cars.
In Finnmark — known for its northern lights, striking fjords and vast tundra expanses — there is lingering discomfort with EVs. Last year, 74 percent of new car sales in the region were electric, lagging the national numbers.
Proposed copper mining projects, vital for EV batteries, have drawn criticism from Indigenous Sami communities and environmentalists. “Maybe they should search somewhere where the people aren’t as close to the nature,” said Ann-Kristine Bongo, 48, a reindeer herder who drives an EV.
Interviews with locals highlighted other concerns: inconvenient charging apps, long waits at charging stations and reduced winter range.
The Norwegian Automobile Federation determined that EVs have an average range loss of about 20 percent in cold weather. Opting for a heat pump to warm the cabin, rather than relying on the battery, can help. One driver said he wears a snowsuit on exceptionally cold days to save battery on cabin heat.
Carpenter Tormod Simonsen, 21, said he didn’t yet trust an EV for traveling to the mountains. “I’ve gotten stuck many times — road closures, avalanches,” he said, filling up his gas-powered Volvo at a gas station in Alta. “If I just drove in the city, okay. But in the mountains? You need to trust your ride.”
A growing number of Norwegians, though, are being won over, with many citing cost as the primary motivator. Taxi driver Tommi Olsen estimated that switching to an EV has cut his expenses by about 20 percent. Alta’s main taxi company is now 75 percent electric, aiming for 100 percent by October.
Even electric snowmobiles are appearing. Tour guide Jørgen Wisløff tested one for northern lights tours at his “ice hotel.” But it costs $6,000 more than the gas version. So he said he’d consider buying it if the government offered tax breaks to make the price more competitive.
Wisløff said he’s happy, though, with his white electric Ford Mustang, which he noted was cheaper to buy than its gas equivalent. It gets 400 km on a full charge in winter and 500 km in summer — or about 250 miles and 310 miles. With charging points every 70 km (45 miles) or so on his journeys, he said, he rarely worries.
“That’s why it’s working here in Norway,” he said."
Global Development: Afrobeats’ New Groove: Africa’s Growing Diaspora Is Transforming The Continent’s Musical Exports
The Economist (UK) reports, "In 2023 odumodublvck, a Nigerian rapper and singer, put out his first single. Called “Declan Rice” after an English footballer, the track saw a fresh surge in streams in April when Mr Rice scored two free kicks for Arsenal in a tense match against Real Madrid.
On the record the artist, brought up in Abuja as Tochukwu Ojugwu, layers Pidgin English on a drill track to liken Mr Rice’s game-changing star power to his own. Since its release he has signed with Native Records, a Nigerian label based in Britain, and has put out a mixtape featuring an Italian rapper that has proved popular from Britain to Qatar.
Living and working across the world, Odumodublvck typifies a new generation of African musicians who in recent years have won global awards, topped international charts and rocked stages from India to Brazil. Spotify, a streaming platform, found that streams of what is referred to as Afrobeats increased more than six-fold between 2017 and 2022, and by 33% in 2024 alone.
As African music has spread around the world, it has also acquired more varied influences and a more diverse sound, partly thanks to its changing audience. Afrobeats now refers to a range of styles that is hard to capture in a single word, changing the business.
The popularity of African music is not new. African acts from King Sunny Ade, a Nigerian juju singer, to Amadou & Mariam, a Malian blues duo, have played on festival stages in America and Britain since the 1970s. But as diasporas have grown, some African artists now perform abroad more often than at home.
Yoruba slang and Zulu call-and-response loops echo from London’s O2 arena to New York’s Madison Square Garden. This summer Rema, one of the world’s most streamed African artists, will headline Japan’s first-ever Afrobeats festival, performing alongside Ghanaian, South African and Jamaican acts.
As audiences have expanded, the music has changed. Songs are a fraction of the length of Fela Kuti’s 15-minute ensembles from the 1980s, made more digestible for a generation of TikTok dancers who often discover new sounds on social media.
