View Gender Performance and Transgression As It Relates to a Long-Standing System of Domination and Oppression in Latin America

Home , El Sexto Sentido, International Drag Day, Tabula Rasa (Heroes)

Gender Transgression and Hegemony: the Politics of Gender Expression and Sexuality in Contemporary Managua

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

John Stephen Petrus, M.A.

Graduate Program in Spanish and Portuguese

The Ohio State University

2015

Dissertation Committee:

Ileana Rodríguez, Advisor

Laura Podalsky, Co-Advisor

Guisela Latorre

John Stephen Petrus

2015

Abstract

In this dissertation I study transgressive gender expression and performance in contemporary Nicaragua (1979-present) in order learn about how distinctive strategies of gender expression relate to the coloniality of power and knowledge and transnational political ideologies. I show how Nicaraguan performers contend with, mediate, critique, and/or reinforce expectations of gender performance promoted by local and global centers of power. The goal of this project is to provide a better understanding of how coloniality has continued to function with respect to gender performance in very recent years and also to highlight the brave, complex, creative, and astute cultural interventions that are being created by Nicaraguan artists and performers that grapple with oppressive gender systems. I carry out my analysis by reading and engaging intellectually with audio-visual cultural texts from a variety of media including performance art, television programs, short documentaries, low-budget videos, film, and photography produced in the last two decades.

Specifically, I analyze the gender performances in the television show

International News Network in chapter 1, in recent Nicaraguan film and video productions in chapter 2, in Elyla Sinvergüenza’s performance art in chapter 3, and in annual diversidad sexual events LGBTI Pride and Operación Queer in chapter 4. I highlight gender transgression in these cultural texts in order to demonstrate and appreciate the cultural interventions being done by contemporary Nicaraguan artists,

activists, and thinkers to actively contest compulsory heterosexuality, violent masculinity, hegemonic normative gender roles, and State and international sexual politics. I focus specifically on representations and performances of and by Nicaragua’s sexual diversity due to the fact that these individuals are both 1) particular targets of gender policing and gendered violence, and 2) the most active transgressors of gender norms in their cultural texts and their everyday lives. I show how gender performance for Nicaragua’s sexual diversity is a complex negotiation between identity politics, State ideologies, geo- political pressures, and local cultures and traditions.

In order to study gender transgression in these media, I engage with a variety of theoretical lines of inquiry that help to frame the questions listed above and to apply them to the context of contemporary Managua. I draw from the discussion in Latin American

Cultural Studies on coloniality, particularly its relation to gender roles and categories, in order to view gender performance and transgression as it relates to a long-standing system of domination and oppression in Latin America. I draw on political theory, especially that of neoliberalism, in order to show how economic and political systems influence representational strategies and body politics in diversidad sexual communities.

Finally, Queer theory has taken on the task of de-naturalizing and deconstructing sexual dimorphism, the heterosexual-homosexual binary, and the viability of identity politics. In this way, it has provided an approximation to gender and sexuality studies that focuses on performativity and the social construction of masculinities and femininities. I implement this theoretical approximation to show how gender expression is a practice that can support or contest hegemonies.

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Dedication

Dedicated to all the cochones del barrio in Managua who carve out a place for themselves in a society that sees them as abject.

Acknowledgements

It takes a transnational village to raise a scholar. I owe my Advisor, Ileana

Rodríguez more than she will ever know. I have had the privilege to work with her since

2008, and she remains the most eloquent, provocative, and hardworking intellectual I have had the pleasure to work with. Laura Podalsky and Guisela Latorre have also been role models of mine. They are truly exemplary thinkers and my project would have never made it onto paper without their encouragement, support, and input. I would like to express my gratitude to the colectivo ex/centrO and the grupo de estudios at the

IHNCA—working groups that not only introduced me to new ways of thought and productive intellectual debate, but raised my expectations for myself as a scholar. I would like to thank the CLAS at OSU and the Tinker foundation for funding my initial research in Managua, the IHNCA-UCA in Managua for being so supportive of my project and my research and for being a home away from home, and the Department of Spanish and

Portuguese at OSU for allowing me to flourish and to create my own academic path. I am extremely thankful for all of my colleagues and friends who have helped me academically, emotionally, and spiritually in Columbus and Managua. I am grateful to all the visual artists attempting to make cultural change happen in Nicaragua—I am inspired and empowered by your work. And, lastly, but most certainly not least, thank you, Bill.

You are my rock, my soundboard, my therapist, my lover, and my partner in crime.

Vita

2005-2009 The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH B.A. summa cum laude with Honors and Distinction in Spanish and French

2010-2012 The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH M.A. In Spanish

2012-present The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH Ph.D. Candidate in Latin American Literatures and Cultures

Publications

“International News Network: Un análisis de transgresiones de género en la producción audio-visual nicaragüense” In: Revista de Historia. #29 2014. Managua: IHNCA-UCA (Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica- Universidad Centroamericana). “Huecos en el archivo: la homosexualidad como obstrucción de justicia en el caso Gerardi” In: Revista de Historia. #27 September-December, 2012. Managua: IHNCA- UCA (Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica- Universidad Centroamericana). “Argentinian Queer Mater: Del Bildungsroman urbano a la Road Movie rural: Infancia y juventud post- Corralito en la obra de Lucía Puenzo” Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana (junio 2011). Co-authored with Fernando Blanco

Fields of Study Major Field: Spanish and Portuguese Specialization: Latin American Literatures and Cultures

Table of Contents

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………ii Dedication………………………………………………………………………………v Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………...vi Vita…………………………………………………………………………………...... vii List of Figures…………………………………………………………………….…….viii Introduction: Theoretical Concepts, Review of Existing Literature, and Potential Significance……………………………………………………………….…….1

Chapter 1: Tuning in to Gender Transgression: The Cultural Politics of International News Network………..…………………………………………………………27

Chapter 2: Diversidad Sexual on the Screen (Big and Small): Nicaraguan Film and Video……………………………………………………………………...…….78

Chapter 3: Transformative Performance Art…………………………………………...128 Chapter 4: Diversidad Sexual en Marcha: Pride and Operación Queer in Managua…...167

Conclusion…….………………………………………………………………………..211 References/Works Cited……………………………..…………………………………215

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Moncho Ramón………………………………………………………………45

Figure 2: Mariconasol Advertisement………………………………………………….53

Figure 3: Campaign Against INN………………………………………………………55

Figure 4: Jacinto Barba Photo Shoot.….……………………………………….....……62

Figure 5: Interlocking Male Signs….……………………………………………..……66

Figure 6: Image 1 from A quien le importa.……………..………………………..……105

Figure 7: Image 2 from A quien le importa.…..…………………………………..……106

Figure 8: Elyla Sinvergüenza in “Revolución de la memoria”……..……………..……154

Figure 9: Image 1 of Elyla Sinvergüenza in “Sólo fantasía…”…….……………..……158

Figure 10: Image 2 of Elyla Sinvergüenza in “Sólo fantasía…”.………………....……158

Figure 11: La Gigantona and El Enano Cabezón...... ……………………………..……161

Figure 12: Elyla Sinvergüenza in “Se la bailó”.…………………………………..……165

Figure 13: The First Gay Pride in Sex and the Sandinistas ..……………………..……175

Figure 14: Collage Activity at Operación Queer 2013..…………………………..……197

Figure 15: Image 1 of Altar to Vaginas …………………………………………..……208

Figure 16: Image 2 of Altar to Vaginas….………………………………………..……209

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Introduction: Theoretical Concepts, Review of Existing Literature, and Potential Significance

