Spatial and Discursive Practices in Luis Zapata’s El vampiro de la colonia Roma

• In Event: Mexico D.F.: Generating Cultural and Political Change

Abstract

Published in 1979, Luis Zapata’s El vampiro de la Colonia Roma constitutes an attempt to conceptualize, understand and “textualize” the incipient homosexual presence in Mexico in the 1970s. This paper explores how this novel produces a rupture of the Mexican heteronormative paradigm and its corresponding practices, sexual or otherwise. I first examine how the novel’s protagonist, the cynical prostitute Adonis García, proposes alternative imaginaries through his wanderings and sexual encounters in Mexico City. Utilizing Esteban Muñoz’s concept of “disidentification,” I analyze how Zapata reworks the notion of heteronormativity to “re-signify” identity formation practices. Through Adonis’ disidentificatory tactics, Zapata illustrates how such a mechanism can be used to strategically occupy and intervene urban and textual spaces. Ultimately, this project aims to question the hegemony of the heteronormative nationalistic discourse that constantly ignores sexualities and alternative practices that continue to demand space within the construction of Mexican national identity.

Author

• Manuel R Cuellar, University of California/Berkeley