718287 research-article2017
QIXXXX10.1177/1077800417718287Qualitative InquiryAndrade and Gutierrez-Perez
Section I
Bailando Con Las Sombras: Spiritual Activism and Soul Healing in the War Years
Qualitative Inquiry 2017, Vol. 23(7) 502–504 © The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800417718287 DOI: 10.1177/1077800417718287 journals.sagepub.com/home/qix
Luis M. Andrade1 and Robert Gutierrez-Perez2 Keywords spiritual activism, soul healing, queer of color critique, pulse, performative writing Standing on the edge my home I feel the pressure of the artist Circling the cage my darkness Bodies dancing Bodies running Bodies bleeding Like a virus, the images infect me Turn my immune system against me Mind fights gut fights soul I lose spirit Coping en las sombras Hiding head in chest crying at sunrise How did you convince me to be afraid? flight takes over fight impossible decisions in the blink of an eye no options no warning moving without my control shots confused as musical beats A cumbia of death A reggaeton of doom A hip-hop, salsa fusion splayed red Forward, hip back out of step face on the floor staring into a puddle too soon not ready 49 cell phones ringing no breathing, no answer #weareorlando
You Mattered, I Texted I held my phone in desperation, Robert, to tell you what I’m feeling. Because my writing is sometimes broken but instinctual. I texted you dozens of statements and thoughts that I was feeling. Sometimes I have moments where I feel the need to scream and say the things I feel. So, right here, I want to share the back and forth movement of our thoughts and feelings as we attempted to make meaning via text messages. Texting you was my only recourse. You mattered. Do I? Luis, you texted me for support and I was grateful for that. The image of a dance hall empty and silent with nothing but LGBTQAI bodies (of color) unable to respond to the ringing and the text notifications of their loved ones . . . It fucking breaks my heart. Robert, I have been wanting to tell you that you are my brother, sangre, and that you should cry and let your words become swords for others. Only to you, I will admit that I have nightmares because we can be killed at any given moment. I texted you to express my silence because I feel wanderlust, navigating the psychic terrains of my body, and though we are different, I feel a spiritual connection with you, splintered, yet whole. It’s overwhelmingly terrifying to understand that as queer people of color we are living in the war years.1 Yes, I finally understand Cherríe Moraga when she wrote, “Change don’t come easy. For anyone. But this state of war we live in, this world on fire provides us with no other choice.”2 Hermano, I want to make a choice but everything feels like an impossible decision. I feel frozen en susto. I need soul healing for this soul loss.3 I need a spiritual activism to call back my lost souls, so I can do “the work”—la tarea—for our various interconnected communities.4 On the dance floor. Out of the innermost parts of our body, our souls scream. They let out, give in, forcefully sing: déjenme llorar,5 mi amor eterno e inolvidable, tarde o temprano estaré contigo, para seguir amándonos.6 They 1
Santa Monica College, CA, USA University of Nevada, Reno, USA
2
Corresponding Author: Luis M. Andrade, Department of Communication Studies, Santa Monica College, 1900 Pico Boulevard, Santa Monica, CA 90405, USA. Email: luismanuelandrade1@gmail.com
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Andrade and Gutierrez-Perez shout for the centuries of struggle that they went through to fight cabrones, colonizadores, amores. These screams are guttural reminders—visceral scratches—that the ratas de dos patas7 no se saldrán con las suyas. They are broken promises, blood-written contracts that we are not docile; we are savage, in control of our bodies, and owning our desires. Luis, I wish I had your conviction! I am tired of being a monster.8 Tired of playing the part of shadow to someone else’s nightmare. When I dance, I feel free. Free from gender norms, free to move without fear, free to let my body speak for me, and sometimes free to let someone in. There is something about how the music shifts from cumbia to reggaeton to hip-hop y más that reminds me of the borderlands. That state Anzaldúa calls “nepantla,” which is Nahuatl for “in-between space,” that queer people of color spend the majority of our lives within. Is this why the music at Latinx gay night calls to us? A ritual state where we completely inhabit our feelings, emotions, and reality; an inner– outer realm where music unleashes sensations and loosens stress held within our bodies—we roam wild. Why is it that my mother, aunts, and vecinas all shouted the same songs when tending to their homes? Why is it that the maricones