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Maricas: Queer Cultures and State Violence in Argentina and Spain, 1942–1982

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View the page of Javier Fernández-Galeano

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Javier Fernández-Galeano discusses the many ways queer communities and individuals in Argentina and Spain fought against violence, rejected pathologization, and contested imposed, denigrating categorization.

Image courtesy of interviewee. August 28, 2024

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This video consists of a dialogue discussing the motivations and methodologies behind a book focused on queer cultures and state violence, particularly in Argentina and Spain, during the late 20th century. The speaker emphasizes the importance of using state archival sources to explore the resilience of queer and trans communities, and to challenge the oppressive narratives propagated by authoritarian regimes.

They explain how their interest in this research began over 14 years ago while conducting a master's program. They argue that historical records, often overlooked, contain explicit representations of same-sex desire and community dynamics that reveal how marginalized individuals resisted persecution.

Throughout the interview, the speaker contrasts the explicitness of Argentine military records with the more moderated records from Spain. They discuss various terms, such as “maka,” “maicon,” and “marica,” to illustrate the cultural vernaculars reflecting differences in the queer experience and social stigma in these nations.

The conversation further explores themes of resistance, articulation of desire, integration of cultural practices, and ways queer individuals navigated oppressive systems through both humor and subversion. The overall argument suggests a spectrum of resistance that ranges from overt political activism to subtle forms of accommodation and playfulness within oppressive contexts.

In conclusion, the speaker calls for future research to examine the interplay between queer identities and other forms of marginalization, encouraging a broader understanding of social structures and interconnections that impact varied subjectivities. They advocate for a nuanced approach that acknowledges both global influences and local contexts in shaping the experiences of queer and trans individuals.

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Here are five key points from the video :

1. **Archival Research and Queer Resilience**: The author discusses a long-term project aimed at exploring state and archival sources related to violence and how these can reveal the resilience of queer and trans communities. The aim is to undermine narratives of stigma and isolation that authoritarian states often project.

2. **Interconnectedness of Gender and Desire**: The video emphasizes a paradigm where sexual desire is intertwined with gender performance, contrasting this with the separation often found in the gay paradigm. This interconnectedness highlights how individuals express their identities and desires through performance and can process state violence in their expressions of sexuality.

3. **Resistance Through Everyday Actions**: The author argues that resistance to state oppression is not solely about formal activism but also includes daily actions and coded meanings that provide survival mechanisms and expressions of solidarity among queer individuals. This encompasses various forms of resistance, including sexual encounters as acts of defiance.

4. **Cultural Convideo and Historical Layers**: The video underscores the importance of understanding how different national convideos and historical periods shape the vocabularies and narratives around queer identities. Comparisons between Argentine and Spanish archival records reveal different attitudes and representations related to homosexuality and state control.

5. **Future Directions in Research**: The author advocates for future research to examine intersections between queer and trans subjectivities with other marginalized identities (e.g., racial, religious). This includes a holistic understanding of how various forms of inequality interconnect and how local and global convideos influence resistance and identity formation.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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Is a project that I started something like

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14 years ago when I was doing my masters.

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And at that time I felt like there was a lack

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of his graphical work on how state sources

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or the archival sources that are related to state violence

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or social violence are also a way

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of accessing the resilience of queer and trans communities.

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How we can read the sources through the lenses of

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the ways in which stigmatized

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and criminalized people were able to find around,

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communities, around languages, around sexual,

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sexual spaces too.

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Uh, so that was my perspective, how to use all these unuse

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or unexplored state archives in order to

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undermine the discourse

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and narratives that the authoritarian state have tried

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to project, which were all about same pain, stigma,

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isolation, lack of community, lack of meaning.

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How can we use the sources that were meant to

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reinforce a narrative to undermine that same discourse?

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And I started the project I was working on,

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I was using the category of homosexual,

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which comes from pathologizing criminalizing frameworks,

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but then it became appropriate by gay

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and queer movements in the sixties and seventies.

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Uh, but then I realized that in the sources,

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the terminology, the vernacular vocabulary of the America

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and the American was the way in which,

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state interventions

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or state violence somehow incorporated

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the actual daily experiences of people

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who were on the margins of sexual normativity.

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So the America has to do with the, with a paradigm

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to understand sexual desire that is prior to

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or distinct from the gay paradigm.

