A Central American Mestiza Consciousness: Rebeca Lane, Interruptive Choreography, and Rehearsing Change in the Borderlands

Three decades have passed since Gloria E. Anzaldúa theorized mestiza consciousness from the US-Mexico borderlands, and since then, the borderlands have thickened and bled into Central America. On this landscape, queer, feminist hip hop activist Rebeca Lane from Guatemala theorizes another mestiza consciousness rooted in the distinct Indigenous and mestiza histories and contemporary struggles of Central America. At the intersection of borderlands politics and hip hop resistance, Lane employs poetry and sound to write a theory of transformation that activates in her live performance. I critically reflect on my participation at Lane's live shows to develop the concept of "interruptive choreography," stuttering body movements that encounter and respond to rupture. Considering the embodied movement at live shows, I examine Lane and the audiences' collective imagination of a Central American mestiza consciousness and their rehearsal of the practices that make such a consciousness transformative. The repeating experiences of rupture and the rehearsals of interruptive choreography build familiarity with repertoires of change and theorize decolonial alternatives for the painful, widening wound of the borderlands.