Breaking Queer Silences, Building Queer Archives, and Claiming Queer Indigenous P’urhépecha Methodologies

Abstract

In this essay, I recover queer Indigenous P’urhépecha histories in Michoacán, México, by claiming queer P’urhépecha research methods. To do so, I introduce the Indigenous methodology of talking-while-walking, which refers to how I learned to connect with P’urhépecha knowledge and traditions through the voice of my P’urhépecha grandfather. Since the colonial system eradicated queer histories from my land, I seek historical narratives about queer people in Michoacán from any source available to me, including oral histories, archives, information in the media, and interviews. I argue that queer P’urhépecha histories are unstable and non-linear, and that P’urhépecha bodies have been hunted and their histories distorted, provoking fear and false speculations about queerness among the collective. I also examine the attachment of P’urhépecha people to gender binary traditions and heteronormativity and how the narratives behind these practices relate to colonial violence and the persecution of queer P’urhépechas. Thus, I demonstrate how P’urhépecha queerness has been marginalized and simultaneously displaced from the archival records while I claim queer P’urhépecha histories and build queer P’urhépecha archives. Finally, I propose a sensitive and personal approach to queer histories guided by the voices of my queer P’urhépecha interlocutors and the histories that my P’urhépecha abuelo passed to me.

Keywords

• queer P’urhépechas
• colonial violence
• queer erasure
• gender binary
• archives
• memory