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In the gay paradigm, you have sexual orientation

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as something that is different from gender performance

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in the America paradigm.

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Those are intertwined.

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You cannot really separate the way in which a people,

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the way in which a person experiences their gender

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from the way in which they project their desires,

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they're actually mutually,

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mutually the course.

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They, they reinforce each other

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or they, materialize each other.

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So, for example, America will be someone

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that fail attraction towards male persons in order

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to express that desire.

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They will fa femina feminize themselves in public.

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Uh, so they will use the female gender

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when referring to themselves.

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They will be, flamboyant.

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They will be extravagant, they will be playful about

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that gender, ambivalence.

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They will sift from one gender to another,

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and they will be very seductive.

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They will be very provocative and very

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hypersexual in some occasions.

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And then the American is in Spanish,

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is all about the accents and the phonetics.

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So when you add the final on, it means that it's a,

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an even more hypersexual, more extreme, more visible

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iteration or manifestation of this America subjectivity.

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So the American was defined by bi, which is a Spanish term.

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That means the lack of self-control people who were

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so over the top, so in your face

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that there was no hope or redemption.

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They were seen as people who were so taken by their,

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the generation, their, the private,

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that they could only become like agents of contagion, people

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who will express that, transgression to other people.

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And the opposite of that is the Marquita,

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which is a domestic religious, inoffensive figure,

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which is a very particular local phenomenon,

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is particularly a strong in the south of Spain,

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but it also happens in our places.

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So depending on the accents, depending on the phonetics,

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we can distinguish different gradations

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of these stigmatized objectivity.

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I started this archival research when I was doing my masters

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at the new school, and my first archival experience was

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going to, I went to Buenos Aires,

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and I didn't know where to start, honestly.

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So I went to the National Archives

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and someone mentioned, okay,

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so there were homosexual soldiers

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that were prosecuted in the seventies,

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so maybe you can look at those.

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And I didn't have much hope about

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how military records will be relevant for a queer history

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or a history of queer resistance.

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But then there were extremely explicit,

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there were quai porn African, in which,

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in the ways in which soldiers were vocal

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and open about how they encounter each other, the kinds of,

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the mechanics of their sexual intercourse,

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particularly because they were performing binary roles.

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They were performing either the America high feminized

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persona or the hyper-masculine dominant

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and aggressive macho persona in order to do so.

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They were very explicit about the culation

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penetration urges, et cetera.

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So then I realized that in this very, very,

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very central to a state violence archives, military records,

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you can actually find the most explicit description

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of gay sex that you could ever imagine.

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And I don't know, the, the examples are fascinating.

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And then I decide to go from there to look for, to look

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for the most, most institutionalized,

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more violent archives and try to look at them

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through the lenses of desire, pleasure,

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and hypersexual encounters.

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Uh, so, and I was doing

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that research simultaneously in Spain and Argentina.

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So in Argentina, I was looking at military records,

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but also like activism, oral histories,

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the classification institute,

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which is a criminological foundation, institute.

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And in Spain, I was looking at background

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courts, in Spain.

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Homosexuality was prosecuted as a form of,

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as an expression of lamping proletariat lack

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of discipline, so to speak.

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Uh, the fact that it was called the ancy law is very

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indicative for the fact that the people

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who were prosecuted were the ones who were,

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supposedly unemployed or at the

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margins of the formal economy.

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Uh, and then I was interested in the different vocabularies

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or the different languages that you can see in these

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different national records.

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Comparing the military records in Argentina were, as I said,

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super explicit in your face.

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Uh, with the Spanish records that were more mediative,

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there was more paraphrasing, more attention

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to respectability

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and discretion, even in the way in which the authorities

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were creating these records.

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That led me to interrogate the sources

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and look for the reasons why

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these national paradigms will be both connected,

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but also distinct in terms of how they develop

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and became consolidated in this very significant period

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between the forties and the eighties.

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Uh, just to give you an example of like a soldier

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and what they will say to the, to the judge.

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So this is someone who was integrated

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for being bottom in gay sex, and he say, Mr.

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Judge, I experience an enormous satisfaction when I'm

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penetrated and I'm able

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to e*******e since at those moments I

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m********e at the same time.

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So this kind of very vocal confrontation with the state

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of telling them what they didn't want to hear,

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that you could find so much pressure

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and satisfaction in gay sex is my, is what drove me

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to unheard all the sources

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and incorporate them in my project.

