My feature on Chile’s queer performance artist/writer renegade voice, which he once characterized as “mariconaje guerrero” (“warrior faggotry”) appears in the May/June Gay & Lesbian Review, under the issue theme of “Unsung Heroes.”
The below excerpt describes a performance by Lemebel and collaborator Francisco Casas (as Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis entitled La Conquista de américa:
At the Chilean Human Rights Commission, Las Yeguas danced the cueca, Chile’s national dance, on a map of South America littered with broken Coca-Cola bottles, until their commingled blood stained the map in dance-step patterns. They each danced the female role alone, signaling the absence of the desaparecidos (political detainees who were “disappeared” by the state). It was a haunting appropriation of the symbolic dance as much as a rebuke of colonialist violence.
Many thanks to Chilean-American artist Ignacio Salas for his unwavering guidance and support, and to Richard Schneider Jr, for his scholarly edit.