Bridging Sexualities:

Cherríe Moraga’s Giving Up the Ghost and Alma López’s

Digital Art
Confluencia. Revista Hispánica de Cultura y Literatura 18.2 (Spring 2003): 69-
84.

Introduction: A Bridge Over Troubled History

The year is 1980, and Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa are on the verge of
publishing This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color.
Moraga questions herself ruefully, "How can we–this time–not use our bodies to
be thrown over a river of tormented history to bridge the gap? … ‘A bridge gets
walked over.’ Yes, over and over again" (xv). The collection of essays and
creative writings emphasizes relationships between women in a way that shocks
and intrigues scholars (and general readers) still today; this text continues to serve
as a bridge between times, between ideologies, and between sexualities. Similarly,
Anzaldúa’s essays and poetry in Borderlands/La Frontera offer a sensitive, angry,
and sometimes wrenching portrait of the emerging lesbian Chicana philosophy and
literature.

These fleshly and textual bridges have been crucial, and without them Chicana and
Mexicana lesbian writers and artists would still be on the side of invisibility and
secret subversion. In the last two decades, however, cultural production by women
of color has gained a momentum and mental complexity, as well as a sense of play
that strengthens and broadens the ideological bridge between cultures and
sexualities. This study will focus on the work of selected Chicana writers and
graphic artists, primarily Cherríe Moraga and Alma López, and how their
representation of sexuality sustains and enriches cultural connections, even as it
operates with a critical and satirical feminist gaze.

The trajectory of the representation of lesbian sexuality in Chicana cultural

production is complex, and a glance back into recent literary history will allow a
necessary contextualization. In Gay and Lesbian Themes in Latin American
Writing, Foster proposes to explore the possibility of a "semiotics of
homosexuality and its representation" in Latin American literature (5). For him,
the underlying problem and question is:

How to define homosexuality and how to locate it within a definition of

sociopolitical conduct, how to describe the parameters of certain forms of personal
desire within a social discourse that has inadequate names for them, how to
recover distinctive forms of identity that the prevailing sign system neutralizes or
obliterates, and, quite simply, how to leave a record of personal experiences that
seem to be illegitimate and insubstantial because they lack any confirming
function within the textual models available for reporting them. (5-6)

Foster’s seminal work began to uncover and interpret the signs of same-sex
sexuality within specific literary traditions, often noting the tension between the
inherent political subversion and the necessity of confining the word to the
limitations of society, genre, or narrative "good taste."

By the same token, Chicana and Mexicana cultural production in the U.S. was for
many years reined in by the dictates of both politics and literary or cultural
criticism. In particular, the Chicano Movement, which grew out of the Civil Rights
Movement and César Chávez’s work with immigrant farm workers in California,
developed an agenda and an esthetic that disallowed the representation of
women’s sexuality, much less from the lesbian perspective. The Chicana writer or
artist supported the shared struggle, and along with her brother artists, her work
became steeped in the icons and images of Mexican culture and the appropriations
and adaptations resulting from the Chicano Movement. By the 1980’s, inspired by
the work of writers like Moraga and Anzaldúa, and artists like Yolanda López,
women began to re-envision their own identity in terms of race, class, politics,
gender, and sexuality. They were no longer content to merely be wives, sisters,
mothers, and daughters of the Chicano cause; they were forging a personal
subjectivity that could express the diverse totality of the Chicana experience.

In contemporary culture, Chicanas who previously may have identified primarily

as "Chicano" now feel free to identify primarily as women, as sexual beings, as
mixed-heritage, and as lesbians or dykes; to that end, contemporary art and
literature are reflecting multiple levels of identity. How has this paradigm shift
occurred? As a partial answer, I suggest that the simplified political identity of
Chicanas has always been more enigmatic than was apparent. Eve Kosofsky
Sedgewick, in The Epistemology of the Closet, suggests that the process of
identification always is shot through with elements of "incorporation,
diminishment, inflation, threat, loss, reparation, and disavowal" (61). The history
of Latin American and Latina women writers reveals ideological and textual
battles fought so that they might join the ranks of the visible. As proposed by Beth
Miller, women writers have both reflected the traditional archetypal images of
women, and created "divergent iconic images" in order to "enrich the limited stock
of stereotypical images of women prevalent in literary works by male authors, as
well as in the minds and fantasies of their contemporaries" (24). Re-readings of
icons like the Virgen de Guadalupe, the Malinche, the Angel of the Home, and the
Seductress have run the gamut from serious to angry to compassionate. For
instance, Anzaldúa’s appropriation of the deity Coatlicue and her deconstruction
of La Virgen and La Malinche reflect a growing sensitivity to the power, both
creative and destructive, that resides in these female cultural symbols.

