Essays

THEY DIDN’T EXPECT US TO SURVIVE!

Poetics against Racism: Sexual Dissent, Archives and Imaginaries.

This online event features a conversation about intersectionalities, as relating to the bodies of artists Malvin Montero, LoMaasBello and Johan Mijail. It stems from their interest in revealing heteronormative control systems as part of the colonial matrix of capitalist culture, and its implications in racism as a culture of discrimination.

The dialogue will present reflections that focus on writing, and the construction of imaginaries in contemporary art, music, dance, video, cultural cross-dressing, and poetry. These act as the engines of production for criticism of white, heteronormative, male sensibilities. In the midst of a planetary crisis, what can disobedient bodies say? From escaped bodies how is one to divert the civilizing mandate from heteronorma? How can one propose, from the black body, a thought and writing critical to ‘common sense’?

This online event invites reflections that strain the flow of consumable meanings, by proposing that the memory that activates black bodies and sexual dissidents in the cultural fabric is resistance in life.

THEY

DIDN’T

EXPECT US TO SURVIVE! as the Cimarron shouts in the fight against heterosexual colonialism, against racism

THEY DIDN’T EXPECT US TO SURVIVE! as an activist shouts.

Amor Vegetal, Co-habitar, 2016, Johan Mijai

Maroon patch of scriptable promiscuity.

by Johan Mijail

One of the emancipating effects of sexual dissent activism has been to give me the feeling of not being alone. I have found a reflection in the Other, through the visibility of their existence and work, outside the sphere of heterocisdomination.

Loneliness for me, is not just the absence of something, it means nostalgia - for the memory of a caress, a hug or a kiss. Loneliness for me is the end of the aesthetic-political project of Vegetable Love. Maybe loneliness is learning to live in pain.

I stopped feeling alone in my teens, when I read Aída Cartagena Portalatín. Through her, I learned that one is never alone, that we have our stature, that is, a body. Portalatín writes “A woman is alone. Alone with her stature.” I reinterpret that definitive verse, taking Portalatín as a kind of Dominican queer mother, who invites us to imagine and think, in this deeply transvestophobic country, of a complex and experimental idea of the late–camp (protoqueer). She stands as a female-feminist negricia, in a generation of poetry dominated by the masculizing tradition of Dominican literature, that does not recognize, except for in a few cases (Manuel Rueda, Luis Alfredo Torres, Pedro René Contín Aybar or Hilma Contreras) that there is a curved and dystopian line marking where people of sexual and gender diversity/dissent have been, through time and place, forever, in all the spaces of life.

We must urgently break down this idea of loneliness, to give meaning to multiple deviations from the heteronormative. We must find political encouragement in human diversity, a philosophy that places the Ubuntu credo “I am because others have been” as relevant. I don’t dance alone in this. I dance, collectively, in understanding, love, tension and controversy, with my sisters in activism.

We write to propose interruptions to the hegemonic logics that produce ‘meaning’. We write to deny the triumph of heterosexuality as a form of organization of life, and to puncture holes in the forms of representation that make supremacist realities in one body, whilst rejecting others. We write to blow up the cognitive production that manufactures racist narratives, because the bodies we have are not; not straight, not white.

Challenges to the sex-gender binary appear in my body from a subversive cross-dressing that experiences nonconformity to heteronormality hegemony from a “first I am black” critical political position. In this journey I found it more pleasant to think of microscopic spaces of cognitive emancipation.

For me, a critique of the coloniality of power must have as one of its priorities the construction of a black rationality. I stimulate the production of a black thought that becomes body, from the body and with the body. Speaking as a transvestite does not refer, only, to an appeal by the subject but also to the discourse. In other words, although there is a critique of the binary idea of identity, cross-dressing involves building a discursive reflection that starts from a proposal of my own existence, through the spaces of writing and contemporary art.

