Beyond the Pink Tide: Art and Political Undercurrents in the Americas
3/5
()
About this ebook
Macarena Gomez-Barris
Macarena Gómez-Barris is Chairperson of Social Science and Cultural Studies at Pratt Institute, Director of the Global South Center, and author of Where Memory Dwells: Culture and State Violence in Chile and The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives.
Related to Beyond the Pink Tide
Titles in the series (15)
We Demand: The University and Student Protests Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Fifty-Year Rebellion: How the U.S. Political Crisis Began in Detroit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Boycott!: The Academy and Justice for Palestine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTrans: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Being Brown: Sonia Sotomayor and the Latino Question Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond the Pink Tide: Art and Political Undercurrents in the Americas Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Imagining the Future of Climate Change: World-Making through Science Fiction and Activism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Dirty South Manifesto: Sexual Resistance and Imagination in the New South Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaking All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNever-Ending War on Terror Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary: Understanding U.S. Immigration for the Twenty-First Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRed Scare: The State's Indigenous Terrorist Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnticolonial Eruptions: Racial Hubris and the Cunning of Resistance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related ebooks
Chicanx Utopias: Pop Culture and the Politics of the Possible Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNeoliberalism, Interrupted: Social Change and Contested Governance in Contemporary Latin America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Dirty South Manifesto: Sexual Resistance and Imagination in the New South Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity: Music, Race, and Spatial Entitlement in Los Angeles Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsToxic Loves, Impossible Futures: Feminist Living as Resistance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGroup Works: Art, Politics, and Collective Ambivalence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPublics and Counterpublics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reclaiming Queer: Activist and Academic Rhetorics of Resistance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings50 Feminist Art Manifestos Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAre the Lips a Grave?: A Queer Feminist on the Ethics of Sex Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGender Politics: Citizenship, Activism and Sexual Diversity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQueer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOutside the XY Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Material Feminisms Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOutspoken: A Decade of Transgender Activism and Trans Feminism Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Generation of '72: Latin America's Forced Global Citizens Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCommunity as Rebellion: A Syllabus for Surviving Academia as a Woman of Color Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBuyers Beware: Insurgency and Consumption in Caribbean Popular Culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDarkwater: Voices from Within the Veil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Streetwalking: LGBTQ Lives and Protest in the Dominican Republic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInvisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood among Black Women Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsForget Burial: HIV Kinship, Disability, and Queer/Trans Narratives of Care Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBoycott!: The Academy and Justice for Palestine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Crunk Feminist Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Relational Formations of Race: Theory, Method, and Practice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOther, Please Specify: Queer Methods in Sociology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLife & Times of Butch Dykes, The: Portraits of Artists, Leaders, and Dreamers Who Changed The World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Latin America History For You
Chicano Bakes: Recipes for Mexican Pan Dulce, Tamales, and My Favorite Desserts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Day of the Dead Drawing Book: Learn to Draw Beautifully Festive Mexican Skeleton Art Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Radical Women in Latin America: Left and Right Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How the Gringos Stole Tequila: The Modern Age of Mexico's Most Traditional Spirit Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBecoming Creole: Nature and Race in Belize Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMS-13: The Making of America's Most Notorious Gang Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLife and Death in the Andes: On the Trail of Bandits, Heroes, and Revolutionaries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Conquest of New Spain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5State of War: MS-13 and El Salvador's World of Violence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA new Compact History of Mexico Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEl Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Boom and Bust in Puerto Rico: How Politics Destroyed an Economic Miracle Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCut the Crap & Move To Costa Rica: A How-to Guide Based On These Gringos' Experience Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the "Mexican Drug War" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Indians of the Rio Grande Delta: Their Role in the History of Southern Texas and Northeastern Mexico Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (Revised Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Life with Che: The Making of a Revolutionary Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Memory of Fire Trilogy: Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Aztec Herbal: The Classic Codex of 1552 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mayan Civilization: A History From Beginning to End Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Castro: A Graphic Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Latin Table: Easy, Flavorful Recipes from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Beyond Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHavana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba…and Then Lost It to the Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize): An American History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Journey through Texas: Or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Reviews for Beyond the Pink Tide
1 rating0 reviews
Book preview
Beyond the Pink Tide - Macarena Gomez-Barris
Beyond the Pink Tide
AMERICAN STUDIES NOW: CRITICAL HISTORIES OF THE PRESENT
Edited by Lisa Duggan and Curtis Marez
Much of the most exciting contemporary work in American Studies refuses the distinction between politics and culture, focusing on historical cultures of power and protest, on the one hand, or the political meanings and consequences of cultural practices, on the other. American Studies Now offers concise, accessible, authoritative, e-first books on significant political debates, personalities, and popular cultural phenomena quickly, while such teachable moments are at the forefront of public consciousness.
1. We Demand: The University and Student Protests, by Roderick A. Ferguson
2. The Fifty-Year Rebellion: How the U.S. Political Crisis Began in Detroit, by Scott Kurashige
3. Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability, by Jack Halberstam
4. Boycott! The Academy and Justice for Palestine, by Sunaina Maira
5. Imagining the Future of Climate Change: World-Making through Science Fiction and Activism, by Shelley Streeby
6. Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century, by Barbara Ransby
7. Beyond the Pink Tide: Art and Political Undercurrents in the Americas, by Macarena Gómez-Barris
Beyond the Pink Tide
Art and Political Undercurrents in the Americas
Macarena Gómez-Barris
UC LogoUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.
