Performing Mexicanidad: Vendidas y Cabareteras on the Transnational Stage

1. Sexing Guadalupe in Transnational Double Crossings

31 The only wetback I have respect for is the Virgen de Guadalupe. —Luis Alfaro, Electricidad: An American Tragedy T he overwhelming presence of the Virgen de Guadalupe image in all forms of commercial objects across the United States and Mexico, as well as in noncommercial makeshift canvases, primarily human skins (tattoos) and static walls (murals), helps one to easily argue that this image is perhaps the most recognizable one associated with mexicanidad (Mexicanness) and Mexican femininity on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Moreover, in the various instances (or what I would consider to be necessary reenactments) of nationalism and mexicanidad in the context of Mexico and the United States, what performance theorist Diana Taylor may classify as “acts of transfer,” whether these are in the realm of political organizing or mass-mediated cultural representations, the Virgen de Guadalupe figures prominently as both the patron saint of the archives of mexicanidad and its very own measuring stick. Using a performancestudies lens, Taylor, in her book The Archive and the Repertoire, examines the ways in which the Virgen de Guadalupe apparition narrative has been mobilized in different occasions and for different, perhaps even contradictory, motives. Theorizing the importance of both “the archive” and “the repertoire” in the multiple accounts of the Virgen de Guadalupe performative narrative as “acts of transfer,” Taylor proposes that “[t]he multicodedness of these practices transmits CHAPTER 1 SEXING GUADALUPE IN TRANSNATIONAL DOUBLE CROSSINGS 32 as many layers of meaning as there are spectators, participants, and witnesses” (49). Because of the Virgen de Guadalupe’s performative characteristic (and the continuous reenactment of her narrative of apparition) as well as her status as the principal imperative in the archives of heterosexual national culture, it is thus apropos to open this section, Reimagining the Archive of Mexicanidad, with a chapter that examines the appropriation and sexualization of this image in visual cultural practices as well as the public reactions to them. One possible way to think about mexicanidad is the material culture associated with “lo mexicano” (that which signifies Mexicanness) and the preponderance connected to this: selling and collecting kitsch objects from Mexican popular culture. One working concept of mexicanidad developed when, during the postrevolutionary period but not exclusively, figures such as filmmaker Emilio “El Indio” Fernández, with his celluloid postcards, and the visual artist Jesús Helguera, with his paintings that were reproduced overwhelmingly in cromos (Mexican calendars), constructed Mexican popular mythologies that continue to dominate the visual landscape of what we consider to be “lo mexicano.” These cultural representations, it should be noted, also participated in constructing notions of femininity and masculinity that also continue to dominate our conceptions of what it means to be a Mexican woman and man. These kitsch objects and popular mythologies were reappropriated during the 1980s by visual artists as well as by some musicians not only to inject these objects and representations with new meanings but also to sell to a wider, and even international, audience. Within the art world, the movement was tagged as neo-Mexicanist; visual artists, rather than turning toward Europe or the United States, began to incorporate images, symbols, and even artistic techniques deemed Mexican. There was a comparable movement in the music world, where the postrevolutionary type of mexicanidad was reappropriated “to forge” a more Mexicanized type of rock music. One such example is the Mexican rock band Botellita de Jérez, who created the concept of “guaca rock.” One only has to listen to the song “Forjando Patria (Forging the Motherland)” once to get a sense of what is deemed to be important in the “archives of mexicanidad”; for example: “Es mil soldaderas / la Virgen Morena” (It’s a thousand female soldiers, the Dark-skinned Virgin [i.e., the Virgen de Guadalupe]).1 And, as I will discuss in this chapter and the two subsequent ones, Mexican and Chicana feminist artists have reappropriated mexicanidad to both challenge and critique SEXING GUADALUPE IN TRANSNATIONAL DOUBLE CROSSINGS 33 its nationalistic, patriarchal, and heterosexist constraints and pay homage to it. CROSSING AND REFRAMING CONCEPTUAL BORDERS Toward the end of his extended essay on Mexican identity (last stop!), La jaula de la melancolía/The Cage of Melancholy (1987), Mexican intellectual Roger Bartra takes us back to the founding myth, that of the Mother. Bartra points to the link between alternating and shifting conceptions of female sexuality in Mexican culture and the...