Jotería Studies

Habib, Samar. Introduction to Islam and Homosexuality, edited by The etymology and significance of the term jotería is Samar Habib, xvii–lxii. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010. important to understanding the relatively new but Kugle, Scott Siraj al-Haqq. “Sexuality, Diversity, and Ethics in the growing academic field known as jotería studies. The Agenda of Progressive Muslims.” In Progressive Muslims: On term jotería derives from the colloquial Spanish-language Justice, Gender, and Pluralism, edited by Omid Safi, 190–234. term joto (sissy, faggot), one of three pejorative terms (the Oxford: Oneworld, 2003. others being puto and maricón) for gay men in Mexico and Malti-Douglas, Fedwa. Introduction to The Innocence of the Devil, in Mexican and Chicanx (a gender-neutral version of by Nawal El Saadawi, vii–xlv. Translated by Sherif Hetata. Chicano/a; also, Latinx) communities in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. According to Robert Buffington (1997), the term joto Malti-Douglas, Fedwa. Men, Women, and God(s): Nawal El resembles a bastardized past participle of the word joder Saadawi and Arab Feminist Poetics. Berkeley: University of (to fuck), but Buffington suggests the word derives not California Press, 1995. from joder, but from Jota (Cell Block J) of the Lecumberri Malti-Douglas, Fedwa. “Tribadism/Lesbianism and the Sexualized federal penitentiary—in existence from 1900 to 1976—in Body in Medieval Arabo-Islamic Narratives.” In Same Sex Love Mexico City, where prison authorities kept effeminate and Desire among Women in the Middle Ages, edited by Francesca Canadé Sautman and Pamela Sheingorn, 123–141. men isolated from the rest of the prison population New York: Palgrave, 2001. starting in the early part of the twentieth century. Prisoners in Cell Block J were called jotos, Buffington Mansour, Elham. Anā hiya anti. Beirut: Riad el-Rayyes, 2000. Translated and edited by Samar Habib as I Am You posits, and the word became synonymous with homosex- (Youngstown, NY: Cambria Press, 2008). uality; yet, the word existed before this period. Although Massad, Joseph A. Desiring Arabs. Chicago: University of Chicago for some jotería is a stand-in for the US umbrella term Press, 2007. queer, jotería has a cultural, linguistic, and political specificity not captured in queer. Given the Mexican Saadawi, Nawal El. The Innocence of the Devil. Translated by Sherif Hetata. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. and US Chicanx origins of the terms joto and jotería, other Originally published as Jannāt wa-Iblīs (Beirut: Dār al-Ādāb, Latinx folks sometimes feel excluded by the nomenclature, 1992). but this is changing as people engage with it and as the Samman, Hanadi al-. “Out of the Closet: Representation of field decolonizes and becomes more inclusive. It is hard to Homosexuals and Lesbians in Modern Arabic Literature.” pinpoint an exact year when the field of jotería studies was Journal of Arabic Literature 39, no. 2 (2008): 270–310. created, given the long trajectory of queer Chicanx and Samman, Hanadi al-, and Tarek El-Ariss. “Queer Affects: Latinx folks engaged in scholarship and cultural produc- Introduction.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 45, tion. However, the development of the Association for no. 2 (2013): 205–209. Jotería Arts, Activism, and Scholarship (AJAAS) in 2011, Sirees, Nihad. Ḥālat shaghaf. Beirut: Dār ʿAṭiyya li-al-Nashr, its first conference in 2012, and the publication of a 1998. special issue of Aztlán on jotería studies in 2014 were Whitaker, Brian. Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the critical, formative events in the growth of the field. Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Resignification of Jotería Daniel Enrique Pérez argues that jotería studies “can be considered a critical site of inquiry that centers on nonheteronormative gender and sexuality as related to mestizo subjectivities” (2014, 144). For Xamuel Bañales, Jotería Studies jotería studies is a decolonial project; he argues that contrary to the “reclaiming of fag or other terms like dyke EDDY FRANCISCO ALVAREZ JR. and queer, the resignification of Jotería … is part of a Assistant Professor, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies decolonial collective movement—an emerging political Portland State University, Portland, OR term that challenges Western thought” (2014, 156). The influential Chicana lesbian scholar Gloria Anzaldúa (1942– JORGE ESTRADA 2004) helped launch the academic usage of the term jotería Visiting Assistant Professor, Women’sandGenderStudies Department in her classic work Borderlands/La Frontera: The New State University of New York, Oneonta Mestiza (1987) when she wrote, “People, listen to what your jotería is saying” (85). This widely cited command has been taken seriously by jotería scholars, artists, and activists An academic field evolving at the intersection of as confirming that they have something valuable to say and Chicanx, Latinx, queer of color, and transgender that their experiences need to be heard. Between 1987 and studies. the Aztlán special issue in 2014 (the so-called jotería studies

GLOBAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENDER, AND QUEER HISTORY 863 Jotería Studies dossier), a vibrant body of work was published using the [1983]), The Last Generation (1993), and Virgins, term and helping to form the field. In the dossier, Anita Guerrillas, and Locas: Gay Latino Men Write about Love Tijerina Revilla and José Manuel Santillána (2014) outline (2001; edited by Jaime Cortez), Tomás Almaguer’s essay tenets of jotería identity and consciousness, which include “Chicano Men: A Cartography of Homosexual Identity radical queer love, commitment to multidimensional social and Behavior,” and fiction by Michael Nava, John Rechy, justice, and rejection of racism and colonization. Francisco and Terri de la Peña are part of the legacy of jotería J. Galarte, writing about trans inclusion in jotería studies, studies, as are women-of-color feminist texts by Audre asserts that “the challenge for jotería studies is to be Lorde, bell hooks, Emma Pérez, Chela Sandoval, and attentive to the lived realities of trans* Chican@ folk and to others. tatiana de la tierra’s poetry, photographs, and consider how this can inform and challenge how we editorial work, and Carla Trujillo’s Chicana Lesbians: The understand varying assemblages of race, gender, sexuality, Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About (1991) and Living and nation” (2014, 233). Chicana Theory (1997) are included among the founda- Importantly, not everyone doing queer and trans tional influences of jotería studies. More recently, queer-of- studies work at the intersection of Chicanx/Latinx studies color theorists, such as Leonel Cantú, José Esteban Muñoz, Horacio N. Roque Ramírez, Juana María Rodríguez, is comfortable saying they are engaged in jotería studies. Richard T. Rodríguez, Catrióna Rueda Esquibel, and Rita In part, this is due to the lack of legibility of the term in Urquijo-Ruiz have also contributed to the expanding field. mainstream academic circles, including in queer studies. Rigoberto González’s Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Another reason is that that field is grounded in border Mariposa (2011) is also an influential text. However, it was consciousness and may be attributed to Mexican or the publication of the dossier that helped to name, curate, Chicano communities specifically. For some, the use of and shape the field, as well as to provide legibility, primarily the pejorative term jotería as a term of empowerment is within the North American academy. still a challenge. Although these scholars choose not to use jotería to describe their work, their contributions are part As jotería studies scholars join the faculties in US of the intellectual lineage that nonetheless contributes to universities, more students are exposed to the field. an understanding of the field. Currently, jotería studies is taught in Chicanx, Latinx, and queer studies, sociology, and education courses, to name a Jotería studies is a political project and scholarly field few. Students may find an entire undergraduate or vibrantly evolving at the intersection of Chicanx, Latinx, graduate course on jotería studies, or instructors who queer of color, and transgender studies concerned with the include readings on the syllabi or use a jotería pedagogical histories, identities, scholarly works, and artistic and activist approach in their classes at the University of Nevada, practices of queer Chicanx and Latinx people. In the jotería Reno; the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Portland State studies dossier, editor Michael Hames-García defines jotería University; the University of Oregon; Oregon State studies as “identifiable but not yet fully formed” (138). University; the University of Michigan; the University This collection of essays put jotería studies on the map and of California, Davis; the University of California, Santa is regarded by scholars and educators as a foundational Barbara; the University of California, San Diego; the pedagogical, historical, and theoretical text, containing University of Minnesota, and some of the California State essays on topics ranging