University of California Press
Oakland, California
© 2018 by Macarena Gómez-Barris
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gómez-Barris, Macarena, 1970– author.
Title: Beyond the pink tide : art and political undercurrents in the Americas / Macarena Gómez-Barris.
Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018015079 (print) | LCCN 2018018323 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520969063 (epub and ePDF) | ISBN 9780520296664 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780520296671 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Arts—Political aspects—Latin America—20th century. | Social movements—Latin America—20th century. | Latin America—Politics and government—20th century.
Classification: LCC NX650.P6 (ebook) | LCC NX650.P6 G66 2018 (print) | DDC 700.98—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018015079
Manufactured in the United States of America
26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Jack
CONTENTS
Overview
Preface
Introduction
Beyond the Pink Tide
1. Sounds Radical
Ana Tijoux, Student Protests, and Palestinian Solidarity
2. How Cuir Is Queer Recognition?
A Manifesto from the Sexual Underground
3. Art in the Shadow of Border Capitalism
Migration, Militarism, and Trans-Feminist Critique
4. An Archive of Starlight
Remapping Patagonia through Indigenous Memories
Conclusion
Rogue Waves
Acknowledgments
Notes
Glossary
Selected Bibliography
OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
How do artistic and political undercurrents refuse the nation-state, offering other modes of being and doing politics in the Americas? Moving beyond the Pink Tide, or state-centered change, I discuss how Transnational Americas Studies foregrounds the importance of art and activism to imagine the world otherwise.
Pink Tide•Art and Social Movements•Transnational Americas Studies•Critical Hope•Debt
CHAPTER 1. SOUNDS RADICAL
What imaginations of solidarity exceed the container of the nation-state? This chapter focuses on the interventions of Ana Tijoux whose music based in the African diaspora and South-South exchanges has become the backdrop for social movements in the Americas, including student anti-debt mobilizations and Indigenous land struggles.
Ana Tijoux•Mapuche Land Struggles•Decolonization•Palestinian Occupation and Resistance•Diaspora•Student Movements
CHAPTER 2. HOW CUIR IS QUEER RECOGNITION?
What spaces and voices challenge the heteronormative violence of nation-state politics? This chapter considers the difference "cuir makes to theorizing LGBTI recognition politics, beginning with Pedro Lemebel’s classic manifesto,
Hablo por mi diferencia."
LGBTI Politics•Queer Theory•Cuir•Pedro Lemebel•Sex Alternatives•Trans Representations•A Fantastic Woman
CHAPTER 3. ART IN THE SHADOW OF BORDER CAPITALISM
What perspectives challenge the normalization of border violence? This chapter looks at how artwork, performance, and critical theory reveal the extreme conditions of living and dying in the shadows of the US-Mexico border.
US-Mexico Border•Militarization•Experiential Art•Performance•Post-Commodity•Sayak Valencia•Teresa Margolles•Regina José Galindo
CHAPTER 4. AN ARCHIVE OF STARLIGHT
This chapter decenters colonial maps and archives to reveal the genocidal colonial violence against Selk’nam, Yeguen, and Ona peoples and territories in Tierra del Fuego. A focus on archipelagos and Indigeneity reorient our view toward land, sea, sky, and starlight.
Patagonia•Tierra del Fuego•Archipelagos•Patricio Guzmán•Selk’nam and Ona Peoples•British Colonialism•Disappearance
CONCLUSION
I offer a metaphor for the sudden sea change and potential of art and political undercurrents from the Americas and the Global South. Art and social movements find routes out of the heteronormative and racialized logics of the nation-state.
Global South•Antonio Gramsci•Future•Southern Theory
PREFACE
One origin moment for this book came from my time living in Quito during 2015. There I saw how a progressive Latin American government, or what has been dubbed the Pink Tide,
turned against the leaders of the social movements that had first brought them to power. Manuela Picq, an anthropologist and journalist and currently a professor at Amherst, was persecuted for her activism alongside her long-term partner, Carlos Pérez Guartambel, Indigenous activist and president of the Kichwa Confederation of Ecuador (Ecuarunari). Even before Manuela was jailed for her supposed antistate activities in solidarity with Indigenous land and water defenders, it became clear that the strong-arm tactics of the state were meant to quell increasing discontent with the politics of resource extraction. As she herself noted, Surprisingly, the Left is also prone to criminalizing social protest.
¹
In contrast to these strong-arm tactics, I witnessed how on the ground, eco-feminist, transgender, anarchist, artist, youth, and Indigenous activists worked collaboratively to denounce state violence. A series of actions called out President Rafael Correa’s cover-up of the real story, which was the Ecuadoran state’s alliance with extractive corporations. In the face of Manuela’s shocking beating by police and her subsequent arrest and imprisonment, I found my hope in the Pink Tide, or the turn to progressive governments in Latin America over the past twenty years, quickly dissipating.
