This work engages with questions around the imbrication of gender, race, and political activism from a anti-racist-transfeminist decolonial perspective. Through an analysis of my ethnographic work with travesti-trans* subjects in a travesti-trans* cooperative and a popular travesti-trans* high school in Argentina, I explore tensions between positions, relationships, and identities. Drawing on antiracist-transfeminist decolonial epistemology and the "anthropology of power" I examine how processes of racialization, gendering, and essentialization are imbricated in the dynamics of the field. For instance, as I was read as a "marika" by the participants, this opened a door for the sharing of certain meanings and experiences that would have been hardly accessible to a cis-heterosexual man. Furthermore, I analyze how the racialization of a student as "brown" by a former teacher is rejected by her highlighting the situated ways in which the racial matrix operates in the Argentine context, where racial whitening and denial are prevalent. Additionally, from an episode where travesti-trans* students complained that in the popular high school they were being "indoctrinated" with notions of "feminism," "gender perspective," "human rights" and "Peronism," I discuss the tension between the “travesti-trans* activisti ideal” student and the actual students who expressed being "non-activists" or "apolitical” problematizing the tendency to make essentialization and homogenization of the subjected of a communiyr, without considering the internal heterogeneities. By foregrounding these frictions, I seek to foster a dialogue between the ethnographic field and the theorizations around travesti-trans* communities. This involves also addressing the methodological concerns inherent in researching sensitive topics in times of global neoliberal-fascist uprisings, situating these methods in the challenging environments where they may be applied. Overall, this study contributes to the decolonial interrogation of the anthropology of gender and sexuality, aiming to expand the conceptual and analytical toolkit for addressing these issues through a critical lens.