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I would say it's about paying attention to the different,

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to the whole spectrum of resistance.

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Not only vocal political,

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public resistance that happens through protest or activism

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or formal organizations,

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but also the most daily,

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daily forms of resistance that have to do

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with sometimes accommodation

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or incorporating the discourses of power

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or material culture, the ways in which people use erotica,

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pornography, literature, et cetera.

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So trying to include all that spectrum

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that goes from the ian

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to the most political was challenging,

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but was also very enriching for the project.

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Uh, and also like finding those moments when people

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who are prosecuted for their queerness

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or their transness, were able to make fun

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of the per persecution, were able to par the,

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the undermine the underlying principles of state violence.

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Um, so a couple of examples.

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There is this person called Alita, who was America, someone

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who lived in between both genders, hypersexual,

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very selective.

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And in 1940s, she was interrogated

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by a criminologist in Buenos Aires,

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and she was flirting with the criminologist.

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So her way of resisting was actually sexualizing

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that encounter that was meant to produce a criminal report.

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And instead she was like, Hey, how are you?

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Like, you look cute today.

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So she was like very flirt, flirtatious with the integrator.

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And that really undermined the whole power

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structure of that situation, right?

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Uh, and then there are things that have to do more

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with particular cultural expressions.

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Like for example, in South Spain,

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Catholic curiosity was super important,

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for small communities in the way they build their

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so ability solidarity networks, daily rituals

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and maritas.

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Uh, in andal, Lucia were able to find mechanisms

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of social integration through that kind of

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participation in Catholic rituals

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and, sociability, which is also the language of power.

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Obviously the Franco regime was,

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instrumentalizing Catholic religiosity for the sake

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of a nationalist discourse.

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But the same discourse was also instrumentalized

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by communities who supported queer people in order to

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question the legitimacy of step persecution.

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So that continuity between power structures

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and the possibility of turning around those discourses

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to claim that it is legitimate to be different,

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that is something that is fascinating for me.

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Uh, and finally there is, there are also this ways in which

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people basically told the state, there is no role for you

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to, explore my private or intimate life.

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And you can even trace that in medical records

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or psychological exams.

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Uh, so I'm gonna written an example.

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This is a psychological exam in which the person is asked

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to complete a sentence.

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So these are his answers. The best thing.

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I never say what hurts me.

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I don't, so in secret nothing.

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So even though this person was not telling the interrogator

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or the psychological expert, I'm not gonna answer your

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questions, or I'm not gonna participate in this form

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of state violence, the way in which they refuse

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to provide any single information that will be, related

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to their pri, their intimacy, their actual desires,

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and they use this very like ambivalent answers,

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is very powerful to me.

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And it connects with the ways in which the,

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the political activism

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of the seventies presented similar claims.

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Leave us alone. Don't try to police our private lives

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or our communities.

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And that is also present before gay activism.

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Uh, so that there are so many iterations of this.

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And I think the key was to be attentive to the fact

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that sometimes it might seem that they are,

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that there is a rupture or a discontinue between negotiation

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and accommodation on the one hand, and confrontation

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and, opposition on the other.

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But I think there is more connection

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between the both extremes

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that we might think at the beginning.

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I think it has to do with,

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looking at America's objectivity

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and America archives through the lenses

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of understanding the particular context in which these

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people were reacting to, oppression and discrimination.

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Uh, there is an expression by a Spanish author, author,

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a Spanish novelist, who said in the fifties, Hilbert,

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he wrote, it's not like we are quiet or we are silent.

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It's that we are speaking a in a very low voice.

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So all the people who are attentive can listen to us.

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And I think that's something to keep in mind that mari

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or queer and trans people were creating

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meaning, but it was coded.

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It was, it was meant to be listened by those who were able

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to have a more sympathetic or understanding

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and understanding perspective on their daily experiences.

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Uh, so that doesn't mean that those forms

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of resistance were not changing the system

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or providing mechanisms of survival and resilience.

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It's just that we have to understand those code meanings in

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order to give them the value that they have in that moment.

12:34.715 --> 12:37.015
So I'm thinking, for example, in Miguel de Molina,

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who is in the cover of the book, he was a, a performer

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and singer, who never openly declare,

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at least in the fifties and sisters, that he was

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a gay person, that he had desires for other men.