The tracks are sped up to sound more poppy or slowed down to marry better with r&b. Lyrical rap and underground music lean heavily on American hip-hop. Cross-genre collaborations, samples and interpolations have become the norm.
Rema featured Selena Gomez, an American pop singer, on a remix for his 2023 hit “Calm Down”. It became the first song led by an African artist to exceed 1bn streams on Spotify. Within the continent, artists in Nigeria have lifted from, and collaborated with, Amapiano hitmakers in South Africa, who slow down European drum-and-bass beats and fuse them with log drums and local languages.
“Pop borrows from other genres. Afropop is nothing different,” says Seni Saraki, who runs Native Records (and prefers the moniker Afropop to Afrobeats).
A more global sound has brought a more global ownership. Spotify paid 58bn naira ($36.5m) to rights-holders of Nigerian music in 2024. Because many artists and their labels have links with global firms, little of that stayed in Nigeria. And while global reach has brought commercial success for some, it has also meant less creative control. “We need the money and we need the connections, so it’s a bit of a sacrifice,” says Joey Akan, a podcaster.
Artists earn more from streams in richer countries than in poorer ones. Spotify says this is because royalties are proportional to subscription prices which, based on the currencies’ purchasing powers, vary widely across countries. A premium subscription costs around $2 a month in Ghana, but $17 in Switzerland.
The financial benefits of producing music that does well in the West can sway artistic choices made in the studios, sometimes to the detriment of an artist’s identity. “The songs were not picked by me, I wasn’t in the right place,” Davido, a Nigerian-American singer, later recalled of a collaboration with Sony.
The diversification of African music reflects its success in shaping global pop culture. Yet for now, African countries are benefiting less than they could. By investing in concert infrastructure, improving protection of intellectual property and developing the skills of young musicians, they could help ensure that Africa’s musical appeal is as good for the continent as it is for the rest of the world."
Pride Month: The trailblazing Trans Miner Of Patagonia: "I Hacked The System. I Set A Precedent. We Changed History"
El Pais (Spain) reports, "Here, there has always been wind and cold. Along with guanacos, rheas, pumas, hares, foxes. Until someone discovered coal beneath a hill. An attractive mineral — fuel, opaque, shiny, black, rigid, brittle. They drilled. They built a mine.
A town formed around that mine. Workers from various northern provinces came to live in that town. There were bodies — many bodies — in a place where before there was no one. There were marriages, deaths, and births. Like in every town, there were people who didn’t feel represented by their bodies.
But there was one who decided to say it. To show it. Who fought against her family, her coworkers, her teachers, her neighbors, and anyone who stood in her way. One who chose to fight for her convictions. One who in that fight shattered a myth — a legend, a tale, fiction, a chimera — and made it possible that after 80 years women could work inside that mine.
A person who now, in this wooden cabin, on a May morning, helmet at her side, voice steady, speaks about her body. She says she is proud of it. She says: “I left my body in that fight.” She is silent for a moment, perhaps sighs, and adds: “I left my life in that fight.”
Carla Antonella Rodríguez dreamed of becoming a miner before she dreamed of being a woman. She was born 33 years ago in Mina 3, a settlement next to the Río Turbio coal mine, a town of 11,000 inhabitants nestled between the Andes and the Patagonian plateau, in Argentina’s Patagonia.
She was given the name Carlos Enrique at birth. Her father worked in the company’s washing plant, and when she was five or six years old — her earliest memory — she would walk to the hill and sit to watch him and other men board the trucks that slowly disappeared into the mine’s dark hole.
She attended preschool there. She smiles as she remembers that time, that community, the feeling of being protected. Because later, when she moved to Río Turbio and started dressing as a woman, things changed. At school, she was mistreated. She felt the town rejected her.
Even back then, she wanted to leave — to escape the anger, the drinking, the family fights. At 10, she got her hopes up for a spot at a Salesian boarding school in Río Gallegos. But her father, her mother, said no. Better not. A few years later, another chance at a boarding school, but again, they refused to sign the paperwork.