At the turn of the (new) century, increasingly one finds a ludic approach linking
the Chicana lesbian with her cultural heritage. The playfulness suggests an
intellectual distance from the gender and sexual oppression that does not often
characterize earlier feminist or lesbian works. The diminishment, threat, loss, and
disavowal that, according to Sedgewick form part of the identification process,
have been mitigated and ultimately turned on their head in a carnivalesque, albeit
political, artistic venture. One critical methodology that facilitates an interesting
entrée to such works is José Muñoz’s "intersectional" theory of "disidentification."
Applying Sedgewick’s ideas on identification to the analysis of cultural production
by queers of color, José Muñoz posits that:

Disidentification can be understood as a way of shuffling back and forth between

reception and production. For the critic, disidentification is the hermeneutical
performance of decoding mass, high, or any other cultural field from the
perspective of a minority subject who is disempowered in such a representation
hierarchy. (25)

The concept of hybridity is key to understanding this critical stance; Muñoz

studies texts that reflect a "fractured and split" identity (31). What is distinct about
his approach is a subtle reading of how texts can paradoxically celebrate and twist
(or queer) elements of traditional culture that can also be viewed as oppressive.
Disidentification is more radical than assimilation or wholesale deconstruction;
rather, it is a shameless adaptation of icons and images that appropriates the power
for the disenfranchised.

Images Seeping Through The Word

Norma Alarcón identifies This Bridge Called My Back as a disidentificatory text.

Going beyond the attempt to identify with all women or counteridentify with men,
the diversity of texts therein point to the hybrid experience of women of color
(360). Women from dozens of cultures write about "their" cultural icons and
ideologies, as well as the outsider perceptions that affect their lives; often these are
ideas and images that they fight. For instance, Anzaldúa talks about how she can’t
not be La Vendida, but how she must find a new strength and character that grow
larger than that simplification of a historically colonized being (167). However,
This Bridge does not employ the same mischievous and whimsical approach that
characterizes many of the contemporary performance texts analyzed by Muñoz.

Published six years later than The Bridge, Giving Up the Ghost by Cherríe Moraga
also draws from her own cultural iconography (Mexican and Chicano) to style her
characters; still and all, humor is a primary vehicle that slowly moves the drama to
its emotionally charged climax. Each disidentification suggests the playfulness of
camp, but simultaneously demonstrates the inherent cruelty of stereotyped roles
that perpetuate gender oppression, even between women. Like the drag kings
studied both by Muñoz and by Judith Halberstam, whose "over-the-top" quality of
dress and behavior pokes fun at the very models they mimic, Moraga’s
Corky/Marisa is a theatrical boy just as she is a flesh and blood butch. Yvonne
Yarbro Bejarano asserts that Moraga’s "literary and dramatic representations delve
into the differences between butch-femme sexual styles and the chingón-chingada
polarity, the Mexican variant of active/passive normative heterosexual roles as
described by Octavio Paz" (Wounded 116). In Giving up the Ghost, Corky is a
conflation of the chingón-chingada opposition, a hip and cool teenage girl who
looks like a 1960’s cholo, in "khakis with razor-sharp creases; pressed white
undershirt; hair short and slicked-back" (i). However socially threatening and not
funny the butch figure may be in general, Corky’s tongue-in-cheek and self-
deprecating monologues soften the audience with a humor that offers a modicum
of escape from the harsh realities of gender and sexuality that she narrates. At the
beginning of the play, Corky reflects back to her pre-adolescent days, an evocative
and telling passage that is worth quoting at length:

then during the week my friend Tudy and me

we’d make up our own movies

one of our favorites was this cowboy one

where we’d be out in the deser

‘n’ we’d capture these chicks ‘n’ hold them up

for ransom we’d string ‘em up ‘n’

make ‘em take their clothes off

jus’ pretend a’course but it useta make me feel

real tough

strip we’d say to the wall

all cool-like

funny now when I think about how little I was

at the time and a girl

but in my mind I was big ‘n’ tough ‘n’ a dude

in my mind I had all their freedom

the freedom to really see a girl

kinda the way you see

an animal you know?

like imagining

they got a difernt set

of blood vessels

or somet’ing like so

when you mess with ‘m

it don’ affect ‘em

the way it do you

like like they got a difernt

gland system or somet’ing that

that makes their pain cells

more dense

but you see

I could never

quite

pull it off (5-6)

Corky expresses her gender ambivalence, her strong pull toward what she
perceives to be the role of the chingón and her equally ruthless knowledge that she
really is a "girl," whatever that means. In the voice of a child, she mimics
justifications for her sexualization and coercion of other girls, saying it is "jus’
pretend" and "it don’t affect ‘em." Here Corky disidentifies with the chingón,
taking the parts that represent her own feelings while registering the differences
that mark her from the "real" boys. She implies that her behavior is less
reproachable because she couldn’t go "all the way" in the game, yet she jokes
about the girls’ reactions in a mimicry of misogyny. The criticism underlying the
passage is paradoxically both mitigated and intensified by the fact that the
character is indeed a girl herself, and herself a survivor of sexual assault. This
children’s "cowboy" game, a mini-theatre for gender performativity á la Butler, is
by turns cute, funny, wrenching, and dangerous. The coercion theme is reenacted
repeatedly throughout the play, each time in a graver tone, which provides
disturbing re-readings of the original playful scene. Nevertheless, the humorous
narrative voice provides a point of access through which the reader or spectator
can begin to hear the complexity of gender and sexual roles before they even think
about it.