12:53.405 --> 12:56.745
Uh, but then his followers, his fans were able to understand

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what he was doing in public.

12:58.965 --> 13:02.105
Uh, by the way, he used clothing, voice,

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sentimentality.

13:05.005 --> 13:09.345
So he had like this very extravagant, over the top blows

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and search.

13:11.165 --> 13:15.025
And his fans were always asking him for those designs,

13:15.025 --> 13:17.665
those patterns that he used for those clothing items.

13:18.325 --> 13:19.545
And also they were expressing

13:19.565 --> 13:22.465
how much his music was transporting them

13:22.465 --> 13:24.225
to a different space, to a space of freedom

13:24.365 --> 13:28.845
or, a space of,

13:29.345 --> 13:34.085
the possibility of imagining another situation

13:34.085 --> 13:35.925
where stigma was not so powerful.

13:36.865 --> 13:40.045
Uh, and those meanings might not be evident

13:40.385 --> 13:42.485
or obvious when you read the letters at the first time.

13:42.595 --> 13:45.845
It's someone saying, I want a copy of the pattern

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that you used to, create that beautiful shirt.

13:49.785 --> 13:51.205
But then if you keep reading there,

13:51.205 --> 13:54.125
talking about feeling transported, feeling freedom,

13:54.125 --> 13:56.685
feeling desire for Molina,

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and all that has to be incorporated into the

13:58.485 --> 13:59.805
his that we're writing today.

13:59.895 --> 14:01.565
Later in the seventies, late sixties

14:01.585 --> 14:04.125
and seventies, there was the argument

14:04.125 --> 14:05.285
that America's objectivity,

14:05.285 --> 14:09.085
because it was recreating gender binaries, the, the notion

14:09.085 --> 14:10.285
that there is a complementarity

14:10.285 --> 14:13.285
between the feminine receptive sexual partner

14:13.625 --> 14:16.925
and the active dominating insertive partner

14:17.905 --> 14:19.845
for the active, for some sectors

14:19.845 --> 14:21.605
of the activism in the seventies, that was

14:22.205 --> 14:24.965
considered alienation, that was considered something

14:24.965 --> 14:27.445
that prevented people from sexualization.

14:27.825 --> 14:28.925
And I'm trying to understand

14:28.985 --> 14:32.405
how sometimes even though we are operating within gender

14:32.645 --> 14:35.805
binaries or power structures, those can be more flexible.

14:35.805 --> 14:38.485
And there is a level of playfulness in our engagement

14:38.485 --> 14:39.485
with those structures.

14:39.825 --> 14:41.045
And I think that's something that comes

14:41.045 --> 14:42.325
across in the sources as well.

14:42.385 --> 14:44.245
The fact that it wasn't spoken about the fact

14:44.245 --> 14:46.925
that there was this undercurrent of alternative

14:47.725 --> 14:50.205
appropriations of mainstream discourses

14:50.205 --> 14:51.325
or mainstream figures,

14:51.745 --> 14:53.525
but it was something only visible

14:53.665 --> 14:55.045
for participants in the culture.

14:56.195 --> 14:59.565
That to me, is a very powerful strategy of,

15:00.525 --> 15:01.945
community building.

15:02.645 --> 15:03.645
Uh,

15:04.845 --> 15:05.855
Like the, even the

15:05.855 --> 15:07.255
Vocabulary that they use for people

15:07.275 --> 15:08.935
who participated in the sub culture,

15:09.995 --> 15:11.775
Uh, Convey the idea

15:12.325 --> 15:13.735
That It was not meant for everyone

15:13.735 --> 15:16.495
that you could survive by creating ledgers of possibility

15:16.515 --> 15:18.295
and ledgers of self protection.

15:18.315 --> 15:19.895
So one of the terms that they use for,

15:20.595 --> 15:23.695
Uh, queer people Or homosexual men who were

15:23.985 --> 15:27.775
Aware of the cultural repertoire that,

15:28.355 --> 15:29.945
that

15:30.225 --> 15:32.665
Preserve transgression and made it more,

15:33.285 --> 15:37.825
Uh, resilient, Wasdo, anddo

15:38.355 --> 15:39.985
Means the ones In the know,

15:40.205 --> 15:42.825
The ones who know the code. Uh,

15:43.525 --> 15:44.865
And again, there are tensions in

15:44.865 --> 15:47.265
This, in This repertoire.