She carried on, as best she could — enduring the stares, the taunts. As she grew older, it got worse. When people saw her from a block or two away — thin, wearing a floral dress — they’d yell at her. Sometimes they threw snow. Other times, stones.
At 14, she dropped out of high school and started working: as a hairdresser’s assistant, cleaning houses, cleaning the town’s cabaret.
That’s when the turning point came. Because the stories of trans women often share familiar threads: they discover their gender identity, come out to their families, who reject them; they suffer; they face workplace discrimination; they try to find their place in a system that excludes them. Some turn to sex work. The country, city, town might change, the context and details might differ. But society pushes them aside, alienates them.
Yet Carla — who had no one in the town, no one in the world — drew closer to those she saw as similar. She sought out other trans women. Others who had suffered in similar ways before her. Watching them, she realized she wanted to forge her own path. She made a decision: something had to change. Looking back now, she says: “I hacked the system. I set the precedent. We changed history.”
Legend has it that a long time ago, after a collapse in the mine, a woman went in to search for her husband. That no one ever saw her come out. That her soul remained trapped inside the mountain. That from time to time, some miners would fall under the spell of this woman — “the black widow” — and disappear as well. That’s why no other woman could enter: the tormented soul would become jealous and cause accidents.
With some variations, the legend was passed down in Río Turbio, told and retold year after year. It included one exception: on December 4, the day of Saint Barbara, the patron saint of miners, women were allowed to enter the mine and visit their husbands’ workplace. Then, outside, there would be dances, grand parties in big halls, and the crowning of the Miss Carbón, the coal queen.
For 80 years, people believed and spread the myth. If women didn’t go in, there would be no accidents. But even though women didn’t enter, accidents still happened.
It’s 11:30 p.m., and her six-hour shift was supposed to end at midnight, but a 5.2-magnitude earthquake, with its epicenter just four miles from the town, made the ground shake. Due to the possibility of aftershocks, Carla was evacuated along with more than 180 others working the night shift inside the Río Turbio coal mine, operated by the company Carboeléctrica Río Turbio (formerly Yacimientos Carboníferos Río Turbio).
Despite the momentary calm, with the earth unlikely to tremble again for a while, concern lingers over the town like an unmoving cloud. In February, the Argentine government issued a decree converting the state-owned company into a corporation and launched a voluntary retirement plan.
The stated goal was to facilitate privatization and attract private investment. However, the taxi drivers, waiters, housewives — everyone in the area — know that coal doesn’t sell, that the investments aren’t coming. They fear the mine’s closure. And with it, the decline of Río Turbio and 28 de Noviembre, the two towns whose 22,000 residents depend directly or indirectly on the mine.
Curled up in a lobby armchair, Carla Antonella Rodríguez says the quake caught her off guard, though it didn’t scare her too much. When asked how she has managed, throughout her life, to endure hostility, mockery, and a lack of shelter, she replies: “I’ve thrown myself to sleep, I’ve cried.
But trans people are like onions with skins: layers, layers, and more layers. Maybe it’s because others who suffered before taught us that if someone asks how we’re doing, we have to say ‘fine,’ even if we’re falling apart. If they see us hurting, it’s easier to hurt us more.”
She made a decision: she had to do something. As soon as she turned 18, she submitted the paperwork to work in the mine. It was a tough time for the coalfield — there were strikes and protests. Two years later, she applied again. She knew that if she presented herself as a trans woman, they’d send her home. So she went with her hair tied back. And when they asked for her name, she answered firmly: “Carlos Enrique.”
During the interview, the psychologist asked her questions about her gender identity. He probed, trying to catch her in a slip. But she gave nothing away. “If I were you, I’d choose something else,” he said. “This is the only option,” she replied, determined to follow through with her goal. When they told her she was hired to work inside the mine, she thought it was a joke — that they were testing her so they could later throw her weakness in her face.
On her first day, as she arrived, she heard the laughter: “Here comes the faggot.” The second day, the same. And the third. She kept her head down and walked on. Enduring. If someone lifted 50 kilos, she lifted 60. If someone needed help, she helped — quietly. Overworking herself, knowing that this job would make a difference in her life.
