Wild Tongues: Transnational Mexican Popular Culture

4. Of Wild Tongues and Restless Bodies: María Elena Gaitán's Performance Art

Strangers in Our Own Land Apartheid in Aztlán Don’t Mourn. Organize! maría elena gaitán The origins of Chicana and Latina theater and performance can be situated in the U.S. Southwest during the time this geographical region was still under Spanish colonial domination.¹ Historically, Chicanas and Latinas have participated in all the creative and technical components of U.S. theater and performance from its incipiency. Anglo mainstream theater in the United States, slowly and only recently, has begun to recognize and incorporate theatrical cultural productions by Chicanas into its canon. Yet less than two percent of the plays produced in the United States are written by Chicanas.² Given this virtual invisibility, such playwrights and performance artists address issues of self-representation and empowerment. At the same time, they attempt to contest the stereotypical and racist depictions by voicing their concerns regarding issues of identity formation as subjects who constantly inhabit a liminal cultural space where multiple aspects of their culture overlap. Furthermore, this contestation addresses issues of gender and sexual discrimination from within their own ethnic group, especially starting in the late 1970s when the first wave of Third World feminism produced empowering literary works that were later transformed and transferred onto the stage.³ In confronting the issues mentioned above, Chicana playwrights insist on making their voices heard, and their “wild tongues” will tell their own stories regardless of the consequences faced from mainstream culture and their own. As Alicia Arrizón argues, “[The Chicana] subject is the one who replaces whispers with shouts and obedience with determination. In challenging her assigned position, she begins to transform and transcend it . . . She is the . . . taboo breaker . . . the transgressive, the lusty and comical performer, the queerest among us.”⁴ Such ideas of rupturing the silence of wild tongues and restless bodies: maría elena gaitán’s performance art Chapter 4 of wild tongues and restless bodies 107 and defying the patriarchal roles assigned to Chicanas have been theorized by Chicana feminist writers Tey Diana Rebolledo and Yolanda BroylesGonz ález. In Women Singing in the Snow Rebolledo exalts women whom she calls mujeres callejeras and explains that whenever women step outside of the oppressive roles traditionally assigned to them,⁵ society considers them “loose women.” The author redefines this term when she states that mujeres callejeras are “women who wander and roam, who walk around, who journey : the terms imply restlessness, wickedness. They are not bound by societally constructed morals, nor cultural practices. [These] women . . . can be demanding, self-satisfying, and worse, perhaps they don’t need a man.”⁶ These terms can be applied to Chicanas/Latinas in theater and performance when they empower themselves by breaking the chains of patriarchy even at the risk of being considered traitors to their communities in order to reclaim their experiences,⁷ their voices, and especially their bodies on stage. Along similar lines, Broyles-González theorizes about the Chicana performance artist who can be considered an atravesada. She defines this term as “a crosswise woman [who] crosses conventions, borders, and hierarchies with wisdom.”⁸ “When the atravesada is grotesquely comical, then she is a trickster. Laughter is the ingredient [that] magically changes everything [and] shocks us out of the complacency of seriousness.”⁹ In their (re)codification of these terms Rebolledo and Broyles-González contribute theories of empowerment for Chicanas whose voices traditionally have not been heard. However, I believe that a third term, hocicona, or loudmouth, is necessary to highlight the way language is used. I define hocicona as a woman who speaks without restraints when challenging the exploitation of her people. The hocicona often risks censorship and even physical violence when her words are considered offensive or distasteful in nature. The term derives from the Spanish noun hocico, which means an animal’s snout or mouth, especially that of a dog, thereby animalizing the woman or girl who is called hocicona. The insult is used primarily with girls and women. However, the hocicona defies patriarchal norms of decency, decorum, and language in order to continue to voice her demands. Chicana theater and performance, then, can be analyzed through the theoretical framework of Chicana/Latina and Third World feminisms. Whether we apply the theoretical terminology created by Anzaldúa (new mestiza consciousness)¹⁰ or by Chela Sandoval (oppositional consciousness),¹¹ we must situate this subject in a “third space,” or between cultures, where she is empowered to enact her own (re)presentation(s). Emma Pérez states that Chicanas...