People, listen to what your jotería is saying. The mestizo and the queer exist at this time and point on the evolutionary continuum for a purpose. We are a blending that proves that all blood is intricately woven together, and that we are spawned out of similar souls. -Gloria Anzaldúa (Borderlands/La Frontera 107)

ÚLTIMA HORA: La Policía Nacional ha informado que no se puede realizar la marcha del Orgullo LGBTI en Nicaragua el día de mañana. El comunicado que fue divulgado esta tarde sobre la cumbre presidentes, cancilleres y ministros de energías PETROCARIBE a desarrollarse a partir de mañana afectó la ruta aprobada. (Sinvergüenza, Elyla “Última Hora”) Two summers ago, in May of 2013, I set off to make contacts and to begin research on gender performance in popular festivals in Nicaragua. I was inspired by

Katherine Borland’s work on el Torovenado and El baile de las negras, but I was left with lingering questions about how these popular spaces provided a platform to discuss politics, break norms, and remember the past. I did not want to think of popular festivals as merely carnivalesque escape valves where temporary inversions of power structures were allowed and contained. I was interested in how these spaces served as alternative archives of political thought, identity expression, and local memories. One of the festivals that I was most excited to see and participate in was the national LGBTI Pride March in

Managua. Having attended Pride marches since 2004 in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio,

I was excited to compare and contrast the meaning-making and meaningfulness of these festivals in differing contexts.

However, what actually occurred during my research trip far exceeded my expectations. As I interviewed and spoke with activists in order to learn more about the

Pride festival, I was surprised to see that they shared a lot of my critiques and concerns with respect to the institutionalization of Pride. Without goading my contacts, they spoke of Pride as a depoliticized act of visibility where NGO-supported groups competed among themselves for legitimacy without making clear political demands from the government or from society. In my conversations with diversidad sexual activists, I realized that while the Pride festival served a purpose for making the community visible, many were hoping for an alternative event that could foster critical thought on what it means to be part of diversidad sexual and what are the ways that activists could intervene politically or culturally to improve the everyday realities for diversidad sexual individuals. In fact, as I became friends with these activists, they began to organize a parallel event to the official Pride festival that would focus on creating a space for dialogue and artistic interventions—what became known as Operación Queer.

Operación Queer was designed to be an alternative to the Pride March that would center on reflection and celebration of the diversity within the diversidad sexual community. While the Pride March was seen as supporting identity politics, Operación

Queer set out to think critically of difference without resorting to identity categories. The event was also organized to incorporate performances and cultural texts that responded to dominant discourses on diversidad sexual. The event included poetry, reading of written texts, open microphone, music, photography, theater, performance, and audio-visual 2

texts, allowing for a wide variety of expressions that represented and provoked reflection on sexual difference.

As alluded to above, in 2013, the official Pride March was unexpectedly postponed the day before it was scheduled to take place. It appears that the National

Police revoked the permit previously approved for the Pride event, citing that increased security along the route was needed for the summit of leaders of PETROCARIBE. It would appear that the State’s tentative approval of diversidad sexual events was nominal and precarious. Indeed, the State’s economic interests came first. In turn, this made

Operación Queer the destination for those individuals turned away from the March. The event attracted over 600 participants and provoked conversations and celebration well into the early hours of the following morning. I was inspired by the range of cultural interventions and the radicalism of the politics presented at Operación Queer, wishing that a similar event be organized in my own community.

As I enjoyed the company of so many like-minded queers, talking at length about representation, political goals, utopian ideals, and body politics, I felt euphoric. The open-mindedness, the lack of inhibition in sharing opinions or questioning oneself, the willingness to put into practice somewhat lofty theorizations—this is the stuff of revolutionary liberation. I, like so many who came to Nicaragua for the revolution in the

80s, was inspired people trying to change the world for the better against all odds.

However, as Michael Hardt in the documentary Examined Life reflects on how the revolutionaries in Central America thanked him and other US intellectuals for their solidarity, they suggested that perhaps the best way for US intellectuals to get involved was to take the revolution to the US. “Don’t you have mountains is the US?” they asked 3

(134). The lesson that perhaps wasn’t learned in the 80s is that we have much to learn from Central America—the way liberation was envisioned during the revolutionary struggles and how liberation is envisioned by subaltern groups today. While I am not advocating for armed struggle in the US, I do argue that we should seriously consider the interventions in visual media from Nicaragua’s diversidad sexual that can help US queers and allies to re-imagine the struggle for social liberation. I argue that the politics of gender transgression in Managua performed in the cultural texts I analyze in this dissertation can help us to reformulate strategies to combat homophobia, heterocentrism, and violent masculinities and femininities.

Throughout my research, I have played particular attention to the variety of visual cultural productions that are being created and distributed in contemporary Managua.

Each of the different media that I saw as having a profound impact on Managua’s media landscape have developed into the corpuses for my chapters: television, film and video, performance art, and Pride/Operación Queer. Each of these media have their own particularities as art forms and their own histories of development in Nicaragua. For each chapter, I attempt to provide both a context and an analysis of the cultural texts I have chosen.

In my analyses of these cultural texts, I use a few concepts that may be polemical, such as gender transgression, the performativity of gender, and the coloniality of gender.

While I insist that these theoretical concepts are the most helpful for me in order to understand the complexities of the texts I analyze, I realize that there are a variety of other theoretical tools that could provide insight. In the following sections of this introduction, I wish to describe these theoretical concepts and debates in detail as well as 4

the politics that surround them. Namely, I will discuss gender transgression, performativity of gender, and the relation of gender to coloniality. Following this theoretical discussion, I briefly describe the structure of my dissertation as well as my main arguments for each chapter.

Gender Transgression

Transgression, especially gender transgression is not easily nor objectively defined. It is a slippery concept that that implies a dialectic with hegemonic norms. As hegemony and normativity are in a constant state of flux, breaking with norms must be specifically contextualized socio-historically while also recognizing that transgression is a subjective qualification. For instance, the oft-cited example of pink once being considered a masculine color comes to mind. Jeanne Maglaty from the Smithsonian institute provides an example from a June 1918 article from Earnshaw's Infants'

Department that said: “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl” (n.p.).

This anecdote shows the importance of recognizing and specifying gender norms in their particular socio-cultural contexts. However, in order to study transgression, it is also necessary to view gender as performative. To view certain gender performances as transgressive, I argue, as Judith Butler has, that gender is something that one does, not something that one is. “[It is] an act… a "doing" rather than a "being"” (Gender Trouble

25). In turn, the hegemonic expectations of gender performances are socially constructed.

One’s personal gender performance is based on memories of models and ideals of gendered performances through lived experiences and cultural texts. In this section I will 5

discuss theories on the performativity of gender, the transformative potential of gender transgression, and the social construction of gender norms.

I derive my theory of the performativity of gender primarily from the theories of

Severo Sarduy, RuPaul, and Judith Butler. These three intellectuals, while they come from widely varying disciplines and backgrounds, have very similar arguments with respect to gender performance. Central to their understanding of the performativity of gender is the concept of transvestism, or drag, which I use interchangeably. RuPaul argues, in her book Workin’ It: RuPaul’s Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style,

"You're born naked and the rest is drag. Drag is everything. I don’t differentiate drag from dressing up or dressing down. Whatever you put on after you get out of the shower is your drag" (ix). In this way, RuPaul sees drag as all the ways in which we modify the appearance of our bodies. Of course, this implies that every modification and adornment that we make to our bodies contributes to our gender performance. It also implies consistent change in our gender performances. RuPaul argues that from birth we are put into drag, and that our daily decisions as to how we present ourselves are a continuation of that transvestism. In this way, instead of seeing gender performance as static or constant, she points to the ways in which gender performance is a constant and changing negotiation.