In this sense one of the strongest and most revealing learnings I have experienced through cultural cross-dressing has been being able to activate solidarity with other transvestites, to know a language. I became a transvestite to motivate others to be themselves, not for men to write to me, to show me their penis without even saying “hello”, while masturbating, hidden from their wives, girlfriends or mothers.

I became a transvestite to decolonize my political and historical experience with language. I became a transvestite to establish a decolonial relationship with the cis and heterosexual normative production of writing and images: lives. I became a transvestite not to be the recipient of the failure of masculinity and capitalist heterosexuality, but to take a position that questions the heteronormative tradition of sex, and the clinical and colonial understandings of gender as binary and biological.

What is it to be trans? What is it to be a transvestite? What is it to be black?

Object of transit: memoirs and utopias of a black transmaricon

Me, the one with the cotton candy hairs. Me, the one with the toasted skin flavored with Café Santo Domingo. I, who now star in screens of cinema, who appears on local television, who gets invited to Christian radio programs and stations that claim to be progressive. I, the one with the poems without metaphors, the one of the musicalized voice, the chamaquito of San Cristóbal who was obtained his passport at fifteen because the Orishas were opening roads to the other side. I, who is accused of being a meist, read megraphy in a borrowed bed but which feels mine and think of a Jeannette Miller less tired of herself. I think of a Santo Domingo that I only have close through Instagram users, I think of that Caribbean sun that looks like the fire pit that gave flames at twelve noon in the countryside that was really a neighborhood, but for those of us, that what is not a capital is woodlands and snakes. I write from myself - object of transit, eternal traveler of the genre, black - but with the memories of the lived in alleys of the Digital Republic, of that little New York, of the island that constitutes this bridge, my back.

I was born in the furrows of a people who have lost hope, in the alley of the forgotten, in the hand of those who do not even have their own selves. I was born in a devil’s locker that has the name of saint and therefore of a deceased. On streets that although dead, bleeds too much. On a roof that was scratched by black women who wanted to be free and who in their own way taught me to be. Women who were called witches and those who tried to protect me with bitter drinks which only served to connect me more to them. Women who were never too much women. When I think of the margin I don’t think queer, nor incarefully organized acronyms, I don’t think of “conditions”, mental illness, electro-chock, I think of myself. Scream in the voice of me pineapple “I’m not queer, I’m black, my orichas didn’t read J. Butler.”

In my neighborhood they don’t take you to conversation clinics because the house and school work like one. I grew up surrounded by love and hate. I grew up in evangelical churches, in assemblies, in places where I learned to feel, but where I am not welcome. I started building myself a man on corners where laughter was not necessary, on basketball and football courts, in old cars and bicycles with sound systems adapted for music to break your eardrums. I thought I was welcome in the parks, in spots, in the disco clubs, under the bridges, but also there I had to fight for the category I now run away from, man. My mother doesn’t think me a man, but she says I’m the one who calibrates the engine, instead of being in the tail, the one who sharpens the machete when they talk loud to me, the one that the metresas gave skills to work his visa if he wants, the tigueron with tits, the dembowsero. I am the materialization of the dream of my ancestrxes.

I have blurred the ages, because they say that I was born in the year of apocalyptic prophecies, seeing the light of this plane an autumn of 2000 at 12 noon makes me the problem. They accuse me of causing deaths, of fussing the world, of breaking order, of provoking God’s wrath. They say I’m the future and they forget all the other verbal times. They steal my words and spaces. I’m made of memories. The absolute present does not exist, therefore I do not believe when I am told to live the now, because my now is a memory of a thousand things lived. I don’t escape the past. My past, my now, is an extinct megafauna that still roars when I get my black rage. My now is the violence that passes through a feminized body that they turn into holes, my now is the bullet, the whip, the force that is exerted on a masculinity associated with the beast, my now is a memory of plantations. My now is a kiss to genderless bodies because before it was colonized I didn’t have it. My now is a dream in the present, past and future.