from jotería activism to spirituality, Universities, among others, where some of the innovators identity, aesthetics, pedagogy, and trans studies. They serve in the field are teaching or in graduate school. Artists and as an entry into the field and leave room for others to activists are central to jotería studies, as are movements continue to define it and reimagine its contours. As Hames- such as the undocuqueer movement, led by a network of García wrote, the essays in the dossier are “gestures toward queer undocumented immigrant activists fighting for the elaborating this emergent formation, whatever it might rights of undocumented youth and their families (Equality finally become” (2014, 138). Archive 2018). The pathbreaking labors of Bamby Salcedo, immigrant and trans rights activist and founder Emergence of Jotería Studies of the TransLatin@ Coalition, have been inspirational to For many, jotería studies has a longer historical genealogy jotería studies. Her work has been documented by several than one might expect. The field dates back to the early jotería studies scholars, and she has led workshops and work of gay and lesbian Chicanx artists and activists of the given keynote speeches at many conferences and symposia late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, as well as Chicana feminists These examples show how intersectionality and coalition such as Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga (1952–), who building are important to the field. These coalitions were coedited the landmark anthology This Bridge Called My germinating as early as 2006, when an undergraduate Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981). conference called La Jotería was held at the University of Certainly, works such as Moraga’s Loving in the War California, Los Angeles, organized by queer Chicanx and Years: lo que nunca pasó por sus labios (Loving in the War Latinx students and activists (Santillana 2011). Many of Years: That which never passed through her lips; 2000 the organizers and attendees have moved on to make

864 GLOBAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENDER, AND QUEER HISTORY Jotería Studies important contributions to the field. US-based artists being intentional about centering indigeneity and Afro- Monica Palacios, Yosimar Reyes, Julio Salgado, Adelina diasporic and intraethnic alliances. Cross-generational Anthony, Carlos Manuel, and Hector Silva have made exchanges among artists, scholars, and activists have led important contributions through the provocations in their to the intersection of activism, solidarity, community, and art and have inspired jotería scholarship on their work. coalition, taking seriously activism and politics as central Recent scholarship on jotería studies in mainstream to knowledge production and art practice. These tenets publications includes Alejandro Madrid’s essay about were important in the development of AJAAS but can Mexican icon Juan Gabriel in a 2018 issue of GLQ: A also be seen as central to jotería studies scholarship. Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, which also includes a Several scholars in the jotería studies dossier documented poem by Maya Chinchilla, and Ellie Hernández’s essay their own engagements with and contributions to the “Cultura Jotería (Jotería Culture): The Ins and Outs of burgeoning field of jotería studies. Since then, both Latina/o Popular Culture” in The Routledge Handbook of jotería studies and AJAAS have flourished in academic Latina/o Pop Culture (2016). Another key text within this and community spaces in the United States, and several developing canon is Queer in Aztlan: Chicano Male scholars identify their work as jotería studies, although the Recollections of Consciousness and Coming Out, edited by origins of this work predates both the 2014 dossier and Adelaida del Castillo and Gibrán Güido. Through these the organization. Speaking of the history of the field, interdisciplinary and intersectional projects, jotería studies Hames-García noted that “jotería studies is not some- engages with activism, popular culture, affect, memory, thing new. It feels old, continuous with years of healing, sex positivity, self-care, and spirituality. organizing, reading, writing, and activism. In another Jotería studies is nurtured by its relationship with the sense, of course, it is new, so I have been trying to put my AJAAS, which was founded in 2011 after meetings in finger on exactly what is new about it. I think it has to do Berkeley, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. The founders of with its face-to-faceness” (2014, 4). jotería studies met at