However, in Lettin It All Hang Out, RuPaul also points out how our drag is constrained by hegemonic pressures. She writes, “In today's masculine culture, hiding our emotions and our feelings is seen as a sign of strength and power, whereas being loving and giving is seen as a sign of weakness” (207). In this way, RuPaul expands the traditional notion of drag as pertaining only to clothing and makeup and implies that the 6

way we interact with each other is also an element of our drag. In addition, she notes the way in which gender performance is policed in terms of these behaviors: “There are so many rules imposed on us about what we should do, what we should say. Boys should be boys, and girls should be girls. But says who?” (188). She questions the authority of generally understood hegemonic expectations of gender performance and points to our ability to transgress them.

In turn, Judith Butler, albeit in very different terms, has also made similar arguments. Butler has contended, like RuPaul, that gender is performative—a collective performance of body modifications and behaviors that are policed according to hegemonic norms. In Bodies that Matter, she writes,

The practice by which gendering occurs, the embodying of norms, is a

compulsory practice, a forcible production, but not for that reason fully

determining. To the extent that gender is an assignment, it is an assignment which

is never quite carried out according to expectation, whose addressee never quite

inhabits the ideal s/he is compelled to approximate. Moreover, this embodying is

a repeated process. And one might construe repetition as precisely that which

undermines the conceit of voluntarist mastery designated by the subject in

language (231).

Butler, like RuPaul, sees gender performance as a constantly changing, repeated process.

She also notes the pressures attached to gender assignments. However, she adds that the performance of gender is a gesture to an impossible ideal that we merely attempt to (and are compelled to) imitate.

Severo Sarduy, in his essay La simulación (1982), also speaks to the imitative nature of gender performance and the impossibility of conforming entirely with an ideal gender model. He writes, “[cuando se trata de imitar a] la mujer ideal, la esencia… el modelo y la copia han entablado una relación de correspondencia imposible y nada es pensable mientras se pretenda que uno de los términos sea una imagen del otro: que lo mismo sea lo que no es” (11, italics in original). Sarduy points out how the expectations of the “essence” of gender cannot be translated into corporal signifiers. I would argue that this is perhaps why classic or ideal models of gender performance are often mythologized figures from the past or altered or enhanced figures from the present. Perhaps iconographic femininities and masculinities are found in legends, official histories, movies, and paintings precisely because flesh-and-blood people cannot provide the perfect embodied ideal.

In any case, the hegemonic projects of femininity and masculinity do not lose hegemony for holding impossible ideals. The vast majority of us make daily efforts in our drag, perhaps not to conform exactly to an ideal, but rather to avoid conspicuously deviating from being categorized as a woman or a man. The fact that gender and sex are social constructions does not diminish their social force. Indeed, it is the social aspect of these constructions that polices gendered expectations—the collective societal gaze that seeks out fissures in gender performances in order to expose and discipline them. This is why the vast majority of drag goes unnoticed—most transvestism corresponds to hegemonic norms of gender expression. It becomes part of our personalities, our daily routines, and thus it is naturalized.

The point of seeing all gender as performative, as drag, and of describing the ideals of femininity and masculinity as impossible projects is to de-naturalize normative drag. It is an effort to recognize the violence inherent in gender assignments and expectations which stifle self-expression, especially the expression of both masculine and feminine qualities present in all people. Considering all gender performance as drag also comes from an intimate, embodied knowledge held by queer individuals/diversidad sexual. This knowledge has to do with the politics of “passing.” Young queers have intimate knowledge of how their bodies are made vulnerable if they do not attempt to

“pass” as straight, as a man, or as a woman in a variety of spaces. In order to protect oneself, or to avoid ridicule, one becomes an astute student of the types of behaviors that do not draw attention and the types of behaviors the elicit violence.

Heterosexuals also learn the politics of passing by necessity. They are socialized according to assigned sexes as well. Simone de Beauvoir famously stated, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” Equally, one could argue that one is not born, but rather learns to pass as, a woman. The same can be said of men. If we think of these gendered performances as drag, and how they relate to dominant models in cultural memories, we can also imagine how these same models and hegemonic expectations can be changed. Drag has the connotation of imitation, simulation, mimesis, and performance.

Indeed, despite hegemonic expectations and the policing of gendered performance, there is a great deal of liberty and range available to everyone in their gender expression. Gender performance can be used as a tool to make apparent, much in the way of ostranenie, the impossibility of conformity with ideal masculinities and 9

femininities. Also, one’s gender expression can be used to critique, question, and mock these normative ideals. Given that our bodies are consistently categorized and interpreted through signs that are arbitrarily given meaning by dominant ideologies1, the body can be used like a canvas to interpolate those who direct their gaze toward you to transgress—to show that our bodies are capable of performing both masculine and feminine features.

Sarduy explains how transgressive drag can elicit this type of critical thought:

El travestí, y todo el que trabaja sobre su cuerpo y lo expone, satura la

realidad de su imaginario y la obliga, a fuerza de arreglo, de

reorganización, de artificio y de maquillaje, a entrar, aunque de modo

mimético y efímero, en su juego…Para el travestí, la dicotomía y oposición

de los sexos queda abolida o reducida a criterios inoportunos o

arqueológicos…se sitúa en un tiempo adánico, en un tiempo antes del

tiempo y de la separación física de los sexos (64-65)

In this way, conscious, transgressive drag forces not only the performer, but her/his public to question sexual dichotomy and to be reminded of the performative nature of gender. Butler reiterates this argument in Bodies that Matter:

In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of

gender itself—as well as its contingency. Indeed, part of the pleasure, the

giddiness of the performance is in the recognition of a radical contingency

in the relation between sex and gender in the face of cultural

configurations of causal unities that are regularly assumed to be natural

1 Indeed, Freud points out that “When you meet a human being, the first distinction you make is “male or female?” and you are accustomed to make the decision with unhesitating certainty” (in Garber 1). 10

and necessary. In the place of the law of heterosexual coherence, we see

sex and gender denaturalized by means of a performance which avows

their distinctness and dramatizes the cultural mechanism of their

fabricated unity (137-138).

According to Marjorie Garber, transgressive transvestism opens up a discursive space that she calls “the third.” She argues, “The ‘third’ is that which questions binary thinking and introduces crisis—a crisis which is symptomized by both the overestimation and the underestimation of cross dressing…The ‘third’ is a mode of articulation, a way of describing a place of possibility (11). In other words, she echoes the thoughts of Sarduy and Butler, asserting that transgressive drag questions naturalized binaries and allows for imagining new ways of performing gender. Finally, Nelly Richard affirms, “el travestismo con su juego inestable de anversos y reversos sexuales que hacen oscilar la fe esencialista en una verdad originaria...sembró la confusión en el interior de las categorías supuestamente naturales, defendidas por la moral conservadora” (en Rodríguez 12).

All of these theorists insist on the denaturalizing power of transgressive drag that confuses the signs that are typically performed in normative expressions of gender. They also refer to transgender drag—the mixing of gendered signs on either male- or female- bodied performers. If we consider all gender performance drag, then it is important to also consider how cisgender drag might also be transgressive. Cisgender refers to performing the gender that corresponds to one’s assigned sex. The vast majority of individuals are cisgender. Does one have to perform multiple genders to transgress hegemonic norms? I argue that cisgender drag can also be transgressive if it reveals its constructed nature and subverts its own consistency. For example, one could achieve this 11

type of transgression through hyperbole—overly exaggerating the gender expectations placed on oneself.

