‘La Montra’: Rita Indiana’s Queer Dominicaness

• In Event: New Critical Frameworks for the Queer Caribbean

Abstract

In this paper, I attend to the ways in which Dominican lesbian performance artist/author/ and vocalist Rita Indiana through performance presents an alternative Dominican subjectivity challenging heteronormative constructions of “Dominicaness.” Specifically, I argue that “La Montra,”- translated as the female monster from Dominican argot, operates on two levels: one, it functions as a derogatory term positioning Indiana as monstrous and I argue excessive- she does not fit within the boundaries of the Dominican national imaginary in terms of proper comportment or acceptable ideology and practice, while on the other, her self-identification as “La Montra” signals a move towards a different way of being in the Dominican Republic, where the literal and figurative borders are porous enough to allow for the queer, for the female, for the Black, and for the Other, to coexist. Ultimately, what are the politics of Domincaness? How is Dominicaness performed? What does it mean to self-identify as a Black queer Dominican woman during this current politically, and racially charged moment where the politics of national and cultural belonging are under constant attack and negotiation? How are issues of race, sexuality, femininity, and masculinity excavated? In answering these questions, amongst others, I position Indiana and her cultural productions alongside the dictatorship of Rafael Leonides Trujillo in order to complicate the ways in which Trujillo operates as both the central figure and as part of a larger historical narrative of the Dominican Republic as a non-Black, heteronormative, and “hyper-masculine” nation.

Author

• Karen Jaime, Cornell University