The trailblazing trans miner of Patagonia: ‘I hacked the system. I set a precedent. We changed history’

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 Argenine 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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