the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS), a Chicanx professional Recent Developments organization that brings together academics, students, Jotería studies is continually being shaped by artistic, and community members doing scholarship on or for cultural, political, and scholarly developments. These Chicanas/os/xs and Latinas/os/x. The development of include art exhibits, films, activist platforms, and college AJAAS followed a route similar to that of Mujeres Activas courses on jotería studies, as well as the AJAAS en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS; Women Active in conferences and opportunities for publication. One Letters and Social Change), which broke off from NACCS important advance was the establishment of Kórima Press and created its own organization in 1982. Women and gay/ by poet and activist Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano, one the lesbian members of NACCS became frustrated with the original founders of the AJAAS. Kórima Press is an lack of representation and a safe space for them to share independent publisher committed to “queer Chicana and their work within the organization. The Lesbian Caucus Chicano literary art,” according to its website. Publishing was created in 1990, and in 1993 the Gay Caucus was books by Claudia Rodríguez, Maya Chinchilla, Michael incorporated into NACCS and became the Joto Caucus Nava, Anel I. Flores, Adelina Anthony, Joe Delgado, two years later. In 2007 the Joto Caucus of the NACCS Cathy Arellano, and others, Kórima has been a nexus of hosted its first conference at the University of Nevada, Las creativity, organizing book launches and poetry readings Vegas, titled Towards a Queer Homeland: Bridging across the United States. Its publications serve as an Communities and Resisting Hate. This conference cata- archive of jotería literary innovation and inspire new pulted a critical mass of queer Latinx and Chicanx people theorizations and scholarship grounded in the lexicon of into a sequence of organized events (conferences, working jotería studies. These works take an unapologetically meetings, and symposia), including large events at the introspective approach to identity and cultural production University of Oregon (2008) and California State that is attentive to the impacts of colonialism, homo- University, Los Angeles (2010). At that point many felt normativity, neoliberalism, and racism. Another literary it was time to create their own organization, and the AJAAS and artistic endeavor anchored in jotería studies is the was established in 2011. In 2012 the first AJAAS Jotería Storytelling Project developed by Ernesto J. conference took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Martínez in collaboration with Maya Gonzalez, Adelina followed by conferences in Phoenix in 2014 and Anthony, and other artists (AJAAS 2018). Minneapolis in 2017; the next meetings were planned for While not all projects use the term jotería, many 2019 in Portland, Oregon, and 2021 in Reno, Nevada. explicitly do, and they are guided by the evolving As AJAAS and jotería studies are symbiotic, the vocabulary and framework jotería studies provides, which organization and its regional offshoots have engaged in allow them to claim identities and epistemologies typically defining, debating, healing, loving, creating space, and shunned by the more traditional Chicano studies, Latino

GLOBAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENDER, AND QUEER HISTORY 865 Jotería Studies studies, and queer theory (espoused especially by white thorough research on this growing field. Joteria studies academics who remain uncritical of whiteness). Others needs more and new critical voices at various intersections build on jotería frameworks, developing such new theories of identities and experiences, including the transnational as Daniel Enrique Pérez’s “mariposa consciousness” and connections described above and engagement with Roberto Orozco’s “critical race jotería theory.” The voices transgender voices and experiences. As a field that is still of queer US Central Americans have also been part of expanding and finding its range of analytical and jotería studies, as exemplified by the scholarship of methodological approaches, jotería studies continues to Horacio N. Roque Ramirez, Suyapa Portillo, Raquel be shaped by scholars, activists, and artists as they Gutierrez, William Calvo-Quirós, and Juan Rios, and the confront the political climate around them. Its newness poetry, performance, and editorial work of Maya and indeed its marginal status in the academy allow for a Chinchilla, whose poem “Jota Poetics” insinuates jotería malleability that is