Cruces e intersecciones entre sexualidades, género y clases.

INSAUSTI, SANTIAGO JOAQUIN

Buenos Aires

Jornada; V Jornadas de Trabajo de la Red de Estudios sobre Represión y Violencia Política; 2021

Red de Estudios sobre Represión y Violencia Política

This presentationexplores the twenty-first century queer memory of state violence in Argentina between1976 and 1983 when the country was ruled by a military dictatorship that killedthirty thousand people known as ?desaparecidos? (disappeared people). The mosttraumatic episode in the history of the country, this dictatorship alsopromoted the ?Christian Western family? and persecuted queer identitiesdenouncing them as anthitetical to the nation. In spite of this persecution,queer cruising and promiscuous sex in public thrived during the dictatorship,becoming a form of ludic resistance against authoritarian rule. Challenged by aHuman Rights movement with international outreach that denounced stateterrorism, the military regime collapsed and Argentina transitioned todemocracy in 1983. A new gay movement emerged under democratic rule that soughtan alliance with human rights organizations and demanded an end to policestreet harassment of those perceived as sexual outcasts. As the gay movementconsolidated in the 1990s police harassment came to an end and a new memory oflife under the 1976-1983 dictatorship emerged. Queer resistance against thedictatorship in the form of cruising, promiscuity, feminine performance andludic sexual defiance was rendered invisible. In turn, the emerging gaypolitics of memory shifted the focus towards victimhood and began to claim that400 of the thirty thousand desaparecidos hadbeen homosexual men. First emerging as a rumor in 1987, the idea of the 400 gaydesaparecidos became more prominent with time and ended up being one of themost important political tools in the crafting of the 2010 same-sex marriagelaw. In this presentationwe will argue that the claim about the 400 gay desaparecidos constitutes a heroic epic that boosted the gay?rights revolution? while erasing queer memory and turning it into gayrespectability. Rather than remembering queer resistance to heteronormativityduring the 1976-1983 dictatorship from the point of view of marica identity, the twenty-firstcentury gay movement chose to remember respectable homosexual men who hadengaged in bonds of romantic love and had fallen victims of state violence. InLatin America until the 1980s the term maricareferred to a self perceived gender/sexual identity different from eithergay men or transgendered people. Assigned as men at birth, maricas did not consider themselves women but understood theirdesire for men as a sign of femininity and alternatively used male and femalegender performances depending on context. In this paper we argue that thecategory ?queer? can help to criticize gay respectability when used as anumbrella adjective to refer to any challenge to heteronormativity. Whenattempting to give a voice to people in Argentina who were persecuted by thedictatorship at the turn of the 1980s, however, a postcolonial approach shouldturn to a native marica perspective.By remembering from a marica point ofview, this paper will challenge the way in which American and Europeanscholarship has also participated in a transnational gay politics of memoryresponsible for erasing local queer identities in Latin America.@font-face{font-family:"Cambria Math";panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;mso-font-charset:0;mso-generic-font-family:roman;mso-font-pitch:variable;mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}@font-face{font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;mso-font-charset:0;mso-generic-font-family:swiss;mso-font-pitch:variable;mso-font-signature:-469750017 -1073732485 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal{mso-style-unhide:no;mso-style-qformat:yes;mso-style-parent:"";margin:0cm;line-height:115%;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;mso-fareast-font-family:Arial;mso-ansi-language:EN;}.MsoChpDefault{mso-style-type:export-only;mso-default-props:yes;font-size:11.0pt;mso-ansi-font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;mso-ansi-language:EN;}.MsoPapDefault{mso-style-type:export-only;line-height:115%;}div.WordSection1{page:WordSection1;}