Amelio Robles: el deseo transgénero y las feministas homofóbicas
Cano, Gabriela. “Unconcealable Realities of Desire: Amelio Robles's (Transgender) Masculinity in the Mexican Revolution”. In Jocelyn Olcott,; Mary K. Vaughan, Gabriela Cano (Eds.). Sex In Revolution. Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.
Cano analiza el caso del coronel Amelio Robles, nacido Amelia Robles y quien desde su adolescencia y al descubrir la "libertad del campo de batalla", vivió casi toda su vida como hombre, luchó en la Revolución Zapatista y se ganó el respeto y legitimidad de sus pares como modelo de hombría, valor y masculinidad zapatista. Gracias a que Amelio se ganó éste reconocimiento en el campo de batalla, su sexualidad era raramente cuestionada o rebatida en público, en un acuerdo tácito entre los que lo rodeaban de que era un tema del que no se hablaba. Amelio una vez mató a dos hombres de un grupo que lo atacó para verificar en forma violenta su genitalidad para resolver el misterio que de todas maneras rodeaba a su nombre.
Amelio recibió muchos honores después de la Revolución por su valentía, y cuando el médico tuvo que examinarlo para comprobar sus heridas de guerra y darle su status de veterano tampoco se hizo ninguna mención a su sexualidad. Pero tampoco podemos ver a Amelio como una especie de héroe en una revolución queer: el modelo de masculinidad que él llevaba a un extremo era uno bastante autoritario, violento y egoísta. Sin embargo y como Cano nota (61), el éxito de Amelio en ser legitimado socialmente como hombre a la vez refuerza y mina, subvierte y confirma la masculinidad heterosexual normativa.
En los 80's, cierto feminismo institucional (representado institucionalmente por la Secretaría de la Mujer del Estado de Guerrero) intentó a recuperar la figura de la "coronela" Amelia Robles, en un esfuerzo por visibilizar la participación de las mujeres en la Revolución, y borrando la identidad transgénero masculina que Amelio Robles construyó y defendió a muerte toda su vida.
Are there Chilean equivalents of such "macho women," do you think?
ReplyDeleteI will make a note to myself to look into whether Chilean queer historians have identified a character like this...but I imagine there must be many! Especially cases where they get away with "passing" and getting a close circle to validate their transgender identity, then we may never learn about them and they just go undocumented. This idea would also force us to reevaluate the assumption that we have always been perceiving "correctly" an aligned set of sexed biological organs, gender performance and sexuality.
ReplyDeleteAwesome article, eh? I had it in my list of comps and thought was one of the most thought-provoking pieces I ever read. First of all, of course, I'm a super admirer of Cano and Cano's work. If you ever have the chance to read some of her several articles in the Mexican journal *Debate Feminista*, please, do so. I bet you would like her work, or at least find it very compelling. At the same time, while I was taken aback by her initial analytical interpretation to Robles' history, I really appreciated (and thought she was really brave to do so) Cano's own self-scrutiny of her historical work, the assumptions that drove her initial interpretations, and the extent to which theoretical framework and political agendas may shape our efforts at producing sound research. I wonder, however, whether her own use of the term "homophobia" as shaping her earlier feminist historical work is entirely appropriate. If as she argues, Amelio Robles was a transgendered man, then was he even homosexual? Cano documents Robles' life as a man and his hetero sexual preference. Cano even shows a picture if I remember correctly) of Amelio and his wife (whose name I don't remember her name, by the way) and suggests that he embodied the figure of a revolutionary bravado man, whose attraction for women (and his bragging about it) was critical to the construction of his own masculinity and male identity during the revolution and even after the war had ended. This is in no way a homosexual man, I don't think, for Amelio would have then found a male lover (or someone signalled as male back at that time); and instead, he found a female wife. In raising a fair critique to narrowed feminist interpretations of archival materials, and in making the compelling argument about symbolic violence of historical actors, Cano fails to acknowledge, in my view, the very fact that there's more to this story that what can be captured in Cano's label of "homophobia" of the time. I think what we are really looking at here is, among other possibilities, a case of transphobia: a tras man, whose sexual desire seems to have been entirely inclined for the members of the opposite sex (I know, I know, I sound "trillada" here, excuses). What do you think, Manola?
ReplyDeleteI hope your writing is going well these days. Let me know when you're done, and well resume that study group thingy then! Well, of course, after we go out for drinks to celebrate. Hug, O.