When normative masculinity and femininity are exaggerated and parodied through cisgender drag, the constructedness and mimesis of gendered performances are revealed as through transgressive transgender drag. In the same vein, the emphasis of fissures in the performance of a rigid gender expression can denaturalize normative gender codes as well. An accessible example is seeing a paternal figure cry for the first time. This type of behavior, a rare occurrence in the normative expression of masculinity, can equally confuse and cause discomfort by breaking a paradigm of previously established acceptable expressions based on gender norms. Given that most people practice cisgender drag, it is important to think of the different ways in which this type of drag can be made transgressive.

However, we cannot forget that normative drag is far more common. Normative performances of gender are those that are generally accepted as appropriate, unassuming, inconspicuous—in a word, normal. While there is certainly a heterogeneity of normative gender performances that are carried out in a variety of spaces and contexts, these performances do not draw attention to the performative nature of gender itself.

Transgressive gender performances reject hegemonic performative models and instead perform interpretations of other models that do not correspond to the expectations placed on the body. In this way, they draw attention, they confuse, they provoke anger, and they solicit gender policing. However, there is a continuum between normative and transgressive gender performances. I argue that the extreme poles of this continuum— complete normativity and complete transgressive—are not possible to perform. Just as 12

one can never fully embody masculinity or femininity, one can never truly transgress all norms and perform one’s gender in an entirely original way. Instead, normativity and transgressivity are imaginaries that we contend with on a day to day basis. They are fictions that have very real effects on how we act and interact with each other.

In this way, one of the limits of this theoretical mark, and of my study in general is that, while drag often times can reveal the constructedness of the gender binary, it still functions based on signs that are read as masculine and feminine. Even when normative gender roles are usurped in gender performance, they still borrow from cultural archives in which models of behavior are coded as masculine and feminine. This means that while transgressive drag is an important cultural intervention, it cannot be seen as a utopian practice. A true liberatory practice would be one that declassifies behaviors as either masculine or feminine. While transgressive drag can be seen as a step toward this type of liberation, it does not achieve it in the present day. Indeed, there are gender violences that are reinforced by certain drag performances, even if other aspects of the same performances promote critical thought.

Another limitation of this theoretical mark is that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to measure the degrees to which a gender performance is normative or transgressive. It is possible, as I argue below, to read the degree of transgression through the push-back, or the level of policing it elicits. Also, it is possible to recognize certain elements of a gender performance as imitating hegemonic ideals. However, it is a very subjective practice to measure normativity and transgressivity, and I admit that my own personal biases and subjectivity are present in my work. While in the cultural texts that I study, I attempt to justify my classification of certain performances, there are other 13

possible interpretations. In any case, I feel that it is important to highlight what I consider to be transgressive responses to oppressive and imposed gender expectations.

In order to contend with this methodological limitation in my study, I suggest that gender performance must be thought of in terms of certain parameters. In order to do this,

I argue that one must bear in mind two continuums. The first is a continuum between cisgender and transgender, and the second continuum is between normative and transgressive. Cisgender refers undertaking a gender performance that correspond to one’s assigned sex. The vast majority of individuals are cisgender. Transgender refers to gender expressions that do not correspond to one’s assigned sex. For example, if a person is born with a penis, they are usually assigned a male sex at birth. However, if they dress and act in a way that is coded as feminine, they are transgender. I recognize that transgender is also an identity category that is used by people who consistently express the opposite gender of their assigned sex. However, I choose to use this term to refer to all transgender activity, which does not necessarily bear on how individuals identify. In addition, it is important to recognize that there is an entire spectrum between cis- and transgender expressions. As argued above, it is impossible to completely conform with the expectations associated with masculinity or femininity. In turn, gender expression is fluid and inconsistent. In this way, whatever categorization that is made along the continuums of normative/transgressive and cisgender/transgender must be considered as generalizations. However, I feel that it is necessary to use these terms to highlight and describe certain behaviors. This is indeed a limitation in my methodology. However, I am convinced that it is necessary to employ what Gayatri Spivak has called “a strategic use

of positivist essentialism” in order to discuss trends in strategies of gender performance as well as their political implications (281).

Equally, I read the body as a text in reference to another continuum—between normative and transgressive. This spectrum is equally slippery due to the subjective nature of normativity and transgressivity. However, it is possible to read transgression through the way in which it is policed. In other words, we can read transgression through the responses it elicits. This could range from verbal insults, or confused looks, to an actual police presence. For example, in one of Elyla Sinvergüenza’s most recent performances, “Sólo fantasía…”, the national police threatened to put an end to the performance, quite literally policing his/her gender transgression. However, we can imagine that some transgressions support normative logics and are therefore not policed, such as straight men ridiculing queer individuals by exaggerating campy gestures.

Classifying gender performance along the continuums of cisgender/transgender and normative/transgressive can be seen as an epistemological violence that categorizes embodied expressions through my privileged subjectivity. Language itself, as Jacques

Lacan and Julia Kristeva, among other psychoanalytical scholars have argued, is tainted with patriarchal semiotics that privilege masculine through the phallic master signifier.

However, I can think of no other way to accurately describe the politics of gender performance as a sight of political and cultural intervention in the cultural texts I study. I am limited by my own subjectivity and language just as drag is limited to performing feminine and masculine signs. However, I continue to listen to and be inspired by the activists and artists that I study, and I hope to accurately describe their work and how it contributes to social change. 15

Coloniality of Gender

Theorists such as Aníbal Quijano, Ileana Rodríguez, Walter Mignolo, Enrique

Dussel, Catherine Walsh, and many, many others have used the term “coloniality” to describe the devastating effects of the cultural logic employed by European colonizers that devalued and dehumanized African and indigenous bodies and knowledges while glorifying European bodies and ideals. In brief, coloniality is both the logic that allowed for Europeans to justify colonization, and also the perduring social hierarchization of races, genders, sexualities, knowledges, and cultural and religious practices that privileges all that is white, European, masculine, and heterosexual while, to borrow a term from Rocío Silva Santisteban, symbolically “trashes” all that is perceived as different (non-white, non-European, non-masculine, non-heterosexual)2. The study of coloniality is the attempt to understand oppression and inequality stemming from perceived difference in postcolonial societies.

Drawing on studies of coloniality, researchers such as María Lugones, Silvia

Rivera Cusicanqui, and Rita Laura Segato have all shown how colonization radically altered conceptualizations and categorizations of gender in Latin America. Segato and

Lugones, to differing degrees, argue that the imposition of European gender systems is an essential, but often ignored, component of coloniality. While I position myself with

2 Santisteban’s concept of basurización or symbolic trashing is described in the following manner: “[L]o otro en general y lo latinoamericano en particular expresan esa mezcla simbólicamente poderosa entre lo bárbaro, lo exótico-hiperbólico, lo pasional, lo folclórico y lo abyecto, puesto que todo lo que simbólicamente es visto como “descomposición” debe ser puesto afuera. Pero, incluso sin ahorrarse el olor a podredumbre, el detritos no deja de tener una cierta atracción debido a su poder de escandalizar, de perturbar, de crear una fisura. La basura tiene dos lados: el oscuro y tenebroso, que provoca asco y repugnancia; y el lado extrañamente adictivo que, a pesar de todo, nos invita a revolver en ella para destapar huellas de cierto goce anterior” (63-64). 16

Segato and Lugones, I must explain why I choose to see heterocentrism, naturalized biological dimorphism, and male privilege as elements of coloniality. Indeed, these three phenomena are not particular to Latin American societies, and they are always tied to concentric spheres of racial and class oppression. Feminists of color and “Third World feminists” in the United States such as Patricia Hill Collins, Chela Sandoval, Rachel Luft, and Kimberlé Crenshaw critiqued white, US, bourgeois feminism for focusing exclusively on gender oppression and promoted “intersectionality” as a methodology that took into account racist, classist, gender, and sexual oppressions in their various intersections. Patricia Hill Collins in particular referred to these collective systems of oppression as a “matrix of domination3.” Why then, do I insist on referring to this system as coloniality?

