BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — When Luana Salva got her first formal job after years of prostitution, she was ecstatic.

A quota law in Argentina that promoted the inclusion of transgender people in the work force — unprecedented in Latin America expect in neighboring Uruguay — pulled her from the capital’s street corners into the Foreign Ministry last year.

Yet just months after Salva got her first paycheck, right-wing President Javier Milei entered office and began slashing public spending as part of his state overhaul to solve Argentina’s worst economic crisis in two decades. Abruptly fired in a wave of government layoffs, Salva said her world began to unravel.