kararikue:

58 - La Nepantlera

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa was a Chicana scholar, third-world feminist, and queer theorist.

She is best known for co-editing This Bridge Called My Back with her friend and fellow queer Chicana Cherríe Moraga and for writing the semi-autobiographical Borderlands/La Frontera, documenting and deconstructing life on the physical and emotional borders of being queer, Chican@, indigenous, and a woman.

It is thanks to her that the concept of Nepantla (inbetweeness) is introduced to queer and Chican@ cultural theory, transforming the various axes of oppression queer Chican@s, Latin@s, and other people of color face into borderlands of possibility, arguing the inherent value of those who live on them because it enables them to see both in and out.

fuckyeahdemonedits:

Yara Sofia

(via kararikue)

kararikue:

Alex Anwandter - Cómo puedes vivir contigo mismo

East Los Angeles Xican@ students protest police harassment at Roosevelt High School. 

March 1970

(Source: sinidentidades)

“Ode to the little queer boy of color”

joteria:

You say you wanna fuck me
whisper in my ear and convert
sacred wind to seduce and attempt
to make cock, ass and mouth
available for the night.

You say and make claim
“hot little Latin”
tell me you like “Hispanics”
expect to gain a response
of satisfaction, of content
of validation. 
Say you want dick, 
you hope to bend me over
make moans.
Reduce my love cries
to assimilated, conditioned
cries for you.
Another brown body
To celebrate and brag 
to your friends about
the piece of ass you had
last night, last week.

Say that I’m the exception
the one who’s “different”
the one who stands out
above all the rest.
Make promises that break down
my insecurities and doubts.

Say that you will 
save me
from the distance and shame
of my family
From the loneliness
each and every night.
When solitude becomes a familiar friend.
From the concerns and risks 
of life-changing illness-HIV/AIDS

Promises too readily offered
without any concern for the
emotional collateral damage
you know you will leave. 
From a wreckage 
Where passerby slow down,
Bare witness and cast judgement.

And when you leave
as fast as you came
how much will I have to pay?
How many other men that
come into my life
will pay for your crimes?

Like the colonizer 
of your ancestry
you take, consume,
make claim to territory 
and have others pay for your crimes

(An unwritten history) repeats itself.

(via dammitcaleb-deactivated20130328)

okaaaay so I need Latin@ participants for a project on tattoos and identity

quelola:

omfgjo:

homoarigato:

It doesn’t matter if you have tattoos or not. It doesn’t even matter if you even want tattoos or not.

All I need from you is:

• If you were to get a tattoo pertaining to your identity as Latin@, what would it be?
• Briefly describe it to me.
• If you want to explain in detail, that’s fine too!
• And that’s all!

And if you could, sig boost please?

OMG LATIN@ PPL GO GO

also it sounds like a pretty fucking badass project, please post it when its done and such?

gimme a lil time to think of something for contributing hrm.

SIGNAL BOOST. Gonna do this in a bit. Should we just drop it in your ask box or do you have an email address?

HOMERO, LOOK!

nueva-bordena:

fyqueerlatinxs:

On Actually Keeping Queer Queer: A response to Cherríe Moraga

Cherríe Moraga’s essay, entitled “Still Loving in the (Still) War Years: On Keeping Queer Queer,” is a two-part essay that was first published in 2009. The first part is a brilliantly written critique on the mainstream gay rights movement’s focus on marriage equality. The second part is a misguided and misinformed attack on the trans* community in general and the transmasculine community in particular. Moraga is well known within QTPOC activist circles and the purpose for this response is to facilitate an inter-generational dialogue that is both effective and salient. I want to bring our best to the table by continuing to challenge and critique, while at the same time to honor and recognize those that have come before. In short, I want to change the world and the only way to do that is to work together.