Given that this is one of the more polemical arguments I make throughout the dissertation, I will attempt to justify my use of coloniality here. One could argue that referring to these collective violences as coloniality may diminish the colonial specificity implied in the concept of “coloniality.” I would argue that “imperialism” is a concept that continues to have appropriate uses that do not necessarily gloss over the specificity of historical empires. Another criticism of the term is that it is very broad. One might be led to ask, is everything coloniality? I would respond with two points. The first is that everything is touched by coloniality. Eurocentrism, white supremacy, perceived sexual

3 She writes, “Oppression is not simply understood in the mind—it is felt in the body in myriad ways. Moreover, because oppression is constantly changing, different aspects of an individual U.S. Black woman’s self-definitions intermingle and become more salient: Her gender may be more prominent when she becomes a mother, her race when she searches for housing, her social class when she applies for credit, her sexual orientation when she is walking with her lover, and her citizenship status when she applies for a job. In all of these contexts, her position in relation to and within intersecting oppressions shifts” (274-275). 17

dimorphism, and heterocentrism were popularized by the European colonial powers in their global sphere of influence. Given that so many Latin American thinkers have traced the genealogies of distinct elements of coloniality and have named them as such, I feel compelled to continue to think of these violent constructs in these terms. To be sure, some of the colonial specificity of these violences is lost—to be sure, gender roles were not imposed in the same way everywhere. Nonetheless, I prefer the concept of coloniality to describe continued processes of systemic physical and symbolic violence. Feminist theorists like Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins, and bell hooks have used the concepts of intersectionality, the matrix of domination, and imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy, respectively, in order to describe these polyvalent, inter-connected, and persistent violences. However, in order to position myself with Latin

American thinkers and the realities of Latin Americans, I feel that coloniality is the best term to describe these complex violences. My second point is that the colonial powers suffered internal colonization prior to and during the colonization of American, Asian, and African lands. This is to say that I believe the concept of coloniality can be used to describe the intersections of racial, sexual, gendered, and economic violences within colonizing countries as well. The logic of coloniality allowed for chattel slavery, sexual violence, and economic violence in the metropoles as well. While coloniality is a very broad concept, I read heterocentrism, naturalized biological dimorphism, and male privilege as elements of coloniality. Just as Rachel Luft describes the risk of flattening difference through intersectional analysis, I am careful to analyze the specificity of the elements of coloniality of gender so as not to oversimplify concrete violences with blanket statements. 18

One of the specific legacies of coloniality that I focus on is the categorization and hierarchization of bodies based on perceived difference. While alternative systems and conceptualizations of gender existed prior to colonization in the Americas, and indeed some survive in indigenous cultures today, there is a powerful lasting legacy of what

María Lugones calls the colonial/modern gender system. According to Lugones, after colonization there was not a direct imposition of the European gender system in Latin

America. Instead, “It imposed a new gender system that created very different arrangements for colonized males and females than for white bourgeois colonizers. Thus, it introduced many genders and gender itself as a colonial concept and mode of organization of relations of production, property relations, of cosmologies and ways of knowing” (186). This is to say, instead of imposing a binary gender system, it imposed distinct genders for racialized peoples. The colonial/modern gender system made African and indigenous feminine bodies vulnerable while it demanded chastity and “amor desinteresado” from peninsular and criollo women. It also feminized indigenous males and cultivated male impunity for euro-descendants. The colonial/modern gender system set out to create hierarchies and to erase whatever elements of indigenous complementarity between genders.

The legacy of this system is that individuals are classified through a racial prism that generates distinct masculine and feminine expectations within racial categories. It also categorizes and places value judgments on sexualities. Recently, what was previously considered “inversion” or “sodomy” is also categorized through a multitude of taxonomizing labels—homosexual, bisexual, trans, transgender, transsexual, queer, cochón, maricón, tortillera, etc.—always in relation to heterosexuality. While many of 19

these categories have been naturalized, it is important to note how they have been questioned as well.

To decolonize gender, it is necessary to think critically about these categories.

However, given that I am theorizing through the medium of language, composed of signs and signifiers (also categories), I am forced to employ what Spivak has famously called strategic essentialism. I ask, is it possible to decolonize gender without categories? Or perhaps with new ones? I insist that “masculine,” “feminine,” and “diversidad sexual,” while they are somewhat ambiguous and slippery concepts that change according to historical, social, and political contexts, they are necessary to analyze gender performances in the present. In my analysis of the cultural texts in the corpus of this dissertation, I question the taxonomizing categories that are legacies of coloniality, and I critically employ “masculine”, “feminine”, and “diversidad sexual” in order to describe how transgressive gender performance allows for either supporting or contesting the dynamics of coloniality.

Dissertation Organization and Structure

I organized my dissertation into four chapters that analyze gender transgression in different visual media forms that make up a corpus: 1) the television program

International News Network, 2) contemporary Nicaraguan film and low-budget videos, 3) performance art in Managua, and 4) gender performance and cultural texts performed in

LGBTQI Pride events and a new, parallel event, Operación Queer. Each of these media are selectively and symptomatically chosen and analyzed as cultural texts that I believe

are representative of the types of transgressive strategies used by contemporary

Nicaraguan artists and activists.

All of these cultural texts are elements of visual culture. There are elements of writing that form part of these media, but I defer to the visual as opposed to written cultural forms of expression given the privilege that has been assigned to written texts in cultural studies. While visual culture and the visual regime of coloniality have indeed contributed to patriarchal and heterosexist systems of oppression (via State iconographies, mass media, and the ways in which certain forms of visual art have been privileged over others) it has also been a mode of expression that contests these systems.

Also, given the visual nature of gendered performance, many individuals privilege a visual mode of expressing gender rather than through written text.

In my first chapter, I outline the uses of transvestism in the popular sketch comedy show International News Network (iNN). Transvestism and gender transgression play a key role in the aesthetic of humor and in the formation of characters that serve as stereotypical social “types4”—recognizable members of Nicaraguan society. I argue that the types of drag performed by actors Reynaldo Ruiz (Rey) and José Ramón Quintanilla

(JR) are sometimes transgressive and critical, while other times they are normative and reinforce violent hegemonies. I give a brief history of the program, then I discuss in detail various elements of the cultural politics of the show, including symbolic trashing, heterocentrism, misogyny, gender transgression, and mestizo supremacy. While I

4 I use this term, “type,” because it is the predominant term used to describe the depiction of stereotypical national figures in studies of costumbrismo. For an in-depth look of the different “types” in both Iberian and Latin American costumbrismo, see “La construcción de tipos sociales en el costumbrismo latinoamericano” by Dorde Cuvardic García. 21

recognize that iNN reinforces in many ways negative depictions of minorities, I argue that certain elements of the show can be seen as socially progressive and opening spaces for dialogue.

Overall, there is a surprisingly large quantity of sketches in iNN that provide for interesting, thoughtful critiques of heterocentric logic, the gender binary, social hierarchy, and patriarchy. Through the mode of parody and hyperbole, the varied characters of the sketches bring into focus local expressions of drag in order to question them. While basurización is used in many representations of social minorities, marginally including abject citizens, an important visibility is sometimes accompanied by transgressive and thought-provoking narratives. Other times, iNN serves as an archive of representations of dominant, normative masculinities and hegemonic social hierarchies.

