Crossing Sex and Gender in Latin America
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Crossing Sex and Gender in Latin America pal-lewis-00fm.indd i 6/3/10 8:13 AM This page intentionally left blank Crossing Sex and Gender in Latin America Vek Lewis pal-lewis-00fm.indd iii 6/3/10 8:13 AM CROSSING SEX AND GENDER IN LATIN AMERICA Copyright © Vek Lewis, 2010. All rights reserved. Cover photograph from the series La manzana de Adán by Paz Errázuriz Chapter 2 was previously published in May 2009 in Chasqui: Revista de literatura latinoamericana 38, no. 1:104–24 in a slightly different form. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978-0-230-10402-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lewis, Vek. Crossing sex and gender in Latin America / Vek Lewis. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-230-10402-0 (alk. paper) 1. Latin American literature—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Latin American literature—21st century—History and criticism. 3. Transgender people in literature. 4. Gender identity in literature. 5. Motion pictures—Latin America—History—20th century. 6. Motion pictures—Latin America—History—21st century. 7. Transgender people in motion pictures. 8. Gender identity in motion pictures I. Title. PQ7081.L4535 2010 860.9'35266—dc22 2009053916 Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: August 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America. pal-lewis-00fm.indd iv 6/3/10 8:13 AM Este libro se lo dedico a mi amigo del alma, N. D. You know who you are. Your influence is alive in these pages. pal-lewis-00fm.indd v 6/3/10 8:13 AM This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: The Persistence of Vision(s): Sex and Gender Variance in the Past and Present 1 1 Thinking Figurations Otherwise: Reframing Dominant Knowledges of Sex and Gender Variance in Latin America 17 2 Grotesque Spectacles: The Janus Face of the State and Gender-Variant Bodies in Reinaldo Arenas 45 3 Life Is (More than) a Cabaret: Gender Crossing and “Trans” Signification in Contemporary Cinema from Latin America 73 4 Authorizing Subjectivity: Eroticism, Epidemia, and the (In)validation of Bodies in Pedro Juan Gutiérrez’s El Rey de La Habana and Mario Bellatin’s Salón de belleza 107 5 Trans Bodies, Popular Culture, and (National) Identity in Crisis: Luis Zapata’s La hermana secreta de Angélica María and Mayra Santos-Febres’s Sirena Selena vestida de pena 143 6 Scandalous Embodiments, Shameful Citizenships: Loca and Travesti Subjectivities in the Work of Pedro Lemebel 181 Epilogue 221 Notes 227 References 249 Index 265 pal-lewis-00fm.indd vii 6/3/10 8:13 AM This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments I would like to thank Diana Palaversich and Stewart King, who helped me with the initial work conducted for this book. Thanks should also go to those who assisted me in its final phases: Debra Castillo, Paul Allatson, and Jeffrey Browitt. Finally, without the intellectual exchange and friendship of Viviane Namaste, Talia Mae Bettcher, Ben Singer, Natalia Anaya, Rosío Córdova Plaza, Mauro Cabral, Rodrigo Parrini, and Ntennis Davi, I would not have had the context or the faith to see this project to completion. Sincere thanks also to friends and family in Australia, Mexico, and Puerto Rico for your love and solidarity. pal-lewis-00fm.indd ix 6/3/10 8:13 AM This page intentionally left blank Introduction4 The Persistence of Vision(s) Sex and Gender Variance in the Past and Present Travestismo, or male-to-female gender crossing, notes critic Anke Birken- maier (2002), has become a fashionable feature of contemporary Latin American literature. This is by no means restricted, of course, to the liter- ary domain. There has been an explosion in the depiction of “trans” sub- jects and acts in contemporary cultural production, particularly in television and print media. Three countries have run soap operas that feature travesti characters (male born individuals who live in feminine mode) played by real-life travestis and transsexuals to great acclaim: Los Roldán (The Roldán Family) in Argentina, starring Florencia de la V., Los Sánchez (The Sánchez Family) in Mexico with Libertad, and Los Reyes (The Reyes Family) with Endry Cardeño in Colombia. In particular, de la V has gained the status of megastar in Argentina. An increasing number of films feature locas, or gender-crossing characters. There have also been several high-profile docu- mentaries, some of which are mentioned in the course of this book. Other examples of representation include performance by transvestites