In the first half of the essay, Moraga outlines how the gay rights movement is flawed in its mostly white, single-issue politics. She says that the movement is “prompted by the entitlement of race and class” which the mostly white queer proponents of the movement possess.  In other words, she states that the contemporary gay rights movement seeks not to challenge those systems of power that keep people oppressed, which is what it’s original aim was, but instead desires to assimilate into those very systems- both as individuals and as a movement.  Moreover, she argues that the movement fails to recognize the way white queers are implicit in the cultural imperialism involved in transnational adoption and “the support of immigrant rights for gay couples but not for migrant workers”…

continue reading

[Submitted by kararikue]

A real badass Transwoman wrote this, and I totally recommend it.  In fact, this shit should be required reading for Chicanos/as/@s.

(Source: xQsimagazine.com)

nueva-bordena:

(Cross post from a blog I did for a class on LGBTQ oppression)

I’ve been avoiding writing about Agnes Torres Sulca for almost a month now.  For those of you who don’t know, Agnes Torres was a Trans* activist in Puebla, Mexico who was found murdered on March 10.  Her Twitter account is active until the day of her disappearance, with a link to an interview she did being the final post.  Agnes was a psychologist, an activist, and an academic.  She was one of the most prominent advocates for Queer people in Mexico, and Mexican authorities went from writing off her death as a crime of passion to stating that the motive behind her murder was the theft of her car, not hatred, not transphobia.


[Agnes Torres Sulca, a brown Mexican Transwoman with curly dark brown hair]

I didn’t want to write about this because I didn’t want to add to the perception that Trans* people, especially Trans* women, are all victims.  I didn’t want to add to that narrative and that perspective, especially if other Trans* people are going to internalize it.  There’s a strong belief that to be Trans* is to be completely powerless, to be dependent on some cisperson for support through our lives, and that’s shown in just about every representation of a Trans* person that I can think of.  Every movie, almost every book, I think with the exception of Leslie Feinberg’s “Drag King Dreams”, has us crying to and leaning on some tolerant cisperson who sits by and listens.  

The fact is that Trans* people are being killed and no one seems to care.  We’re being killed directly, through knives and guns and fists, and we’re being killed indirectly, by being denied houses, medical care, and jobs.  And sadly, that’s never far from my mind.  The fact that almost half the names I read in online obituaries are Latin@ names, that half the bodies and faces shown during Trans* Day of Remembrance belong to someone who looks like me doesn’t help.  And their ages, nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-five, twenty-eight, only add to the weight in my chest.  It doesn’t look like people like me make it to thirty.

So here is the point at which, you, cispeople, are supposed to start doing something.  One of our assignments in Peers for Pride was to interview people on being what being a good ally means, and I received several responses that were simply “Being there for my friend to talk to”.  Let me make this abundantly clear: that is not being an ally, that merely is being a decent friend.  If you want to be an ally to Trans* people, if you consider yourself an ally to Trans* people you’re going to have to start doing more than the bare minimum, because for us it comes down to a matter of life and death.  You need to create spaces for us, to begin with.  You need to give us a part in communities and in families.  This is the first step.  Trans* people need places to organize and places to create.

Those of you who organize, on any level, need to realize that Trans* people are not some abstraction, not some target population for another group or social worker, we are part of your community!  We share your struggles against racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and we need voices in those spaces and those movements.  And we need you to start using your voices to help us.  We are strong, we are capable, but we are few and we are scattered, we need as much help with our struggle as we can get.

And to Trans* people: we need to unite.  There is no other option.  We need to fight for and work for one another, we need to work on loving one another, because without that we are simply a group of people who share marginalizations and medical histories.  It is my sincere belief that Trans* people, all Trans* people, have a responsibility to create a Trans* community and to do everything they can to advance this community, because failure to do so will result in more deaths, more violence, and less hope.

And neither cispeople nor Trans*people should be allowed to forget those who have passed on.  They are more than faces to be gawked at during a memorial service, or names to be read in a litany at Day of Remembrance, they are a part of our family, they were sisters, brothers, siblings, lovers, and they deserve at the very least the justice that every human being deserves.  Never let us forget that, and never let us forget them.

[Black and white picture of Agnes Torres Sulca with her looking off-frame.  The slogan “Justice for Agnes Toress Sulca!” is printed on the side]

I’m Done

nueva-bordena:

This seems more relevant now that this whole “cotton ceiling” thing has gone around.

