El Alto | Queer: Gender Sexuality and the Arts in the Americas

El Alto
62 Rethinking the Andean Fiesta in Cuir Folkloric Times
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modified the China Morena significantly inspired
by vedettes and TV personalities of the 1960s.
Among these changes, they shortened the skirt’s
length, increased the length of their boots up
to the knees, added a provocative cleavage, a
wig and make-up that would replace the mask
that that old China Morena wore, which was a
character performed by a heterosexual man
who would cross-dressed under a mask. 17 In the
earlier 1970s there was an alleged prohibition
for cuir dancers to dance as China Morenas,
which allowed for women to take over the role
through the present. 18 Today, the China Morena
is performed by women in provocative costumes
catching the masculine eye of spectators.
Because of Aruquipa’s book, there is now more
acknowledgement about the China Morena’s
cuir legacy. 19 Additionally, it has allowed for cuir
individuals to play as China Morenas again, which
means the intervention of the China Morena of
the 1960s and the Waphuri Galán of the 2000s
are key moments of cuir intervention in the
Bolivian fiesta’s dynamic space.
Cuir Folkloric Times
In his book Decolonizing the Sodomite, Michael
Horswell looks at pre-colonial and colonial
records and artifacts to unveil third-gender
tropes of sexuality in Andean culture. Particularly,
he relies on the concept of complementarity
in Andean thought and the Quechua term
tinkuy, which represents “the joining together
of complementary opposites through a process
of ritual mediation.” 20 As an epilogue to his
book, Horswell suggests that given that they
are contemporary forms of pre-colonial taquis
(song-dances in public rituals), danzas represent
forms of “tinkuy negotiation of sexual difference
and demonstrate the endurance of third-gender
performance in the Andes,” which can aid our
view of cross-dressing characters initially danced
by heterosexual men, which I called earlier in
this article “patriarchal ritual crossdressing.” 21
Andean ways of knowing in the form of tinkuy
and the pre-Hispanic third-gender deity of the
Chuqui Chinchay allows us to see that perhaps
the cuir folkloric times that I have invoked here
cannot be seen in isolation. 22 For instance, this
was notably pointed out by the late Giuseppe
Campuzano in his groundbreaking itinerant
museum Museo Travesti del Perú (Transvestite
Museum of Perú), and his larger performance
and academic work. 23 Nevertheless, reading
these cuir interventions as manifestations of
complementarity seems insufficient. Instead,
I see it is a form of hacking of the process of
complementarity that occurs. In other words,
the initial patriarchal ritual cross-dressing figures
that enabled a tinkuy-like mediation between the
masculine and the feminine—and in the process
embodied patriarchalism—are repurposed by
cuir artists today in an effort to affect folklore as
a dominating narrative that they have grown up
with while facing of discrimination.
In making cultural expressions representative of
a region, i.e. through a process of folklorisation, 24
fiestas become spaces where Andean culture
is celebrated and consumed by locals and
tourists. In the face of a nationalistic narrative
that relies on a political economy of difference,
the cuir interventions that I have highlighted
here offer us a way to rethink how difference in
folklore also relates to gender and sexual nonnormativity.
25 More importantly, I argue that they
stand as activist interventions in their own right.
In comparison to the Tunantada cuir dancers,
La Familia Galán have become celebrated
public figures and their members have held
different positions that have facilitated their
activist work. 26 Additionally, Bolivia has antidiscrimination
and gender identity laws in place
that Peru has yet to see. I am not suggesting
a direct correlation between state law and the
“fiesta laws” that allow for more or less cuir
visibility—although the masked Tunantada cuir
dancers could be read this way in contrast to the
daring Waphuri Galán. Instead, it is important
that we rethink folklore and the fiesta
in dynamic ways and revise nationalistic
narratives of the 20th Century to consider cuir
folkloric interventions as activist processes
that problematise state law and everyday
discrimination. In this respect, the Tunantada cuir
dancers and La Familia Galán are testaments to
the fact that the aesthetic and the festive knows
no discrimination when in the hands of artists.
Enzo E. Vasquez Toral is a Peruvian
scholar, theater director, and performer
pursuing a PhD in Performance Studies
at Northwestern University in the US.