15:47.345 --> 15:49.985
So then CanDos were not particularly sympathetic to America

15:49.985 --> 15:52.745
because they thought that America was too hypersexual,

15:52.885 --> 15:55.305
too visible and not respectable enough.

15:55.685 --> 15:59.145
And then CanDos were more invested in a certain genealogy

15:59.405 --> 16:02.785
of homosexuality that was grounded in antiquity

16:03.125 --> 16:05.385
and masculinity and civilization.

16:06.045 --> 16:08.745
But still, the idea there was this notion that you could

16:09.395 --> 16:12.985
first gather your strength in a kind of

16:13.535 --> 16:15.225
semi protected social circle,

16:15.405 --> 16:17.585
and then from there have the capacity

16:17.685 --> 16:21.905
to spread your message, ever farther, ever

16:22.445 --> 16:25.065
in a wider scale to change society.

16:25.065 --> 16:27.065
Gradually. We also have to incorporate

16:27.065 --> 16:29.905
that into our genealogies of sexual resistance.

16:30.005 --> 16:32.105
Sexual resistance does not start in the sixties.

16:32.105 --> 16:35.985
There is this previous undercurrent of, solidarity

16:36.165 --> 16:38.825
and survival that has to do with first gathering

16:39.545 --> 16:41.705
strength in a more sheltered space.

16:43.175 --> 16:45.035
And even the prisons are part of that.

16:45.035 --> 16:46.795
Like, America talk a lot about

16:46.795 --> 16:49.595
how when they were in prison, they were still able

16:49.615 --> 16:53.195
to be a community, because they gossip, they had lowers,

16:53.375 --> 16:54.635
and they used the materials

16:54.635 --> 16:57.115
that they had at their disposal in the prisons

16:57.415 --> 16:59.595
to maintain their performance of femininity.

16:59.615 --> 17:02.435
So Tanya Navarro, who's a person that I interviewed,

17:02.615 --> 17:05.995
she talk about using aluminum foil, plaster, things

17:05.995 --> 17:08.635
that seem very inoffensive in the context of the prison

17:09.015 --> 17:12.795
to create makeup so they could still preserve their mari

17:12.885 --> 17:15.075
femininity in a context of repression.

17:15.295 --> 17:16.435
And then the communities that they created

17:16.435 --> 17:18.355
inside the prison were extended beyond the prison.

17:18.935 --> 17:21.635
So only understanding these forms of solidarity

17:22.295 --> 17:24.315
and resilience before sexual liberation,

17:24.315 --> 17:25.435
we can understand what happened later.

17:25.635 --> 17:27.755
I think future research is about,

17:27.755 --> 17:30.115
looking at the connections between queer

17:30.135 --> 17:33.875
and trans subjectivities and other, marginalized

17:34.095 --> 17:37.315
or oppressed forms of subjectivity formation.

17:37.935 --> 17:41.875
So of course racial formation, religious religiosity,

17:41.875 --> 17:44.115
migration status, worker status.

17:44.915 --> 17:47.605
I think, the new research

17:47.605 --> 17:49.410
that is emerging at the moment is all about

17:50.115 --> 17:51.885
grounding the understanding of queer

17:51.905 --> 17:56.645
and trans lives in a broader, in a broader,

17:57.065 --> 18:00.645
analysis of social structures of inequality,

18:01.105 --> 18:02.565
and how those are interconnected.

18:02.985 --> 18:04.685
But for, in order to do so, we had

18:04.685 --> 18:07.045
to incorporate both the global and the local dimensions.

18:07.045 --> 18:10.325
And that's where my work was trying to intervene to look at

18:10.325 --> 18:12.525
what is particular about a certain

18:13.185 --> 18:16.965
nation state under daily politics of violence

18:17.665 --> 18:20.605
versus the transnational circulation

18:20.945 --> 18:22.685
of vernacular, languages of resistance.

18:23.265 --> 18:25.845
So I think we are able to keep both dimensions, the,

18:26.855 --> 18:29.395
the interconnection between queer and trans

18:29.815 --> 18:33.635
and other, forms of, or intersections of oppression.

18:33.765 --> 18:36.515
While at the same time we unpack

18:36.705 --> 18:39.075
what is particular about the local versus the global.