I’m done identifying as “Trans*”.  I’m done trying to force my way into these movements and groups that are so overwhlemingly white.  I’ve already spent three years trying to, I don’t plan to spend the next ten or twenty doing the same.  I’m exhausted from fighting for acceptance outside of the trans* group, I don’t see any need to keep fighting within that group.  I don’t see why I should try to be included in a space that works so ardently to keep me and people like me out.  It’s a waste of my time, and I believe it will ultimately be hurtful to myself and others like me.

Don’t be surprised, the entire trans “consciousness” comes from a place of incredible whiteness.  Not only from its attempts for inclusion within the lesbian and gay movements, but within its discourse.  Kate Bornstein, Leslie Feinberg, Riki Wilchins, S. Bear Bergman, and Julia Serano are all white.  The people defining my identity and supposed community are all white, we share nothing in terms of culture or ideology.  In fact, the reason I celebrated finding Feinberg and Bornstein was because they were such a good alternative to the dominant, ALSO incredibly white, narrative when I was first coming to terms with my gender.  This is like rejoicing at finding a band-aid after being stabbed, because the dominant narrative had me questioning all the time what I was, whether I was trans enough, whether I was feminine enough to even be trans, all that bullshit.  I didn’t feel any kind of peace within myself until I read Gloria Anzaldua’s “Borderlands/La Frontera” at UTEP.  Until then, I had been combing through what Feinberg and Bornstein had written in hopes of making sense of my gender. 

And if I remember right, Jameson Green said that the term “transgender” was thought up by Virginia Prince, someone who didn’t believe people should have access to surgeries,  and who denied gay men and transwomen entry into the organizations she created. Why would I chose to use a label to describe myself that was created by someone who would hate means hate my use of it? Ignoring that history is one of the most problematic things I could do, and I’m not accommodating or excusing anyone by contributing to that. In fact, the only word I really identify with is “Mestiz@”, and within that I don’t need a signifier for my gender, the “@” does that for me. To me, that single letter, or symbol, I guess, shows how I am a combination of male of female, and how my understanding of “male” and “female” are based in Chicanism@.

Ademas, the people who I look up to as my TPOC ancestors didn’t identify as Trans*. Even Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson identified as drag queens and transvestites. Y Sylvia even said in an entrevista that she only identifies as herself. We, and I do mean ‘we’ because I’ve done this myself, ascribe transness to her postmortem because that’s the understanding of the space she occupied that we have today. Maybe she would have argued with that. So my history isn’t something I share with white trans people, and with that goes my last theoretical connection to white trans people. Because really, we have no more in common than I do with the average white cis person, except for some of our medical histories. I realize this means that I’ll have to create a community for myself, to find new ways of defining myself that don’t exist in white queerness, and I intend to. I will (re)create a space in Latinidad for myself and people like me. And I will never give up on that.

I’m going to continue my work.  I’m going to keep working for Trans* rights and TPOC.  I’m going to dedicate my life to doing everything I can to help those communities, because it’s the least they need.  It’s the least I can do.

So nothing’s different, really, except now everyone knows.  And everyone saw me call you out.

ultramaricon:

I read this as a manuscript and I cannot wait to teach it this semester. Description from Duke UP:

The Mexican American woman zoot suiter, or pachuca, often wore a V-neck sweater or a long, broad-shouldered coat, a knee-length pleated skirt, fishnet stockings or bobby socks, platform heels or saddle shoes, dark lipstick, and a bouffant. Or she donned the same style of zoot suit that her male counterparts wore. With their striking attire, pachucos and pachucas represented a new generation of Mexican American youth, which arrived on the public scene in the 1940s. Yet while pachucos have often been the subject of literature, visual art, and scholarship, The Woman in the Zoot Suit is the first book focused on pachucas.