His research work focuses on queer and
trans engagement in cross-dressing
ritual practices in patron-saint fiestas,
folklore, and devotion in the Andes. He
holds an MA in Performance Studies from
Northwestern University, an MA in Spanish
and Portuguese from Princeton University
and a BA in History and Literature and
Brazilian Studies from Harvard University.
He can be reached at enzo@u.northwestern.
edu.
Bibliography
Aruquipa Perez, David. “Placer, deseo y
política: la revolución estética de La
Familia Galán,” Bulletin de l’Institut
Français d’Études Andines 45.3, 2016.
La China Morena: Memoria histórica
travesti. La Paz: Comunidad Diversidad and
MUSEF, 2012.
Dominguez Ruvalcaba, Hector. Translating
the Queer: Body Politics and Transnational
Conversations. London: ZED books, 2016.
Falconí Travez, Diego and Santiago
Castellanos, Maria Elena Viteri (ed).
Resentir lo queer en América Latina:
Diálogos desde/con el Sur. Barcelona:
Egales, 2014.
1 – Terms such as syncretic, hybrid and mestizo are
often used to characterize the Andean fiesta, which
allows us to see this festive space as one in which
several ways of knowing interact and challenge one
another.
2 – Mendoza, Zoila. “Patron Saint Festivals and
Dance in Peru: Histories Told from within” in The Andean
World, edited by Linda J. Seligmann and Kathleen S.
Fine-Dare (London and New York: Routledge, 2019):
p.440.
3 – Here and for the rest of the text, whenever I use
the singular or plural forms of “man” and “woman”, I am
referring to cisgender people.
4 – When making reference to trans people I refer
to transgender and transsexual women (a woman who
has assigned male at birth). The participation of trans
men and lesbian women in the fiesta space remains less
visible, and demands further research.
5 – I purposely do not include the “Q” in this
acronym, which usually stands for the word queer, as it
is not a term often used in Latin American Spanish and
Portuguese. The word cuir as I deploy it in this essay
is not common language either – I use it merely to
“mobilise” it as a theoretical lens.
6 – Relevant academic publications on the queer/
cuir in the Americas include: Translating the Queer: Body
Politics and Transnational Conversations (London: ZED
books, 2016) by Hector Dominguez Ruvalcaba; Queer
& Cuir: Políticas de lo Irreal (Mexico City: Fontamara,
2015), and Resentir lo queer en América Latina: Diálogos
desde/con el Sur (Barcelona: Egales, 2014) edited by
Diego Falconí Travez, Santiago Castellanos and Maria
Amelia Viteri.
7 – Jauja is a province in Peru, situated in the
Mantaro river valley. The Tunantada as a danza
and festivity has spread across local, national, and
transnational borders. Particularly, its presence in the
Mantaro Valley has been imminent. For the purpose of
this essay, I focus on the Yauyos fiesta given its central
importance in the inception and promotion of the
Tunantada.
8 – Mucha Gago, Francisco. Tunantada: Precisiones y
Antología. Lima: Ministerio del Cultura del Perú, 2015, p.15.
9 – Other female dance characters that sometimes
appear in other cuadrillas are María Pichana (an old and
gossipy woman), and the Cusqueña (woman from Cuzco).
María Pichana is a satiric figure mostly performed
by heterosexual men who cross-dress, whereas the
Cusqueña is usually performed by women.
10 – In January 2012, a TV show in Peru (Día D),
aired a short news documentary that portrayed the
Tunantada as a fiesta for travestis (transvestites).
Instead of celebrating the participation of cuir dancers,
it showed them as scandalous participants who had
inadequately taken over the fiesta. This caused great
commotion among Jaujinos (people from Jauja) who
rejected the allegations in this documentary and asked
the TV programme to take back their opinion. Instead
of defending cuir dancers, Jaujinos showed varying
levels of discrimination against them in their defense of
the Tunantada, and only seemed to have focused their
efforts in protecting “tradition” and prestige. Since this
incident, local authorities and fiesta organisers have
inspected and patrolled cuir participation more closely.
11 – Aruquipa Perez, David. “Placer, deseo y política:
la revolución estética de La Familia Galán,” Bulletin de
l’Institut Français d’Études Andines, 45.3 (2016),
p.451. Unless specified, this and all translations in this
essay are mine.