in art and on stage in academic and cultural settings, as well as La manzana de Adán (Adam’s Apple), a coffee-table book with photographs from the 1980s of colas (locas) from Chile, an image from which adorns this book’s cover. Puerto Rican salsero Willy Colón is still heard singing on the radio about a travesti who defies patriarchal control and dies of AIDS in “El gran varón” (“The great man”). Newspapers, magazines, and television networks have devoted considerable column inches and airtime to the subject of travestis and their place in society in venues such as Página 12 in Argentina, Letra S in Mexico’s daily La Jornada, and Chile’s Teletrece, to name just a respect- able few, that is, aside for the more voluminous popular and tabloid press. pal-lewis-00intro.indd 1 5/14/10 3:52 PM 2 Crossing Sex and Gender in Latin America This book is concerned with contemporary visions of nonnormative sexualities and genders in Latin America. It looks at cinematic and literary texts produced over a twenty-year period from 1985 to 2005. In these texts, as in the majority of contemporary representations in other popular forms, change in sexual identity and gender refers principally to crossings from male to female. Only a small number of novels have been published in recent years that deal with female-to-male changes.1 This fact is not in itself new. Birkenmaier notes that even in the golden age of Novohispano (New Spain) literature, during the time of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, for instance, gender crossing was principally from male to female. If in time past, transvestite figures were used in Latin American literary works in the name of a certain exoticism that recalled disguise and festivity, the mask and the pageant, the inversion of orders, and the play of desires between man and woman or man dressed as woman, then the new subject of the travesti in modern and contemporary literature still points to a critique of the social order. Birkenmaier sustains that contemporary representations of travestis rely less on the idea of the mask and more on the sexual inde- cision the figure embodies. The image of the mask, I hold, still pertains in some representations of travestis and their metaphorical use to explain the social order; travestis, in some cases, continue to be engaged from a position of marginality, both in terms of their envisioned cultural space and in terms of the textual space accorded them. They are also persistently viewed in the name of spectacle, as Birkenmaier also argues. Their cultural marginality was mirrored in the narratives that depicted them in the period before the 1980s. Mostly minor characters in these texts, homosexuals and travestis function as plot devices or symbols of a certain order. They are signifying others. In a wide range of texts, they function performatively to point to or embody larger issues at hand. Nar- rative marginality is not a precondition for them to function metaphori- cally, however. Even when writers install the travesti to a more central place in their works, they frequently maintain the symbolic function, and very little in the way of an exploration of the subjectivities of those exist- ing outside of normative sex and gender relations is evidenced. Many of the attributions of doubleness, superficiality, frivolity, and dangerousness remain. Here I would cite the celebrated works of José Donoso, Severo Sarduy, and Manuel Puig—all from the 1960s and 1970s. Donoso and Puig give great precedence to the depiction of their travesti characters in El lugar sin límites (1966; Place Without Limits) and El beso de la mujer araña (1976; The Kiss of the Spiderwoman), respectively. La Manuela and Molina were breakthrough characterizations in the sense that they formed the main foci of their narratives. Never before in Latin America had same-sex desire and gender difference been visualized with such insistence. Puig’s work has a noticeable investment in this visualization, pal-lewis-00intro.indd 2 5/14/10 3:52 PM The Persistence of Vision(s) 3 since as a homosexual writer, he wished to challenge some of the pre- vailing notions about homosexuality in the period. He was also deeply pledged to opposing authoritarian regimes of control around all aspects of existence—libidinal, social, and political. Thus his narrative is greatly connected to such a project, as is Donoso’s.2 But since their works precede the emergence of a politicized travesti subjectivity, they do not entirely break free of the most stereotyped formulations of effeminate homosexu- ality and cross-gendered identity.