exciting, promising, and fruitful. as a “home” for the poet (2014). SEE ALSO Human Rights and Activism in Latin America; Neoliberalism in Latin America; Queer in Latin Possible Future Directions America; tatiana de la tierra (1961–2012); Travesti The future of jotería studies is generative. As a political and Trans Activism in Latin America and the project, jotería studies is providing a truly intersectional Caribbean perspective and making an effort to continuously engage queer, trans, gender-nonconforming, indigenous, Afro- BIBLIOGRAPHY diasporic, and immigrant voices and perspectives. Future Almaguer, Tomás. “Chicano Men: A Cartography of Homosexual directions include transnational approaches that cross Identity and Behavior.” In The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. borders to address LGBTQ culture and politics not only Edited by Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, and David M. in Mexico but also in other places, such as Panama, Halperin, 255–273. New York: Routledge, 1993. Guatemala, and Argentina, for example. Scholars in the Anthony, Adelina, Dino Foxx, and Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano. fields of linguistics, philosophy, film and media, art history, Tragic Bitches: An Experiment in Queer Xicana and Xicano and higher education are applying jotería studies to their Performance. San Francisco: Kórima Press, 2013. perspectives. For example, Pedro DiPietro studies modes of Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San being “permeated by indigenous cosmologies (Aymara, Francisco: Aunt Lute Press, 1987. Quechua, and Nahua), … [and] the production of queer Association for Jotería Arts, Activism, and Scholarship. Accessed space by comparing networks of racialized travestis in the 26 June 2018. http://www.ajaas.com/ Andes to jotería networks in the San Francisco Bay area,” as Bañales, Xamuel. “Jotería: A Decolonizing Political Project.” Aztlán: noted on his faculty webpage (Syracuse University 2018). A Journal of Chicano Studies 39, no. 1 (2014): 155–166. Furthermore, “travesti and jotería both point to the Buffington, Robert. “Los Jotos [The Jotos]: Contested Visions of geopolitical tensions between West and non-West. Latina Homosexuality in Modern Mexico.” In Sex and Sexuality in and Chicana spatial thinking enables the comparative study Latin America, edited by Daniel Balderston and Donna J. Guy, that DiPietro pursues.” Cristina Serna, a queer Chicana art 118–132. New York: New York University Press, 1997. historian, writes about the cultural, aesthetic, and political Castillo, Adelaida del, and Gibrán Güido. Queer in Aztlán: practices of feminist and queer artists in twentieth- and Chicano Male Recollections of Consciousness and Coming Out. twenty-first-century US Latina/o and Latin American social San Diego, CA: Cognella Press, 2015. movements. Serna’s work on Mexican lesbian feminist and Chinchilla, Maya. The Cha-Cha Files: A Chapina Poética [The queer Chicana feminist art highlights the way art has been a Cha-Cha Files: A Poetic Guatemalan]. San Francisco: Kórima medium for activists to engage in transborder dialogue Press, 2014. about identity, the border, culture, and social justice Coronado, Raúl. “Bringing It Back Home: Desire, Jotos, and (Colgate University 2018). Across the border, Mexico Men.” In The Chicana/o Cultural Studies Reader, edited City–based Alexandra Rodríguez de Ruiz is a trans activist by Angie Chabram-Dernersesian, 233–240. New York: Routledge, 2006. who lived for many years in the United States. Her activism and publications about her work are part of the Equality Archive. “Undocuqueer Movement.” Accessed 26 June 2018. http://equalityarchive.com/issues/undocuqueer-movement/ transnational conversation in jotería studies. These are only a few examples of the transnational conversation unfolding Galarte, Francisco J. “On Trans Chican@s: Amor, Justicia y ” and building jotería studies. Diginidad [Love, Justice and Dignity]. Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 39, no. 1 (2014): 229–236. Space limitations in this entry do not permit mention González, Rigoberto. Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano of everyone who has contributed to and continues to Mariposa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011. shape jotería studies through their scholarship, art, and Hames-García, Michael. “Jotería Studies, or the Political Is activism. However, this entry should serve as a starting Personal.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 39, no. 1 point for students and scholars interested in doing more (2014): 135–141.

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