Trailblazing transgender actress and cabaret performer Ana Lupez dies aged 82
She was among the first Argentine transgender women to undergo gender-affirming surgery and spent much of her career performing in Argentina and Spain
By Callum Wells
Argentine actress and cabaret performer Ana Lupez has died aged 82 in Mendoza, Argentina, where she was born in 1944.
Lupez died in the early hours of Wednesday (14 October), according to the Asociación Argentina de Actores y Actrices. She was among the first Argentine transgender women to undergo gender-affirming surgery and spent much of her career performing in Argentina and Spain.
Who was Ana Lupez?
She began performing as a teenager after leaving home at 14. Her early work included circus appearances and performances at Argentina’s harvest festivals. She later travelled to Brazil and Uruguay, appearing in cabaret productions and on the Uruguayan comedy programme Telecataplúm.
Lupez subsequently studied ballet and Argentine folk dance before joining the theatre revue scene in Buenos Aires. By the late 1960s, she was performing at Teatro Maipo and Teatro El Nacional.
Her work coincided with a period when transgender women faced police harassment and the threat of arrest for wearing clothing deemed inconsistent with their sex. During Argentina’s military dictatorship, persecution of gender-nonconforming people and artists also contributed to her decision to leave the country in 1979. She eventually settled in Spain, where she continued her career.
In 1981, Lupez joined Barcelona de Noche, a cabaret venue known as the “Gay Cathedral”, under the management of performer and impresario Antonio Gracia José, known as Pierrot. She became a leading performer there and later appeared in productions including Locas de Amorrr, E.L.L.A.S. and Escándalo Gay. She also worked at Madrid’s New Centaurus cabaret.
“I was the first trans woman to have surgery in Spain” – Lupez on undergoing gender-affirming surgery
Lupez underwent gender-affirming surgery in Barcelona in 1986. In an interview with Diario Uno published in 2013, she described what the experience meant to her.
“I was the first trans woman to have surgery in Spain… when the law was passed, and was the first Argentinian to do so, when nobody [in Argentina] talked about it,” she said.
“For me, it was an indescribable liberation, because for me, of everything I’ve achieved in my life, my greatest triumph was becoming a woman.”
What do her screen credits include?
In 1987, she became a co-owner of Barcelona de Noche with two Argentine colleagues, producing shows including Las Tretas de Ana and Un Desplume Diferente. The venue closed in September 1990.
Her screen credits included the film Las edades de Lulú and television programme Eva y Adán. She later ran the Paradise Show Theatre in Maspalomas, alongside two restaurants and a custom shoe shop.
Following the death of her longtime partner in 2003, Lupez returned to Argentina. She staged Otro tipo de Mujer in Buenos Aires in 2006 and received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Miss Transformarte event in 2019. She later retired in Benidorm, Spain.