I came across words in memories. In the musicality of the voices that no psychiatrist has been able to explain and but do not cease with medications. Voices shouting oral traditions that scattered through out the world, voices that recognize me as part of this diaspora. The voices were translated into texts, poems, songs, stories and I’m just a scriber. I just leave record that I exist and existed from the before, from the now on and from the always. The reason for my writing is that and from that is where my existence comes from, but my existence is not individual. My existence is collective, for that reason the pains are intense, but so are the joys. I am no one’s voice, all have a voice; but I am the fusion of sounds and melodies that are created with the cries of millions of migrants, millions of black people, of millions of people who had to typecast in six acronyms because they built us binaries.

I’m an anti-revolution revolutionary. I’m in love. I find in the love of all dissenting bodies the taste of happiness, my revolution is tenderness. The only homeland I fight for is my body. I learned to know me from nowhere but Ju, because I had to clear the borders to keep sculpting myself. I have had to destroy categorized versions and as a tree grow down, turn into the mud, in the excreta of every animal, find mycorrhizaes, make symbiosis, learn quorum sensing and nourish the root to become strong.

I’m building a world. A world further and further from the center, a world of plants that do not give flowers and flowers that grow on the mud. A world for me and for the children I will not bring to earth, but which I will raise as I escape a masculinity that has been denied fatherhood. I’m hugging the girl and the woman I was, while I tell her I want to be a not too manly man. I’ve never felt so close to myself.

Ju Puello

Against the Little Subject, Mariquiqui Notes for gender/gender dissident mapping in contemporary Dominican culture

By Luis Graham Castillo

1. This text should preferably be read with this background music: ¡Tu tás guillao’, pero eres mariquiquii, tu tás guillao’, pero eres mariquiqui! (You’re a guillao’, but you’re a mariquii, you’re a guillao’, but you’re a faggot!) A loud chorus that repeats again and again La Delfi in his dembow “Mariquiqui”. It plays in the background while I’m writing these a love and random notes.

2. The Delfi was the queen of the cocoró. She disappeared just under a year ago. Her death was announced without further details, whe the COVID-19 pandemic confinement in the Dominican Republic began. “In Dominican urban music, queer language and sex-gender-dissident ways flow with some organicity through the presence of figures like hers. I want to call it Effective micropolitics, “ I got to write on twitter when I found out. La Delfi appeared successfully on the local urban music scene; a scene that, reflecting the society in which it arises, is still is not devoid of misogyny and a language that discriminates. ¡Que perra!,(What a Bitch!) says the same song.

3. La Delfi’s Mariquiqui, is a mate that goes as a hetro, hocking up with women, “guillao”, but relates sex-affectively to men. A buddy in the closet. The Delfi, whose expression of gender and sexual identity defied social norms, and especially those of urban music, knows well what she is talking about: the Dominican man who, sexually oriented towards other men, hides it and leads double life. The song exposes it, as if it were a political device that forced an exit from the closet.

4. The closeted guy is of broad-spectrum. Just over ten years ago the study “Sujetos Tácitos: pertenencia y deseo homosexual entre hombres dominicanos en el exilio” (Tacits Subjects: homosexual belonging and desire among Dominican men in exile”) (Duke University Press, 2011) was published, a book by Carlos Ulises Decena that, if we did a serious research, could be the first text to offer an analysis of the social and familial daily life of an important part of this group. Decena interviewed twenty-five gay Dominicans living in New York and found, expressed in different ways, that everyone had had to live in their home country and family environment since the “don’t ask, don’t say,” almost like that rule in the U.S. military. The tacit guy is the one we all know about, but nobody talks about. In the family it is like the “elephant in the room”; it’s there, we all know it, but we don’t have to refer to it.

5. The widespread reality in the island territory occupied by the country, which is called Dominican, is that of the little subject. It may be a strategy to survive without fitting, without losing the apparent organic belonging to the community it inhabits. That’s the way it’s always been. Heteronormativity, violently pushed by conservative power groups, Christian Churches at the helm, is a culture that throws to marginality bodies and subjects that do not fit their postulates. I’m sorry to rain on wet conditions at this point. The non-heteronormalized body is an insulting body. The struggle for acceptance and respect is real and persistent. However, it is possible to identify moments, people and artistic-cultural productions that burst into a powerful voice to not only make visible, but also to reclaim the presence and the denied place.

