Hip Hop Guerreras: Emerging Radical Queer Contestations to the State in Guatemala

• In Event: Transnational Queer Organizing Futurities

Abstract

Since the thirty-six year conflict (1960-1996), the Guatemalan left has maintained a vibrant culture of contestation to state power. This paper analyzes the emerging hip hop feminist movement that is redefining resistance to the neoliberal state by publicly claiming queer identities and relationships to power. I observe transnational knowledge sharing among specific underground hip hop spaces in Latin America to trace the movement’s evolution away from socialist/communist politics towards anarcho-queer worldmaking. This paper focuses on the work of feminist rapper Rebeca Lane and her hip hop art that employs sexual, political, and generational queerness as tools for imagining new worlds.

Presenter

• Kristen Kolenz, The Ohio State University