18:39.285 --> 18:42.275
There is so much that could be productive

18:42.275 --> 18:43.435
for our daily politics.

18:43.435 --> 18:45.915
And so, strategies of resilience,

18:46.055 --> 18:47.915
and that's I think where research is going.

00:00 - Is a project that I started something like 14 years ago when I was doing my masters. And at that time I felt like there was a lack of his graphical work on how state sources or the archival sources that are related to state violence or social violence are also a way

00:18 - of accessing the resilience of queer and trans communities. How we can read the sources through the lenses of the ways in which stigmatized and criminalized people were able to find around, communities, around languages, around sexual, sexual spaces too. so that was my perspective, how to use all these unuse or unexplored state archives in order to undermine the discourse and narratives that the authoritarian state have tried

00:49 - to project, which were all about same pain, stigma, isolation, lack of community, lack of meaning. How can we use the sources that were meant to reinforce a narrative to undermine that same discourse? And I started the project I was working on, I was using the category of homosexual, which comes from pathologizing criminalizing frameworks, but then it became appropriate by gay and queer movements in the sixties and seventies. but then I realized that in the sources,

01:20 - the terminology, the vernacular vocabulary of the America and the American was the way in which, state interventions or state violence somehow incorporated the actual daily experiences of people who were on the margins of sexual normativity. So the America has to do with the, with a paradigm to understand sexual desire that is prior to or distinct from the gay paradigm. In the gay paradigm, you have sexual orientation

01:49 - as something that is different from gender performance in the America paradigm. Those are intertwined. You cannot really separate the way in which a people, the way in which a person experiences their gender from the way in which they project their desires, they're actually mutually, mutually the course. They, they reinforce each other or they, materialize each other.

02:15 - So, for example, America will be someone that fail attraction towards male persons in order to express that desire. They will fa femina feminize themselves in public. so they will use the female gender when referring to themselves. They will be, flamboyant. They will be extravagant, they will be playful about that gender, ambivalence. They will sift from one gender to another,

02:42 - and they will be very seductive. They will be very provocative and very hypersexual in some occasions. And then the American is in Spanish, is all about the accents and the phonetics. So when you add the final on, it means that it's a, an even more hypersexual, more extreme, more visible iteration or manifestation of this America subjectivity. So the American was defined by bi, which is a Spanish term. That means the lack of self-control people who were

03:08 - so over the top, so in your face that there was no hope or redemption. They were seen as people who were so taken by their, the generation, their, the private, that they could only become like agents of contagion, people who will express that, transgression to other people. And the opposite of that is the Marquita, which is a domestic religious, inoffensive figure, which is a very particular local phenomenon, is particularly a strong in the south of Spain,

03:36 - but it also happens in our places. So depending on the accents, depending on the phonetics, we can distinguish different gradations of these stigmatized objectivity. I started this archival research when I was doing my masters at the new school, and my first archival experience was going to, I went to Buenos Aires, and I didn't know where to start, honestly. So I went to the National Archives and someone mentioned, okay,

03:58 - so there were homosexual soldiers that were prosecuted in the seventies, so maybe you can look at those. And I didn't have much hope about how military records will be relevant for a queer history or a history of queer resistance. But then there were extremely explicit, there were quai porn African, in which, in the ways in which soldiers were vocal and open about how they encounter each other, the kinds of,

04:21 - the mechanics of their sexual intercourse, particularly because they were performing binary roles. They were performing either the America high feminized persona or the hyper-masculine dominant and aggressive macho persona in order to do so. They were very explicit about the culation penetration urges, et cetera. So then I realized that in this very, very, very central to a state violence archives, military records, you can actually find the most explicit description

04:53 - of gay sex that you could ever imagine. And I don't know, the, the examples are fascinating. And then I decide to go from there to look for, to look for the most, most institutionalized, more violent archives and try to look at them through the lenses of desire, pleasure, and hypersexual encounters. so, and I was doing that research simultaneously in Spain and Argentina. So in Argentina, I was looking at military records,

05:16 - but also like activism, oral histories, the classification institute, which is a criminological foundation, institute. And in Spain, I was looking at background courts, in Spain. Homosexuality was prosecuted as a form of, as an expression of lamping proletariat lack of discipline, so to speak. the fact that it was called the ancy law is very indicative for the fact that the people

