Trans Queer Pueblo held their bi-monthly Queer Artivismo Saturday, a fundraiser event that honors the struggles of the LGBTQ community through art.
The event centered Independencia, a celebration of Mexican and Central American independence, and how the LGBTQ community creates independence in different ways. Queer Artivismo is held every other month with this last event being the last one for this year.
The theme of the event centers on the revolutionary spirit that secured independence from colonialism in Central America and Mexico. The latter of which is on September 15, and highlights figures like Amelio Robles, a trans man who was part of the Mexican army that fought in the Mexican revolution.
“LGBTQ people have always been leaders of fighting for what’s right… and we still see that today and that what we see here with Trans and Queer people who are always willing to fight for their rights, for their community, and non- LGBTQ communities,” said Xyra Flores, a Trans Queer drag performer and member of Trans Queer Pueblo.
Trans Queer Pueblo is an LGBTQ+ migrant community of color that seeks to support LGBTQ migrants and people of color with various resources.
The organization prides itself as a non-hierarchical, member-driven organization. They advocate for migrants in and out of detention centers, offer free clinics to LGBTQ migrants, and even family acceptance programs where they explain what being LGBTQ means to family members.
“Galería Toloache” was the gallery on the display, curated by Trans Queer Pueblo, and named after the flower Toloache which can serve as a hallucinogen, medicine, or love potion.
The gallery was called “the territory of my body, the territory of my people,” a concept derived from Bolivian feminists who fight for not only the sanctity of their bodies but also the sanctity of their ancestral land against mining and forest companies.
A month prior, Trans Queer Pueblo held an art workshop where they incorporated this theme to make body mapping collages. The collages represent the journey of their bodies through memories made using magazine cut-outs and incorporated throughout their body map.
The gallery curators, Iris Flores and Yadira Barriento, are a married lesbian couple who recently came stateside thanks to Trans Queer Pueblo. They both hailed from Guatemala, but an attempt on their lives forced them to leave their homeland.
“We migrated to this country and suffered for some time in Eloy [Detention Center] before Trans Queer Pueblo helped us out… now we are incorporated in a program that helps people inside detention,” said Iris.
Trans Queer Pueblo helped the couple get released from Eloy Detention Center and assisted them on their asylum applications. They are relatively new to this country, but they are taking full advantage of their new life to express themselves through their art.
“Drag is a way for me to summon a spirit of healing, of health, of strength, of peace,” said Flores. “I’m always nervous before going on and performing, but then when I get up there it’s calming, it doesn’t matter what happens I will always have a plan.”
Toward the end of the show, Dagoberto Bailon, an assistant of Trans Queer Pueblo who performed at the show as Melissa, performed a touching tribute to his transgender aunt and the legacy she left him. In his performance, through the use of interludes with costume changes, voice-overs, and singing and dancing, he told the crowd of coming to terms with his identity as a gay man and drag performer because of his aunt’s transition as a woman.
“You can create worlds when you do drag… and that power made me realize that my aunt, even though I grew up hating her, she had created a world for me to exist,” said Bailon.
“One of the things we do as an organization is to celebrate our roots, and give people a way to not only do art, but to roots themselves and find a little piece of themselves,” said Bailon.
Contact the reporter at lzambra2@asu.edu.
