Aerolíneas Argentinas, the national airline of Argentina, has announced a milestone in South American aviation history after one of its pilots became the first to transition to “female.”
Traniela Carle Campolieto, born Carlos Daniel Campolieto, became the first trans-identified male to captain a commercial flight in Argentina on May 24.
According to La Capital, the achievement was also a milestone in South America as Campoliento is believed to be the first transgender pilot on the continent.
Campoliento, who is also sits on the Diversity Commission of the Association of Airline Pilots of Argentina, first made the announcement on his social media.
“My first day of work as a trans pilot … I will remember this day forever. Thanks to everyone who made this possible. It is an immense pride for me to be part of the struggle to have a society that is increasingly inclusive, diverse and tolerant,” he wrote on Facebook.
Campoliento made his first international flight as a transgender pilot on May 29, commanding an Airbus A330 to Miami.
Prior to transitioning, Campoliento was known as a professional bodybuilder and personal trainer, though he has scrubbed the majority of his pre-transition photos from social media.
On his Facebook, the first available post is from May 3, showing a would-be seductive silhouette of Campoliento draped in what appears to be a sheer trans pride flag.
The photo was uploaded the same day Campoliento was issued his “female” government identification.
Campoliento has been working in the field of aviation for 24 years, and had been a military pilot for the majority of his career.
After the news broke of Campoliento’s transition, he began trending on Facebook. Multiple accounts began circulating false claims that he was involved in a recent incident in which the nation’s presidential plane made an unauthorized, high-risk maneuver.
On Twitter, a popular account belonging to a former Argentinian army colonel circulated a Facebook post showing a photocopy of Campoliento‘s “female” identification.
Campoliento created a Twitter account and began engaging with the veteran. He demanded the retired colonel contact him and threatened legal or social action.
Campoliento’s achievement comes as no surprise, given that Argentina has some of the most liberal laws on gender identity in the world.
It was one of the first nations to allow people to change their legal gender identity upon request. People are entitled to unlimited revisions of their legal documents without any medical or psychological documentation to support their claims of transgenderism.
In 2020, the country’s President, Alberto Fernández, passed a decree establishing employment quotas in the public sector for individuals who identified as transgender.
The decree mandates that at any given time at least one percent of all public sector workers in the national government must be transgender, as understood in the 2012 Gender Identity Law.
Argentina’s liberal policies on gender identity have been controversial, especially amongst feminist advocates concerned about the impact the laws have on women’s rights.
Over the past month, two separate male criminals in the nation have made headlines. Both abruptly changing their gender identity after committing a sex-based crime.
On April 19, Reduxx reported that a gay man who admitted to murdering the surrogate he had hired to have his children told the court he was now identifying as a woman. Some believe this was a bid to avoid a lengthy sentence for femicide.
Two weeks later, it was announced that a man convicted of Argentina’s first child grooming case, which resulted in murder, had quietly changed his gender identity and was being considered for a transfer to a women’s prison.