05:41 - who were prosecuted were the ones who were, supposedly unemployed or at the margins of the formal economy. and then I was interested in the different vocabularies or the different languages that you can see in these different national records. Comparing the military records in Argentina were, as I said, super explicit in your face. with the Spanish records that were more mediative, there was more paraphrasing, more attention

06:09 - to respectability and discretion, even in the way in which the authorities were creating these records. That led me to interrogate the sources and look for the reasons why these national paradigms will be both connected, but also distinct in terms of how they develop and became consolidated in this very significant period between the forties and the eighties. just to give you an example of like a soldier

06:34 - and what they will say to the, to the judge. So this is someone who was integrated for being bottom in gay sex, and he say, Mr. Judge, I experience an enormous satisfaction when I'm penetrated and I'm able to e*******e since at those moments I m********e at the same time. So this kind of very vocal confrontation with the state of telling them what they didn't want to hear, that you could find so much pressure

06:58 - and satisfaction in gay sex is my, is what drove me to unheard all the sources and incorporate them in my project. I would say it's about paying attention to the different, to the whole spectrum of resistance. Not only vocal political, public resistance that happens through protest or activism or formal organizations, but also the most daily, daily forms of resistance that have to do

07:28 - with sometimes accommodation or incorporating the discourses of power or material culture, the ways in which people use erotica, pornography, literature, et cetera. So trying to include all that spectrum that goes from the ian to the most political was challenging, but was also very enriching for the project. and also like finding those moments when people who are prosecuted for their queerness

07:53 - or their transness, were able to make fun of the per persecution, were able to par the, the undermine the underlying principles of state violence. so a couple of examples. There is this person called Alita, who was America, someone who lived in between both genders, hypersexual, very selective. And in 1940s, she was interrogated by a criminologist in Buenos Aires, and she was flirting with the criminologist.

08:23 - So her way of resisting was actually sexualizing that encounter that was meant to produce a criminal report. And instead she was like, Hey, how are you? Like, you look cute today. So she was like very flirt, flirtatious with the integrator. And that really undermined the whole power structure of that situation, right? and then there are things that have to do more with particular cultural expressions. Like for example, in South Spain,

08:51 - Catholic curiosity was super important, for small communities in the way they build their so ability solidarity networks, daily rituals and maritas. in andal, Lucia were able to find mechanisms of social integration through that kind of participation in Catholic rituals and, sociability, which is also the language of power. Obviously the Franco regime was, instrumentalizing Catholic religiosity for the sake

09:20 - of a nationalist discourse. But the same discourse was also instrumentalized by communities who supported queer people in order to question the legitimacy of step persecution. So that continuity between power structures and the possibility of turning around those discourses to claim that it is legitimate to be different, that is something that is fascinating for me. and finally there is, there are also this ways in which people basically told the state, there is no role for you

09:51 - to, explore my private or intimate life. And you can even trace that in medical records or psychological exams. so I'm gonna written an example. This is a psychological exam in which the person is asked to complete a sentence. So these are his answers. The best thing. I never say what hurts me. I don't, so in secret nothing. So even though this person was not telling the interrogator

10:22 - or the psychological expert, I'm not gonna answer your questions, or I'm not gonna participate in this form of state violence, the way in which they refuse to provide any single information that will be, related to their pri, their intimacy, their actual desires, and they use this very like ambivalent answers, is very powerful to me. And it connects with the ways in which the, the political activism of the seventies presented similar claims.

10:50 - Leave us alone. Don't try to police our private lives or our communities. And that is also present before gay activism. so that there are so many iterations of this. And I think the key was to be attentive to the fact that sometimes it might seem that they are, that there is a rupture or a discontinue between negotiation and accommodation on the one hand, and confrontation and, opposition on the other. But I think there is more connection

11:21 - between the both extremes that we might think at the beginning. I think it has to do with, looking at America's objectivity and America archives through the lenses of understanding the particular context in which these people were reacting to, oppression and discrimination. there is an expression by a Spanish author, author, a Spanish novelist, who said in the fifties, Hilbert, he wrote, it's not like we are quiet or we are silent.