Like many, I wrongly assumed that progressive governments coming to power on radical-sounding platforms would cement social and economic change. Put into power by coalitional movements, Pink Tide states had mobilized the language and symbols of decolonization to garner support. But in the space of a few short years, new progressive states sometimes deployed the same authoritarian methods as their predecessors, and they continued policies that perpetuated social and economic inequalities and reinforced the class, color, sex and gender order.
At the same time, I observed that local communities, artists, Indigenous organizers, and eco-feminists and queer/trans activists embodied alternatives to colonial and modern authoritarianisms in the Americas. Whether through youth radio programs, vibrant exchanges on the street, meetings in people’s houses, coalition marches, or experimental performances in small theaters, artistic and political undercurrents provided alternatives to the increasing violence of the neoliberal and extractive economy. By strengthening these undercurrents, activists in Ecuador deepened the prospects for social transformation.
Within the undercurrents of the Pink Tide, submerged perspectives live in the undercurrents of the dominant politics of the nation-state.² It was through these worlds that I deepened my understanding of the importance of political affect in relation to the potential for lasting social transformation, a point that feminist and queer scholars have long illustrated. I experienced firsthand the creative and active process of social change that felt like forward momentum. Rather than naive, such work was cognizant of the depth of structural injustice and did not instill hope in top-down political machines. Even when repressed by the government, social life reemerged to show how its undercurrents offer alternatives to the dominant global order.
First in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and then globally, the slogan of the World Social Forum, Another world is possible,
has since 2001 inspired social movements, advocacy groups, activists, and artists to counter the devastating effects of globalization. These movements have often been led by queer, trans, Indigenous, and Black activists with direct experience of liberal democracy and its repression. Though I do not focus on the Forum per se, Beyond the Pink Tide does address the modes of thinking, being, listening, and shaping that emerge from below, showing how other worlds are indeed possible and interlinked in vital ways. These artistic and political imaginaries work from translocal spaces, or what Sonia Alvarez and Claudia de Lima Costa and their coeditors refer to as translocalidades.³ Translocalities
is defined by a hemispheric politics based on feminist knowledge production that emerges in spaces of Black and Brown solidarity and in the transits of the South, North, and Caribbean middle spaces of the Américas, or the cross-current flows of political activity. The concept of translocalities comes directly from dissident spaces of solidarity, where social interaction and embodied knowledge transfers are immensely valued.
This book registers exhaustion with the politics of accommodation and the limits of liberalism. This is not to say that new progressive states cannot make dramatic social change, such as that promised by Mexican president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). It is to say, however, that global extractive corporate and right-wing interests will do everything in their power to obstruct genuine social and economic transformation. By considering the undercurrents, and the watery dissolution of nation-state boundaries and principles in acts of solidarity, I ask, can we flow away from the authoritarian politics of the nation-state and past the sea swells of the capitalist economy? Working at the intersections of social action and creative praxis allows us to think, feel, desire, and enact politics together, beyond the Pink Tide.
• • •
All English translations from Spanish are mine unless otherwise noted.
Introduction
Beyond the Pink Tide
ART AND POLITICAL UNDERCURRENTS IN THE AMERICAS
Un oceanografo me enseño que la actividad de pensar se parece al oceano. Las leyes del pensamiento son las mismas del agua que siempre esta dispuesto a amoldarse a todo.*
Patricio Guzmán, The Pearl Button (2014)
This book cautions against our overinvestment in any one model of political change and shows the limitations of liberal democracy. It offers what the Brazilian theorist and educator Paulo Freire called critical hope
by reaching beyond the crashing ebbs and flows of national elections and political defeat to instead perceive how art and social movements fundamentally remake the world. It asks us to perceive the profound desires and critical expressions of social justice in the Americas; it also pushes us to move beyond the limitations of area studies to learn from the rich and living archive of social movements, political experiences, and expressive arts in the hemisphere and beyond. Reflecting on recent documentaries, music, performances, and exhibitions, I show how these modes of doing politics experiment to give primacy to emergent worlds. Taking cues from artists, musicians, and activists helps us organize new forms otherwise according to innovative and embodied models of change, rather than defaulting to well-oiled political machines.
By using the metaphor beyond the Pink Tide,
I refer to getting past the recent disappointing experience with progressive states in Latin America. Rather than slide into a state of political despair, we might recognize and bolster the already existing practices and the continual nonlinear movement toward sustainable and equitable futures, practices that represent an ocean of radical potential.¹ As I show throughout the Americas, artists and activists often reinvent politics by reaching deeper into historical and structural inequalities and by imagining beyond the traditional affairs of the state. Creating non-normative worlds of political being, these efforts queer (cuir) the nation.
As José Quiroga proposes for the Americas, All politics is, or should be, queer politics, just as all forms of artistic expression should aim to queer the public sphere. Somewhere between the dilution of homosexualities and its specificities lies the future of inclusive forms of social action.
² Following Quiroga’s