Two events in wartime Los Angeles thrust young Mexican American zoot suiters into the media spotlight. In the Sleepy Lagoon incident, a man was murdered during a mass brawl in August 1942. Twenty-two young men, all but one of Mexican descent, were tried and convicted of the crime. In the Zoot Suit Riots of June 1943, white servicemen attacked young zoot suiters, particularly Mexican Americans, throughout Los Angeles. The Chicano movement of the 1960s–1980s cast these events as key moments in the political awakening of Mexican Americans and pachucos as exemplars of Chicano identity, resistance, and style. While pachucas and other Mexican American women figured in the two incidents, they were barely acknowledged in later Chicano movement narratives. Catherine S. Ramírez draws on interviews she conducted with Mexican American women who came of age in Los Angeles in the late 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s as she recovers the neglected stories of pachucas. Investigating their relative absence in scholarly and artistic works, she argues that both wartime U.S. culture and the Chicano movement rejected pachucas because they threatened traditional gender roles. Ramírez reveals how pachucas challenged dominant notions of Mexican American and Chicano identity, how feminists have reinterpreted la pachuca, and how attention to an overlooked figure can disclose much about history making, nationalism, and resistant identities.

quelola:

[Image Description: Large group of people walking down a street marching. Some are holding signs. One sign reads “Pass the Dream Act”]

rafastarisativa:

Mexican state legislature announces Dream Act scholarship

According to the Spanish-language daily, La Opinión, a delegation of representatives from Jalisco’s state legislature was moved into action by the death of a young Mexican student who may have taken his own life out of frustration with his immigration status.

Ana Bertha Guzmán Alatorre, a member of the delegation, said the scholarships are meant to support opportunities for young Mexican migrants in the United States.

“From Jalisco, we still worry about them and are working for them,” she said.

“We hope the governor of Jalisco will tell us how much more he would be willing to contribute,” said Olga Araceli Flores Gomez, another member of the delegation. ”We also want to involve the congresses of the 32 (Mexican) states to create scholarships for student migrants.”

Jalisco is one of the states in Mexico with the most people living in the United States. The delegation estimated that about 1.5 million Jalisco natives reside in California, many of whom have left because of the lack of opportunities in the state.

ofanotherfashion:

Photographs of 1940s White servicemen dancing with and kissing White women are a familiar part of our cultural imagination but non-White American men also served during both World Wars. This photograph is a stunning reminder of this aspect of U.S. history. Here, two Mexican American men (at least one of whom is a serviceman) pose with their sweethearts in 1940. (The railing is an in-studio prop.)

Notice the floral design peeking out between the life preserver on the woman’s skirt. Its placement seems almost purposeful, as if she wanted to make certain that the prop didn’t obstruct a view of her lovely skirt. Style matters - even, or perhaps especially, when posing with one’s sweetheart.

Credit: Los Angeles Public Library

(via rentless-mistress)

On the term “colorblind”

classycoochie:

(A reflection thanks to liquoriceandspice’s excellent calling out of another tumblr that seems to think we live in Narnia or some shit.)

It is only convenient for a ~colorblind~ society to exist for white people because white people in this country want us to ignore their wrongs. By suggesting that such a thing exist, oppression is being continued, not combated, even further by insiting that we should forget the color of someone else’s skin and what it could mean to them, which implies we should also forget about our skin, and our individual history, community/ies history, culture, race, heritage and so on…

By being told I (or any POC) should aim to be ~colorblind~, I am being asked to disregard my ancestors, my immigrant parents, my struggles in this country in aspects that are too abundant to list, and on and on…

The fact that a white person can even suggest that we can be “colorblind” or that that’s what POC should be moving towards, is already displaying the privilege to be in a position to know that you have the power to ignore it and the power for others not to let yours affect you.

I won’t be ~colorblind~ because I will not for a second believe that I should ignore who or what someone else is, let alone what I am.

I won’t make the effort to move towards a society that doesn’t recognize me as a Latina, because that just means supremacists are getting better at finding ways to erase my history.

I want people to acknowledge my brownness, I want people to recognize my queerness, my disability, my fatness. All of it. All of me. I want people to challenge themselves every second I’m in a room because they just don’t know what to do with me.

So no, I won’t be colorblind, and if for one second you don’t think of me as a Latina, as a person with a disability, as a queer person, as a fat person, you got a problem.

(Source: quelola)