Despite iNN’s shortcomings, I feel that it is important to highlight the critical gaze made available through these narratives which may indeed help to naturalize the presence of sexual diversity in Nicaragua, as well as to transgress and re-think heterocentrism and the gender binary. The use of cis-drag and transvestism as a visual trope allows for a variety of readings of these narratives, but it also directly performs the breaking down of masculinity and femininity by showing how each body is capable of performing both

(sometimes at the same time). These tactics broadcast to a wide audience of Nicaraguans, and to interested viewers on Youtube.com, are a playful political strategy that counters the rigid gender expressions that are so often promoted by national institutions. Despite the recent controversy surrounding iNN’s depiction of diversidad sexual individuals and activists’ opposition to the show, I believe that iNN provides, more often than not, a positive intervention in the mass-media imaginary of contemporary Nicaragua. 22

In my second chapter, I outline several important contemporary videos and films produced in Nicaragua that use innovative tactics to promote acceptance of gender transgression, either through the politics of sexual citizenship, queer politics, or through identification with fictional characters that represent lived experiences. I also discuss how coloniality relates to the production, distribution, and content of film and video in a

Nicaraguan context. I argue that, through a variety of representational tactics, these videos and films—not without their flaws—are actively contributing to contest certain elements of coloniality that seek to invisibilize and trivialize individuals based on their non-conforming gender expression or their non-heterosexual sexuality.

Specifically, I provide readings of Florence Jaugey’s El que todo lo puede (1997) and La Yuma (2009), Rossana Lacayo’s A quien le importa (2008) and Torovenado, la fiesta del Pueblo (2009), and Azucena Acevedo’s Encuentro de 3 generaciones de la diversidad sexual nicaragüense (2012) and Cortometraje sobre prostitución en la diversidad sexual de Nicaragua (2012). Each of these recent cultural productions provides a form of representation of Nicaragua’s diversidad sexual. Throughout my chapter, I discuss how each visual text employs elements of sexual citizenship politics or queer politics in order to come to a better understanding of recent representational trends in

Nicaraguan film and video.

My third chapter begins with a brief survey of the literature on Central American visual arts, discussing the theoretical arguments that are most convincing and helpful to my own scholarship. I then offer close readings of selected performance pieces from the artist Elyla Sinvergüenza due to their focus on gender transgression, my access to the works, and the ways that Elyla’s performances emphasize the theatricality of the body. The 23

performance pieces I engage with are: “El género no puede caminar” in 2012 along with a few contributions from Barahona’s blog, “Trans-horror” in 2013, “Sólo fantasia…” in

2014, and “Se la bailó” also in 2014. Each performance uses the theatricality of the body in order to comment on power dynamics, coloniality, Nicaraguan history, and subalternity.

Barahona’s examples of performance art are unique in the way that they “poner el cuerpo”5. By this I mean that they use the body as the main meaning-maker—they have a direct affective charge and create a relationship with spectators. Secondly, they are largely public interventions that draw from popular and folkloric forms of expression. When drawing from popular folklore, Barahona employs theatricality—exaggerating the everyday in a way that creates a scenario from which we can reflect on social norms. While

Elya’s performance art is garnering more attention in the academy and in the gallery recently, it still maintains very close ties to popular traditions. The embodied and public nature of Elyla’s performance art makes it an ideal site to study gender construction and transgression, especially since it places gender and sexuality at the center of its narratives.

I argue that Elyla Sinvergüenza’s performance art intervenes in the public memory and in public space in order to present alternatives to the hegemonic ways in which gender, sexuality, and memory are considered. By “poniendo el cuerpo”, Elyla draws specific attention to how the body makes meaning in everyday contexts through creating scenarios

5 The expression “poner el cuerpo”- literally “to place the body” means to throw oneself into the cause and to assume the risks of corporeal vulnerability. It is at once a feminist practice and theory, stemming from feminist social movements in post-2001 Argentina as described by Bárbara Sutton in her article “Poner el Cuerpo: Women’s Embodiment and Political Resistance in Argentina”. I use this term to emphasize the body as a tool of political action- it is medium, meaning-maker, and an intervention in body politics. It has also been brought to my attention that this expression was used in the Nicaraguan revolution, similarly meaning to give one’s body to the cause.

in which the body is theatricalized. Through exaggeration, Elyla highlights the processes by which norms are internalized and projected through our everyday transvestism—how our bodies are always performing gender and how we have the capacity to modify our bodies in ways that reflect our internal diversity.

My final chapter provides a history of diversidad sexual and LGBT organization in the decades following the Sandinista Revolution. I compare the strategies used by diversidad sexual individuals to fight for sexual rights and to alter hegemonic understandings of sexuality in Nicaraguan society. I then delve into the different conceptualizations of gender and sexuality that have been described in academic work done in Nicaragua in the past few decades. I end my chapter with my reflections on the annual event Operación Queer that began in 2013. This event was created parallel to—and in some ways in opposition to—traditional forms of LGBT activism and organizing I describe my personal experiences at Operación Queer in the past two years and I describe the artistic and intellectual interventions that have impacted me and my thinking the most during my fieldwork.

The celebration of diversity, coupled with challenges to re-think how we organize politically as a community, are things that I yearn for in my own community. To be sure, I have learned a lot from these radical events in Managua that I hope to reproduce closer to home. What is more, these events have made me feel at home in Managua—among incredibly intelligent, creative, and inspirational individuals. I argue that Operación Queer is a new form of intervention that shows how Nicaraguan activist culture addresses both global discourses and local needs, forming community, questioning identity politics, intervening culturally in order to combat the culture of homophobia, transphobia, and 25

patriarchy. It has moved beyond the generic confines of Pride and international models of diversidad sexual activism in order to produce a truly innovative approach that puts culture at the fore.

Chapter 1: Tuning in to Gender Transgression: The Cultural Politics of International News Network

In contemporary Nicaragua there has been a conspicuous presence of drag and gender transgression in popular media outlets, religious festivals, and in public displays of sexual diversity. To cite a few examples, the Miss Gay Nicaragua pageant enjoys an audience each year at the National Theater, the female roles in the folk dance el baile de las negras are portrayed by men, and transvestism is a key component in the annual diversidad sexual6 pride parade in Managua as well as the annual event Operación Queer.

Transvestism is particularly evident in cultural productions and activism within the diversidad sexual community but it is by no means limited to those spheres. In this chapter I will discuss in detail one such case. In the popular sketch comedy show

International News Network (iNN), transvestism plays a key role in the aesthetic of humor and in the formation of characters that serve as stereotypical social “types7”— recognizable members of Nicaraguan society. I argue that the types of drag performed by actors Reynaldo Ruiz (Rey) and José Ramón Quintanilla (JR) are sometimes transgressive and critical, while other times they are normative and reinforce violent

6 This term, diversidad sexual, can be translated as “sexual diversity”– it is the preferred term for many non-heterosexual rights groups in Nicaragua used to describe non-heterosexual individuals. It is used as an umbrella term much like many use the term “queer” in English. 7 I use this term, “type,” because it is the predominant term used to describe the depiction of stereotypical national figures in studies of costumbrismo. For an in-depth look of the different “types” in both Iberian and Latin American costumbrismo, see “La construcción de tipos sociales en el costumbrismo latinoamericano” by Dorde Cuvardic García. 27

hegemonies. I will begin by giving a brief history of the program, then I will discuss more in detail various elements of the cultural politics of the show, including symbolic trashing, heterocentrism, misogyny, gender transgression, and mestizo supremacy. While

I recognize that iNN reinforces in many ways negative depictions of minorities, I argue that certain elements of the show can be seen as socially progressive and opening spaces for dialogue.

