Death and Resistance: Queerness in the Face of Violence and Impunity in Guerrero, Mexico

Abstract

Mexico stands out as a place impacted by anti-queer/trans violence, and the state of Guerrero is the site of a disturbing iteration of such aggression. Recent political struggle for LGBTQ rights there has paralleled a dramatic increase in violence linked to organized crime, with significant impacts for sexual and gender minorities. While a small literature on anti-queer/trans violence in places experiencing political violence and armed conflict exists, it has ignored places where such violence links to organized crime, impunity, and state complicity. Furthermore, this literature has largely failed to engage with two other bodies of work: the study of gender-based violence and of sexuality in such contexts. This dissertation addresses these gaps.

The methodological choices guiding this project are rooted in a rejection of a myopic anthropological lens based on tropes that Orientalize Mexico as a distant, other place engraved with patterns of desire tied to tourism and ‘endemic’ violence. Drawing on a poststructuralist feminist epistemology and guided by feminist, queer, and Latinx scholarship regarding geopolitics and transnationalism, this project takes a geographical and critical human rights approach that recognizes how feminicide and homonationalist narratives about Mexico link to this anti-queer/trans violence. A commitment to constructivist Grounded Theory ensures that theorization emerges from the research findings. Research tools include participant-observation, in-depth interviews with key informants with knowledge of anti-queer/trans violence, hemerographic (media) analysis, and an in-depth study of a visual archive of Pride events in Guerrero.

This dissertation makes three arguments that contribute to a queer theory of violence: First, anti-queer/trans violence is an iteration of feminicide, formed through impunity. Second, anti-queer/trans violence is linked to the political violence of organized crime and related state impunity, which has produced a version of queer/trans activism that has a contradictory, even perverse relationship with the state. And third, the transnational dimensions of this violence established through continental geographies of power with linkages to organized crime, drug trafficking, tourism, extractive activities and geopolitical relationships, further sharpen the danger faced by queer and trans persons through the creation of what I call a sallyport, a sort of metaphorical enclosure that magnifies their vulnerability.