shout these same songs in the same movements, the same contorted bodies? Why is it that these wails are all too familiar? In the club, las noches norteñas, eerily, unsurprisingly, familiar. I don’t know. I don’t know. I feel the radical interconnectedness that you are trying to describe. I feel how you are trying to name (on our terms, not theirs) the “process of othering [that] creates individuals, groups, and communities that are deemed to be less important, less worthwhile, less consequential, less authorized, and less human based on historically situated markers of social formation such as race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and nationality.”9 I feel like we are in the dark, circling the cage, trying desperately to “touch and feel” the pit of despair right in front of us.10 The radical interconnectedness may perhaps rest in the spiritual—Yo no sé—but it’s too much of a coincidence to be coincidental. It is as if the souls—the spirits—are scratching our throats threatening to possess us. They scratch through the guts, lungs, heart, arteries, teeth, and tongue. To live again and show their faces. They are in our PULSE. My uncles and my father sing Vicente—I sing Thalia. La Trevi, la Lucha, la Britney, la Gaga, la Yuri. My song is prayer to the eternal feminine. Anzaldúa writes, “Death and destruction do shock us out of our familiar daily rounds and force us to confront our desconocimientos, our sombras—the unacceptable attributes and unconscious forces that a person must wrestle with to achieve integration. They expose our innermost fears, forcing us to interrogate our souls.”11 And though we sing of murder—si en mis manos tuviera un puñal lo usaría y la vida yo te quitaría12—we ultimately love. Through our penas, we endure to protect and love a
estos malditos cabrones. That though they’ve hurt us, we confess eternal love—amor eterno—and we forgive. We write in blood that we will not make love con otro—no, no, no!13—and we will be tu amante o lo que tenga que ser, lo que mas quieras tu.14 My mother taught me that, and her mother, and her her mother; amor de indias. What happened at Pulse Orlando was not us but it was us. A piece of us died in that space. Thousands of miles away, I was dancing, celebrating the union of my gay best friends in a similar environment. A similar place in spatio-temporal reality. We were happy. We were together. Singing. Bailando. Bang, bang. I shouldn’t have turned on the TV at 4 AM. I should have held onto a little more happiness. It was inevitable. We carry the same target sign on our backs, thousands of miles apart. Nightmare or dream I couldn’t sleep last night Power ballads pop songs Latinx gay nights Songs my matriarchs listened to Cleaning houses Growing up Paquita Pimpinela Yuri Marisela Gloria Trevi Alejandra Guzman Chavela Vargas Rocio Durcal Lola Beltran You mattered The power of women Affirming desire Affirming internal impulses To fuck, to sing, To be The sonic force The vocal and embodied power Transmitting energy Feeling the escalofrios con la misma musica
504 This sonic transmission Taps the locas in us Raging Mad Perra spirits Careful! we are deranged depressed desperate Like la llorona We do not mind wandering the Earth Wailing our broken lyrics A long chant Centuries of Adelitas, Chavelas, Ivy Queens Mixing cantos, styles, rock, reggae, Shouts, screams, silence Sonic melodies mourning lost Do we matter? Notes 1. Cherrie Moraga, Loving in the War Years: Lo Que Nunca Pasó por Sus Labios (Cambridge: South End Press, 2000). 2. Cherrie Moraga, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (New York, Kitchen Table, 2000) iv. 3. Gloria Anzaldúa, Light in the Dark/Luz en Lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, 3Reality (Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2015). 4. Gloria Anzaldúa, The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader (Durham, Duke University Press, 2009). 5. Carla Morrison, Déjenme llorar [CD] (Cosmica Records/ Intolerancia Records, 2012). 6. Juan Gabriel, Canta A Juan Gabriel Volumen 6 [Album] (Ariola Eurodisc, 1984). 7. Eduardo Toscano Norberto, Taco placero [CD] (Discos Musart). 8. Bernadette M. Calafell, Monstrosity, Performance, and Race in Contemporary Culture (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2015). 9. Yep 18. 10. Gutierrez-Perez, “Warren-ting.” 11. Gloria Anzaldúa, Light in the Dark/Luz en Lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality (Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2015) 16. 12. Martha I. Pesante, Francisco Saldaña, and Ernesto Padilla, Flashback [CD] (Mas Flow Studios, 2005). 13. Marella Cayre and Consuelo A. Bustos, Flor de Papel [Album] (Fonovisa/Universal Music, 1991). 14. Rafael Perez Botija Garcia and Maria E. Ramos Nunez, Heridas [CD] (Melody, 2010).