Mass media plays an ever-increasing role throughout the globe. Even in what we might call the developing world, in the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere—Nicaragua—98 percent of urban households have access to television and there are nine local stations in Managua alone (“Urban Nicaragua: Television”). Many

Nicaraguans get their news through television—from the omnipresent and wildly popular sensationalist “Nota Roja” journalism on channels 8 and 10, to the somber 60 Minutes lookalike Esta Noche on channel 12. Television is also key for entertainment, offering a window into the latest shows from the US, Mexico, and Brazil—worlds with high-tech forensic science and fantasies of development and burgeoning middle classes. There are very few Nicaraguan programs that are filmed and written in Nicaragua. Most of the news programs are filmed locally, and there are a few educational shows for children and young adults that are produced in Managua as well, but little to no telenovelas and entertainment shows are produced annually in-country. Of the few shows produced in

Nicaragua, many do so with (international) support (and direction) from NGOs. To wit, there have only been three telenovelas produced in Nicaragua: the very successful Sexto

Sentido (Puntos de Encuentro, 2001-2005), Contracorriente (Women´s World Banking,

2011) which was a flop, and now Loma Verde (Fundación Luciérnaga, 2013) which 28

follows in the “televisionary activism” tradition of Sexto Sentido8. However, the only national show that has outlasted and proved to be more popular than these telenovelas is

International News Network (iNN), a sketch comedy show that has aired weekly since early 2007 (“Todo sobre NNN: Nicaraguan News Network”).

iNN is the brainchild of two Nicaraguan comedians, José Ramón Quintanilla (JR) and Reinaldo Ruiz (Rey). The show first aired on the radio in 2006, made up of small sketches with different accents to denote changes in character. It made the transition to

TV on channel 2 in 2007, then, in 2009 it jumped ship to channel 4, the official

Sandinista channel. In late 2013, it moved again to channel 10 (the politics behind this move are unknown). Through its tumultuous relationship with broadcasting companies, it has remained one of the most popular shows in Nicaragua and the only consistent sketch comedy show the country produces. iNN has also steadily increased its online presence, with 90,500 subscribers on its Youtube.com channel, a Facebook page with a little over

26,000 likes, and a Twitter account with a little over a thousand followers9.

Postmodern costumbrismo

The comedy of the show relies on social types and stock characters—the landowner, the campesino, the gay waiter, the bourgeois housewife, the ladies’ man, etc.

Popular characters are put in new situations each week and react to current events and pop culture. The stock characters in iNN function as a contemporary (postmodern?) spin

8 “Televisionary activism” is a term used by Cymene Howe in her article “Spectacles of Sexuality: Televisionary Activism in Nicaragua.” She defines it as, “a mediated form of social justice messaging that utilizes the pervasive, popular platform of television to create new 'visions' of social transformation to shape and change, in the words of advocates, 'culture'" (54). 9 As of August 1, 2014. 29

off of costumbrista literaturethat was popular in the XIXth century10. Costumbrista literature is characterized by small vignettes that consist of descriptions of “social types”

—recognizable professions or stereotypes—situated in local scenes. As a literary movement, costumbrismo in Latin America attempted to describe the particular roles and stereotypes of newly-developing national societies. As the costumbristas described local

“types” in humorous ways to distinguish colonial Latin American culture from Iberian culture, I argue that iNN is casting Nicaraguan “types” as particular to Nicaragua, as opposed to more international, global “types” found in Mexican, United Statesian,

Brazilian, and Colombian programs. Given iNN´s popularity and its commitment to representing and making light of Nicaraguan society, I am choosing to use the sketches of this show as an archive to study representational politics of difference in Nicaraguan television.

The stock characters in iNN are performed, in large part, by Rey and JR. They modify their bodies and voices in order to portray a wide range of characters. The drastic changes in appearance, movement, mannerisms, and speech conform to the politics of camp11 and hyperbole. This is one of the reasons why I read the performances in iNN as a

10 Costumbrismo is a Spanish (Peninsular) genre that was taken up by criollo writers in the Americas. The North American (Anglo) colonial counterpart would be the “novel of manners”. Perhaps the most famous examples of costumbrismo in Latin America are Las habaneras pintadas por sí mismas en miniaturas (1847), Los cubanos pintados por sí mismos (1852), and Los mexicanos pintados por si mismos: Tipos y costumbres nacionales (1854). Dorde Cuvardic García provides a good overview of the genre in Latin America in “La construcción de tipos sociales en el costumbrismo latinoamericano.” 11 The Oxford English Dictionary defines camp as “Ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; effeminate or homosexual; pertaining to or characteristic of homosexuals” ("camp, adj. and n.5."). I should mention that camp refers to an aesthetic that some have argued is apolitical or incongruent with politics (Susan Sontag in “Notes on ‘Camp’”). However, I point to Fabio Cleto’s reader Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject as evidence of the complexity of this aesthetic and the ways in which it intersects with politics. 30

form of drag12. While Rey and JR do indeed wear feminine clothing and makeup to perform female characters, I consider their portrayal of male characters a form of drag as well, given that it involves similar levels of exaggeration, body modification, and mimesis. This mimesis I refer to is that of the social types in the contemporary

Nicaraguan imaginary—the stereotypical types of people that make up society. There is the lazy campesino, the flamboyantly gay waiter, the closeted, degenerate landowner, the jealous bourgeois woman, the thieving evangelist, the pothead, etc. As mentioned above,

I consider the representations of these types as a form of postmodern costumbrismo.

Mexican costumbrismo in the 19th century served to represent Mexican national “types” in order to explain the virtues and vices of different segments of the population, thereby justifying a social hierarchy that, on the one hand, attempted to present Mexican society as wholly mestizo, and on the other hand, described the virtues of lighter-skinned

Mexicans and patriarchal values while criticizing poorer, more indigenous members of society. In this postmodern, Nicaraguan version of costumbrismo, I argue that some of the very same politics of justifying social order along racist, classist, and patriarchal rationales takes place. The characters represented in iNN are portrayed with differing levels of “symbolic trashing” or basurización.

Basurización

12 In this dissertation, I use the term “drag” to highlight the performativity of gender. RuPaul has famously stated, “You’re born naked and the rest is drag...Drag is everything. I don’t differentiate drag from dressing up or dressing down. Whatever you put on after you get out of the shower is your drag” (ix). Judith Butler has more famously described gender as performative in a similar way, albeit as a “compulsory practice” (see Bodies that Matter 231) 31

Symbolic trashing, or basurización is a concept developed by Rocío Silva

Santisteban in her book El factor asco: basurización simbólica y discursos autoritarios en el Perú contemporáneo in which she analyzes the ways in which women, the economically disenfranchised, indigenous peoples, and other minorities are portrayed in authoritarian discourses and in the television industry in Peru. Basurización refers to the discursive subject-object relations through which the politics of representing the “other” is characterized by “lo bárbaro, lo exótico-hiperbólico, lo pasional, lo folclórico y lo abyecto, puesto que todo lo que simbólicamente es visto como “descomposición” debe ser puesto afuera” (63-64). Silva Santisteban employs Julia Kristeva’s theories on abjection wherein the abject is an element of the subject that produces nausea and repulsion—for example, vomit or excrement are integral elements of human subjects, yet they disgust us and we are inclined to distance ourselves from them. At the same time, basurización implies a fascination with and an attraction to the abject as well, given that we derive a certain (perverse?) pleasure and excitement from trashiness, scandal, and shock13.