6. In the Dominican cultural sector, the unwritten rule of the tacit subject is applied. Artists and intellectuals who we all know that they are or were gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, transvestite or cuír, are referred only from the observation of their artistic-cultural production, while they intend to continue to hold down tacit, “we know theirs thing, but we do not talk”, and so it has been difficult for those of us who go around the world being “others” the possibility of finding references with which we can identify and recognize ourselves. We all know about Luis Alfredo Torres, Pedro René Contín Aybar, Aída Cartagena Portalatín, Hilma Contreras, Manuel Rueda, but it is not spoken or written about his sexual orientations or gender identity. Maybe one of the reasons is that they also assumed tacit, perhaps. If you ask their contemporaries, you will find one of two situations: either they decide not to refer to the subject, getting to make you feel that you are gossiping or, if they do, they count funny moments and anecdotes to laugh and make fun of them, cheeky homophobia. When has there been or will there be a break with these dynamics?

7. Rita Indiana Hernández is a tall person who has erected theirselves as a loud voice of and for the Dominican queer community. Openly sexly-dissident, Rita generates affections that transcend LGBTIQ+ community. The Dominican scene of the late 1990s saw they appear. Many of us would have liked to see figures like his on TV, radio or the press, an ID that would have saved us so many snubs, which would have relieved us a little, at least, the heavy burden of being different in this land of Duarte. There it is, it’s the wonderful thing, new generations are growing up with that benchmark.

8. The break of that pitcher, the “keep it implied”, occurs slowly from and in the cultural scene. The fun spaces where bodies and counter-signature identities can be and perform without major concerns are no longer just clubs and bars exclusive to the LGBTIQ+ community. “Dragit”, an inclusive playful event created by the artist and filmmaker Carlos Rodríguez is an example of a party where diversity and dissent are openly celebrated. The performativity of the genre is recognized and subverted with the dance, music, clothing and queerness expressed and celebrated high. The festival is openly announced on social media and other communication spaces; unthinkable just a few years ago. Like this one, other parties and events have sprung up.

9. Since the last decades of the last century, gay clubs were the organic places for community amusement. They tell me about Penthouse, an iconic nightclub where boomers expressed themselves bluntly. There were no apps to hook up. Penthouse, and other nightclubs, were the spaces to meet people in the scene; but they were also spaces for, away from heteronormativity, to unleash repressed desire and expressions of gender. My generation remembers Air, Arena, Cha, Fogoo and Esedekú, the only one that is still open. Today the party continues outside the shelter offered by the den; “Draguélo” is even managing to produce, inclusive Bingos games and cross-dressing story tellying events for kids as well.

10. The Delfi appeared on the scene in the past decade. With her music she presented in nightclubs, gay or straight, and still enjoys every weekend’s coterie anywhere. With La Delfi, other dembows dancers assumed a language and began telling queer stories in their songs, with less intented to mock; rather, to celebrate. Recognizing Dembow as a catalyst, urban environments are today geographies where the strategy of the tacit subject loses strength. “Deja tu estrés (“Leave Your Stress,”) by La Pajarita Paul and the Teke Teke, is another dembow that became popular in the past decade and became a kind of anthem against homophobia. “Le gusta el color rosado, ¿y qué?... Y su peluca, ¿y qué?”(“He likes the pink color, so what?... And his wig, so what?” ) it is sang at every party in the country. Dembow has ways to activate acceptance broadly with a lot of power. Not only with the lyrics and the stickyness of its rhythm, but also with its aesthetics. This sphere of meaningful production has created the environment conducive to figures such as Tokischa, openly bisexual and unapologizing about the content of her songs, and Kiko El Crazy, who has no qualms about dressing crop-tops and accessories that defy the canons of standardized male clothing, develop careers that today become signs of a break.

