Queer subversions in Mexican and Chicana/o art activism

Abstract

abstractAs they developed in the 1970s, the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) and feminist movements in Mexico and among Mexican Americans (Chicana/os) in the United States (US) faced many formidable challenges. Not least of these was how to transform a cultural politics of national/ethnic identity that rested discursively on the patriarchal constructs of heterosexism, machismo, pious motherhood, and rigid binaries of gender and sexuality. Given the history of European colonialism, US imperialism, and North American racism, queer and feminist activists were typically part of larger networks of leftist movements for which cultural nationalism was a cornerstone. The fit was often uncomfortable at best, as many ‘progressive’ Mexican and Chicano social movements of the era conformed to the culture's hegemonic heterosexism. Activist art proved to be one of the feminist and queer movements’ most effective tools for producing counterhegemonic discourses of gender and sexuality. This Article describes how gay, lesbian, and feminist artists active in social movements worked to queer representations of Mexican and Chicana/o identity and to subvert dominant constructions of gender and sexuality.