Every time she was about to break, when she asked herself, “What am I doing here?” she thought about the collective struggle. She reminded herself she was setting a precedent to change things. Faced with the urge to cry, with helplessness, she closed her eyes and worked harder. Until one day she’d had enough: information was power, and until that point, she had chosen not to use it.
She waited. Waited for them to laugh, to call her “fag,” “tranny.” And when they did, she asked, “Why are you calling me that? Weren’t you with my friend?” The only sound then was the noise of the machines. She continued: “You all talk a lot. But if I start talking, your families fall apart. This town is small and promiscuous. Around here, everything gets found out.” That moment, she says — along with the times of struggle, protest, demands, and community cookouts — led her to unite with her coworkers. To be known. To slowly be accepted.
The security guard explains that, because of the gases, we have to leave our phones outside — they could explode. That we must wear a helmet, a flashlight, and a self-rescuer: if something goes wrong, opening it gives us half an hour of chemical oxygen. We’re going in by truck: we’ll ride for about five miles, then walk.
Carla works as a mechanical officer: Monday through Friday, she repairs various types of machines for six hours a day. Every two weeks, she rotates to night shifts. While posing for photos, she says that here, inside the mine, everyone is equal. “Your genitals don’t define you, nothing does. In the worst case, if something happens to someone, we’ll all help each other,” she says.
But it wasn’t always like this. “We built that over time,” explains Carla. “Believe it or not, in these workspaces where there are 10 or 20 people, sometimes debates start up that help you think.”
When asked if she has noticed other changes, she replies: “Generational changes helped. Today, most of the workers are young. They’re not so deeply rooted in patriarchal thinking.”
On May 9, 2012, Argentina passed a law recognizing people’s right to be treated according to their self-perceived gender identity. Carla completed the paperwork: her ID changed to say “Carla Antonella,” and under “sex,” an “F” for female. Later, when she decided to undergo surgery and get silicone implants, the mine was thrown into turmoil. She was called in by Human Resources and told she could no longer work underground.
“Why?” she asked. “Because you’re a woman,” they replied, and told her she would be transferred. She would be moved to an administrative position. They couldn’t change her job category, her hours, or her salary, but they forced her to do office work. When she arrived, her female colleagues rejected her. When she asked to use the bathroom and requested the key, they told her the men’s bathroom was down the hall.
She decided to fight back. In September 2015, she submitted a written statement citing the “discriminatory treatment” from her colleagues and notified management that she would return to her previous position. She knew no one would oppose it — within the political climate of expanding rights, it would’ve been a national scandal. The next day, her former coworkers welcomed her back with hugs. She became the first trans woman to work in a mine.
In 2023, she helped create a gender department within the company. And when, in July of that year, a 1924 law was repealed — a law that had banned “dangerous or unhealthy work for women” and was often used as an excuse to keep women out of mining or port jobs — she helped design the path for more women to enter the mining industry.
In 2018, through her sister, writer Erika Halvorsen met Carla. She told her she wanted to write about her. She began interviewing her and gradually built the story that would become a screenplay. After some back and forth, the script was turned into the film Miss Carbón directed by Agustina Macri, which will premiere in theaters in Spain on June 13.
Macri says there were several aspects that drew her to the story: the theme, the fact that it was an LGBTQ+ story, that it was based on real events, the setting, and the visual possibilities of a town nestled in the Andes. “Often, you choose a story. But then that same story begins to unfold, to spiral inward, to a certain depth — and that’s how you discover there were many reasons you were drawn to it,” she explains via email.
In the dining room, on a small table, lies The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir. Carla says that reading it made her reflect on many ideas. It allowed her to think about dependency, attachment, and the need for others’ approval.
“I learned to look at myself in the mirror and to like what I see. To stop constantly chasing the hegemonic ideals set by the system: pretty, thin, tall. No. I have a strong, firm face, the hands of a laborer, hardened here in Patagonia.”
She smiles. “This is who I am. And I’m proud of who I am, of what I’ve been able to achieve.”
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