References Anzaldúa, G. (2009). The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader (AnaLouise Keating, Ed.). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Qualitative Inquiry 23(7) Anzaldúa, G. (2015). Light in the Dark/Luz en Lo Oscuro: Rewriting identity, spirituality, reality (AnaLouise Keating, Ed.). Durham: Duke University Press. Calafell, B. M. (2015). Monstrosity, performance, and race in contemporary culture. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Cayre, M., & Arango Bustos, C. (1991). Hacer el amor con otro [Recorded by Alejandra Guzmán]. On Flor de Papel [Album]. Woodland Hills, CA: Fonovisa/Universal Music. Gabriel, J. (1984). Amor eterno [Recorded by Rocio Durcal]. On Canta A Juan Gabriel Volumen 6 [Album]. Mexico DF, Mexico: Ariola Eurodisc. Gutrrieez-Perez, R. M. (2012). Warren-ting a “dinner party”: Nepantla as a space in/between. Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, 8, 195-206. Moraga, C. (1983). Refugees of a world on fire: Foreword to the second edition. In C. Moraga & G. Anzaldúa (Eds.), This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Kitchen Table. Moraga, C. (2000). Loving in the war years: Lo Que Nunca Pasó por Sus Labios (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Morrison, C. (2012). Déjenme llorar. On Déjenme llorar [CD]. Baja California, Mexico: Cosmica Records/Intolerancia Records. Perez Botija Garcia, R., & Ramos Nunez, M. E. (2010). Déjame volver contigo [Recorded by Dulce]. On Heridas [CD]. North Hollywood, CA: Melody. Pesante, M. I., Saldaña, F., & Padilla, E. (2005). Te he querido, te he llorado [Recorded by Ivy Queen] On Flashback [CD]. Carolina, Puerto Rico: Mas Flow Studios. Toscano Norberto, E. (2004). Rata de dos patas [Recorded by Paquita la del Barrio]. On Taco placero [CD]. Mexico City, Mexico: Discos Musart. Yep, G. A. (2003). The violence of heteronormativity in communication studies: Notes on injury, healing, and queer worldmaking. Journal of Homosexuality, 45(2-4), 11-59.
Author Biographies Luis M. Andrade is a Communication Studies professor at Santa Monica College. His research centers on educational equity, research methodology, Latina/o student education, intercultural communication, and rhetorical criticism. Robert Gutierrez-Perez is a queer of color scholar, activist, and performance artist from San José, CA who currently resides as an Assistant Professor of Culture and Communication at the University of Nevada, Reno. His research and life revolves around the goal of empowering, remembering, and advocating for queer people of color with a particular focus on the LGBTQ Chicanx and Latinx community. Gutierrez-Perez is currently creating and preparing to tour a solo performance based on the oral history narratives of gay, bisexual, trans*, queer, and/or questioning Chicanos/ Xicanos in the U.S. Southwest as well as working on a co-edited collection on Anzaldúan approaches to communication theory and methods. Other research interests include critical communication/ performance pedagogy, critical intercultural communication, performance studies, and queer of color critique.