11:52 - It's that we are speaking a in a very low voice. So all the people who are attentive can listen to us. And I think that's something to keep in mind that mari or queer and trans people were creating meaning, but it was coded. It was, it was meant to be listened by those who were able to have a more sympathetic or understanding and understanding perspective on their daily experiences. so that doesn't mean that those forms of resistance were not changing the system

12:23 - or providing mechanisms of survival and resilience. It's just that we have to understand those code meanings in order to give them the value that they have in that moment. So I'm thinking, for example, in Miguel de Molina, who is in the cover of the book, he was a, a performer and singer, who never openly declare, at least in the fifties and sisters, that he was a gay person, that he had desires for other men. but then his followers, his fans were able to understand what he was doing in public.

12:58 - by the way, he used clothing, voice, sentimentality. So he had like this very extravagant, over the top blows and search. And his fans were always asking him for those designs, those patterns that he used for those clothing items. And also they were expressing how much his music was transporting them to a different space, to a space of freedom or, a space of,

13:29 - the possibility of imagining another situation where stigma was not so powerful. and those meanings might not be evident or obvious when you read the letters at the first time. It's someone saying, I want a copy of the pattern that you used to, create that beautiful shirt. But then if you keep reading there, talking about feeling transported, feeling freedom, feeling desire for Molina, and all that has to be incorporated into the

13:58 - his that we're writing today. Later in the seventies, late sixties and seventies, there was the argument that America's objectivity, because it was recreating gender binaries, the, the notion that there is a complementarity between the feminine receptive sexual partner and the active dominating insertive partner for the active, for some sectors of the activism in the seventies, that was

14:22 - considered alienation, that was considered something that prevented people from sexualization. And I'm trying to understand how sometimes even though we are operating within gender binaries or power structures, those can be more flexible. And there is a level of playfulness in our engagement with those structures. And I think that's something that comes across in the sources as well. The fact that it wasn't spoken about the fact

14:44 - that there was this undercurrent of alternative appropriations of mainstream discourses or mainstream figures, but it was something only visible for participants in the culture. That to me, is a very powerful strategy of, community building. Like the, even the Vocabulary that they use for people

15:07 - who participated in the sub culture, Convey the idea That It was not meant for everyone that you could survive by creating ledgers of possibility and ledgers of self protection. So one of the terms that they use for, queer people Or homosexual men who were Aware of the cultural repertoire that, that Preserve transgression and made it more,

15:33 - resilient, Wasdo, anddo Means the ones In the know, The ones who know the code. And again, there are tensions in This, in This repertoire. So then CanDos were not particularly sympathetic to America because they thought that America was too hypersexual, too visible and not respectable enough. And then CanDos were more invested in a certain genealogy of homosexuality that was grounded in antiquity

16:03 - and masculinity and civilization. But still, the idea there was this notion that you could first gather your strength in a kind of semi protected social circle, and then from there have the capacity to spread your message, ever farther, ever in a wider scale to change society. Gradually. We also have to incorporate that into our genealogies of sexual resistance. Sexual resistance does not start in the sixties.

16:32 - There is this previous undercurrent of, solidarity and survival that has to do with first gathering strength in a more sheltered space. And even the prisons are part of that. Like, America talk a lot about how when they were in prison, they were still able to be a community, because they gossip, they had lowers, and they used the materials that they had at their disposal in the prisons to maintain their performance of femininity.

16:59 - So Tanya Navarro, who's a person that I interviewed, she talk about using aluminum foil, plaster, things that seem very inoffensive in the context of the prison to create makeup so they could still preserve their mari femininity in a context of repression. And then the communities that they created inside the prison were extended beyond the prison. So only understanding these forms of solidarity and resilience before sexual liberation, we can understand what happened later.

17:25 - I think future research is about, looking at the connections between queer and trans subjectivities and other, marginalized or oppressed forms of subjectivity formation. So of course racial formation, religious religiosity, migration status, worker status. I think, the new research that is emerging at the moment is all about grounding the understanding of queer and trans lives in a broader, in a broader,

17:57 - analysis of social structures of inequality, and how those are interconnected. But for, in order to do so, we had to incorporate both the global and the local dimensions. And that's where my work was trying to intervene to look at what is particular about a certain nation state under daily politics of violence versus the transnational circulation of vernacular, languages of resistance. So I think we are able to keep both dimensions, the,

18:26 - the interconnection between queer and trans and other, forms of, or intersections of oppression. While at the same time we unpack what is particular about the local versus the global. There is so much that could be productive for our daily politics. And so, strategies of resilience, and that's I think where research is going.

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