The Jotería of LatinMex Masculinities: Queer Norteño Aesthetics in the Borderlands

• In Event: Beyond Empire: Latinidades, Borders, and the Unmaking of US Exceptionalism

Abstract

The collective exhibit “Queerteñx: Transfronterizes/Cuir Transnationalism” staged at the Laband Art Gallery at Loyola Marymount University in 2024, explored the embodiment of LatinMex masculinities through a series of installations, performances, and interviews, featuring artworks by José Villalobos and Salvador de la Torre. The exhibition materialized what I refer to as “norteño aesthetics,” that is, a queer way of being in a world caught between the borderlands, migration, transnationalism, and Mexican queerness. Centering on how these artworks queer the cis-heteronormative and patriarchal construction of US citizenship as well as the white logics of Mexican “machismo,”this presentation draws from the field of jotería studies to trace a queer migrant aesthetics that undo and redo gendered expressions of LatinMex migrant masculinities. I argue that both performance artists resort to their own transfronterizo lived experiences to mobilize the material, embodied, and affective ebbs and flows of border crossing. By positioning their queerteñx bodies as a point of departure, Villalobos and de la Torre ultimately reveal the aesthetic and political implications of reframing the experience and voices of undocu+ and queer individuals beyond heteronormative constructions of citizenship while proposing a transnational sense of jotería, one that allows them to dream otherwise amid uncertain futures.

Author

• Manuel R. Cuellar, George Washington University