I believe that the dual repulsion-attraction described by Silva Santisteban’s concept of basurización is a productive way to analyze the politics of representation in iNN. While marginalized groups are certainly depicted as “trashy,” the program also

13 The full quote from Silva is: “[L]o otro en general y lo latinoamericano en particular expresan esa mezcla simbólicamente poderosa entre lo bárbaro, lo exótico-hiperbólico, lo pasional, lo folclórico y lo abyecto, puesto que todo lo que simbólicamente es visto como “descomposición” debe ser puesto afuera. Pero, incluso sin ahorrarse el olor a podredumbre, el detritos no deja de tener una cierta atracción debido a su poder de escandalizar, de perturbar, de crear una fisura. La basura tiene dos lados: el oscuro y tenebroso, que provoca asco y repugnancia; y el lado extrañamente adictivo que, a pesar de todo, nos invita a revolver en ella para destapar huellas de cierto goce anterior” (63-64) 32

cultivates an intimate fascination with abject characters that are drawn into viewers’ television sets and minds, even as they are expelled from mainstream cultural landscapes.

To be sure, iNN tends to trash/basurizar certain social groups over others. In this way, the program contributes to a social hierarchy of Nicaraguan society in which, for example, middle-class, male, mestizo Managuans are not ridiculed with the same frequency as, say, campesinos or costeños14. However, very few, if any, social groups completely escape parody and ridicule on the program. Even president Daniel Ortega has been the butt of jokes due to his proclivity for meaningless ceremony in international politics15. In the case studies below, I am particularly interested in how violent masculinity, misogyny, and classism are reproduced by the representational politics of iNN, but I also wish to explore the ways in which basurización is used to attract audiences to marginalized groups.

I argue that iNN makes important interventions in the ideological battlefield that is mass media—where public opinions can certainly be swayed to accept, tolerate, better understand—or, conversely—mistrust, reject, or despise minority social groups16. In general, I agree that iNN’s representational politics support normative masculinity, misogyny, and classism. However, I am not satisfied with an interpretation of the show

14 I describe in detail further on who costeños are and the politics surrounding their representation. 15 In one episode (NNN uploaded to Youtube.com on December 1, 2009), Daniel Ortega and Hugo Chavez exchange so many meaningless awards to each other that they fall over from the weight of so many medals and laurels bestowed on them. In other words, they are reduced to inaction by the hefty theatricality of the State (“NNN Hugo Chavez y Daniel Ortega 015.flv”). 16 I am reminded of parasocial contact hypothesis in the field of Social Psychology whereby researchers posit the possibility of changing attitudes toward social groups through exposure to said groups through audio-visual media. Specifically, I point to the work of Schiappa, Gregg, and Hewes who found that sexual prejudice toward gays and lesbians was reduced in college students who were frequently exposed to gay and lesbian characters in an audio-visual medium. See works cited for further reading. 33

that categorically rejects it for its patriarchal and homophobic leanings. I am convinced that there are elements of the show’s form and content that serve to reveal the performativity and constructedness of gender expression and sexuality. Furthermore, I believe that elements of the show critique the hegemonic ideology of gender, including the gender binary, the rigidity of sexual identity/orientation, and compulsory heterosexuality. Here, I am disagreeing with some prominent LGBT and feminist activists in Nicaragua who have recently campaigned to remove iNN from the air.

However, I hope to show through my analyses of several episodes that the show serves as an alternative archive that allows us to think critically of the popular Nicaraguan sexual imaginary as well as the masculinities and femininities that inhabit it.

Drag and Gender Transgression

Given that iNN is a sketch comedy show, it should be understood that transvestism is primarily is used for comic effect. However, I argue that often times drag is used as a mode that critiques traditional gender roles and masculinities. It should be noted that all of the characters are exaggerated and parodic, not just those who are queer

(diversidad sexual). Due to the popularity of the show, I believe that the drag elements of the show dialogue directly with the state-sponsored hegemonic sexual ideology. Also, the mere fact of the high visibility of sexual Others in the show may have important effects on embodied visual regimes in contemporary Nicaraguan society.

As I have elaborated in the introduction, I rely on the theories of RuPaul, Severo

Sarduy, Judith Butler, and Nelly Richard to define drag as the performance of gender. In this way, I denaturalize any pre-supposed “proper” or “normal” way of expressing gender. This allows us to see all gender expression as a selective but not necessarily 34

conscious performance of one’s cultural archive. In this way, I argue that gender expression is necessarily imitative of cultural models such as parental figures, acquaintances, literary and popular figures, etc. In the context of a sketch comedy show such as iNN, I argue that the drag performed is a combination of both actors’ unconscious everyday gender expression as well as highly performative expressions of gender that consciously appeal to cultural models.

In other words, at times actors are portraying themselves as they would off air, while at others, they are consciously performing characters with gender expressions different from their everyday performances. For example, there are times that Rey and

J.R. appear as themselves in sketches while in other instances they perform recognizable characters. When playing themselves, the actors are still performing their everyday gender—a masculinity that, for the most part, conforms to normative expectations. When they perform characters such as Paquita la del Barrio, Jacinto Barba, or Juan Pérez, Rey and J.R. modify their everyday gender performance in order to appeal to exaggerated forms of masculinity or femininity.

I argue that even when the performative expression of gender is conscious, it is representative of the actors’ cultural archives comprised of models of gendered behavior available in Nicaragua’s cultural imaginary. For example, Enrique Flores is a character that exudes an exaggerated normative masculinity—his smugness, his aggressive body posture, and his grating diatribes are consistent with a model of masculinity that is recognizable in Nicaragua. I argue that the performance of this character (and his masculinity) can be read as an imitation/interpretation of a form of masculinity that is observable in the public sphere. In other words, the character Enrique Flores is not 35

created in a vacuum—he is an extension and a parody of a type of masculinity that the actor, Rey, and his public are familiar with. The same is true for a variety of characters performed on iNN.

Gender transgression is a specific form of drag takes place when attention is drawn to a body because of the way it is breaking with gendered expectations. The most common form of drag is normative cis-drag whereby individuals conform to the parameters of culturally-appropriate gender expression which corresponds to the gender they are assigned according to their apparent “sex” 17. Examples of normative cis-drag abound—the vast majority of individuals, especially in public spaces and in mass-media, perform normative cis-drag. Cis-drag is men dressing as men and women dressing as women—I call it drag to point out that it is just as performative as transgressive drag.

Transgressive drag is characterized by its departure from hegemonic expectations placed on gendered bodies. Transgressive drag is dressing outside of the box—in a shocking, eye-catching, or uncomfortable way. Transgressive drag prompts eye rolling, confusion, and disgust. Gender transgression is usually thought of as a male-bodied or female- bodied individual dressing as feminine or masculine, respectively. However, cis-drag can also break expectations and be transgressive either through hyperbole or by displaying fissures in an otherwise consistent performance. The importance of gender transgression

17 I choose to put “sex” in scare quotes because I, with Butler, argue that sex, like gender, is a social construct. The difference between sex and gender is that sex is usually a biological distinction based on genitalia, whereas gender refers to identity and expression. However, I am against the notion that there are two biologically distinct sexes (male and female). I am struck by the overwhelming presence of intersex and sexually-ambiguous individuals that are often categorized unjustly within the sexual binary as either male or female. I also believe that genitalia are interpreted through a cultural lens, therefore there can be no consensus on absolute definitions of male or female genitalia. 36

is that it breaks with and calls into question normalized gender expectations. Butler writes,