11. In the last decade Carlos Rodríguez produces and presents “Transit”, a documentary that seizes stories of the LGBTIQ+ community in Santo Domingo, stories on the sidelines that generated empathy in multiple ways and audiences. Juan Carlos Arvelo has made several documentaries and reports that have been presented in the cinemas about “Los Creadores de Imagen”, a group of dissident sex-gender artists who made dance and comedy shows at the end of the last century, coming to be presented on open television and at the Patronal Festivals of almost all provinces. He also made an audiovisual on the life of “Cambumbo” (Tony Echavarría), a renowned transvestite artist who had a bar where he offered his dubbing shows and enchanted a small group of Santo Domingo society in the seventies and eighties. Juan Carlos tells me that he is researching Paco Escribano, an openly homosexual artist during the Trujillo regime, who survived with very peculiar strategies. Juanjo Cid also researches and produces audiovisual-cinematic content in that same line, such as one that has in folder on the album Penthouse, the refuge- shelter nights of the eighties and nineties.

12. It was at the home of Francis Taylor, an artist and activist who died in 2016, that a group of friends began meeting to study the texts of the queer theory in late 2015. We devour Judith Butler, Paul B. Preciado, Monique Wittig, Paco Vidarte, the aforementioned Tacit Subjects and others. In this context, the philosopher, dancer and playwright Rafael Morla was writing his work “Varones”, which was later taken to the stage directed by Isabel Spencer. Morla had already read some of these books and served as a moderator. In addition to Taylor, Morla and myself, other people who studied the theory when they were in that circle are the actor and playwright Emilio Bencosme, the journalist Margarita Cordero, the philosopher and poet Camila Rivera, the academic and activist for the DDHH Cinthya Amanecer, the economist Frank Abatte, Fiona Shékuby, among others. It was the what germinated many performances: plays, poems, articles in the press, open conservatories in cultural centers and art exhibitions.

13. If Aída Cartagena Portalatín is the Cuír Mother of the Dominican Republic, as it has been established in certain circles, then Rita Indiana Hernández is the Son and Johan Mijail Castillo is the Holy Spirit; the end of baptizing our Holy Trinity. Johan Mijail is establishing and consolidating a political impersonation in the Dominican cultural field and around the sexual and gender dissents that already creates a school. After living for a few years in Chile, where she developed a work and research that can be easily consulted on the web and expressed in texts and performances, Mijail returns to live in the country in 2018. This is significant for the local scene and the community to have. Mijail articulates a meaningful production that has the strength to ravage entire centuries of heteronormativity. Her books are devices that detonate deep reflections on dissenting bodies and identities, racism and migrant bodies. She has created “Catinga Ediciones”, an independent editor who publishes texts by Afro-descendants and people. She has just published “Chapeo”, a novel where he unsympathily narrates the peripheral daily life of “bodies that do not fit with the eurosomateca”, as its prologuist says. Mijail’s performance is as disruptive as it is scandalous, especially for the geosocial and political context to which we refer. Reflect and provoke with and on the counternorm body from the subjectivity itself; producing images and new affections that are record and memory of a rupture. Yes, the rupture is already a crack that grows.

14. These notes should be the encouragement that stimulates deep work and thorough research on Dominican queer contemporarity. That motivate serious discussions on speeches in this regard that come from the visual arts; about aesthetics and lightheartedness that opens, like a torrent, the dembow; that activates the generation of texts to understand and identify us; that leads to printing biogra- phies of people who inspire us and fill forces to follow. May these paragraphs push the layout of the routes and the moments that have led to changes and generated new and radical empathies. They are hardly ideas-winks to continue thinking about us and for lives on the margins of this Catholic-Vinchist-Heterocentrada society to be celebrated and respected. They are notes against the tácito, referred to as ways of doing and relating that perpetuate concealment.