Marisa, Corky’s older self who has let go of her cholo image, attempts to find
salvation from her inner torment in an affair with Amalia, an embodiment of the
wise woman archetype. She says, "Sí. La mujer es mi religión" (56). A poet and
spiritual being, Amalia in no way represents the sexless crone, nor the seductress,
but rather a fleshy, sexual yet shy, and emotionally strong woman. The
disidentificatory practices in the representation of this character are no less potent
for their subtlety. She appropriates the power and the respect of the traditional
image of the wise woman, the abuelita or curandera of the Mexican iconography,
but then rewrites the image to include the sensuality and sexual orientation that
truly define her as an individual. For the temporal duration of her scenes in Giving
Up the Ghost, she is emotionally and physically involved with a lesbian; she is the
femme to Marisa’s butch. She is another bridge character, both in her own hybrid
identity and in her unwithering love for a man she left behind in Mexico. Even this
simple truth that she will not refuse or hide is a disidentification, this time from the
expected character of the lesbian.

Together, and individually, Amalia and Corky/Marisa break gender and sexuality
prohibitions even as they search for the plenitude of their heritage. Repeating the
revolutionary path laid by writers like Anzaldúa, they do not break from their
history, from their family, or from their culture. Amalia, finally, symbolically
dreams that she has returned to Mexico, to live alone in the midst of her village’s
censure, but nevertheless at home. She recounts to Marisa:

In our village, something . . . (remembering)

Some terrible taboo had been broken. That was it.

[. . .]
Suddenly, there is a furious pounding at my door.

"Let me in! Let me in!" And it is your voice, Chatita.

But I am unable to move when I realize that it is you

Who has gone against the code del pueblo.

Funny . . . I was not afraid of being punished.

I was not afraid the gods would enact their wrath

against our pueblo for the breaking of the taboo.

It was merely . . . that the taboo . . . could be broken. (52)

Rather, taboos have been broken, including Amalia’s reclaiming of the home
territory as a space that is rightfully hers. In the dream she returns to where she
broke with the tradition of the submissive and forgiving woman who would
forgive her husband anything and everything, for the purity of her love. She comes
back in her intellectual and sexual awareness, to exist in the midst of those who
would exile her for any number of reasons. Then, the final transgression is
Marisa’s arrival in this dreamed revolution, her intrusion into the public and
private space of the pueblo that both is and isn’t Amalia. The older woman,
sensing the rightness of the moment, is not afraid of divine retribution.

As Moraga represents Chicana and Mexicana lesbian desire, she consciously

brings in the elements of race, class, and power (Yarbro-Bejarano, Cherríe, 120).
There is no simplistic stereotyping of characters; on the contrary, each dramatic
voice, whether consciously or unconsciously, reflects a celebratory if troubled
hybridity. Corky, Marisa, and Amalia are human beings in all their pain and glory:
women, Chicanas, queers, radicals, chingones, chingadas, viejas, esposas, and
santas. What’s more, they are all of these things in relation to their communities.
(Giving up the Ghost reflects Moraga’s belief in active connection with the
Chicana/o and Mexicana/o community at large.) Such a serious message
sometimes expressed through jocularity mimics an adolescent’s approach to this
association, perhaps Corky’s approach. Alternatively, it almost sounds like the
approach of a new movement still wet behind the ears, so to speak, a fresh and
young experience of the interstices of race and sexuality, of age-old traditions and
the new generation.

A Picture Screams a Thousand Words: Graphic Art

Yarbro Bejarano has worked extensively on the representation of the lesbian body
in Latina cultural production; one of her foci has been the "project of reclamation,
that of working simultaneously within and against dominant cultural codes. . .
[especially] the impact of popular Mexican Catholicism on sexuality and the
narrative of the Malinche" (Lesbian 181-82). She has authored cultural criticism
on numerous Chicanas and Latinas, including Moraga, Anzaldúa, Ester Hernández
and Laura Aguilar (visual artists), Marcia Ochoa (photographer/poet), and Monica
Palacios (stand-up comedian). Although the analytical gaze of this study shifts
from the body to a more abstract conception of sexuality, Yarbro-Bejarano’s work
often offers points of comparison and contrast. Alma López is a visual and public
artist, born in Sinaloa, México and raised in Los Angeles, who employs similar
reclamatory techniques seen in Hernández, Aguilar, Ochoa, and other Chicana
(and Latina) artists from the last twenty years or so. At the same time, other
stylistic and intellectual elements make her stand out among her contemporaries.
Her development of a personal arsenal of lesbian icons (especially the viceroy
butterfly and the Virgen/Sirena couple), which she juxtaposes with traditional
cultural images and ideas, is as groundbreaking as the early writings of Anzaldúa
and Moraga.

"Her personal works raise questions, educate, and build on the narrative fantasy
realism that has appeared throughout painting since Hieronymus Bosch, but has
strong roots in 20th century Mexican muralism and photo montage" (L.A.
Cultural). López’s work, which includes digital billboards, murals, and Internet art
(as well as the more traditional painted canvases) is particularly notable for its
ability to reach a wide audience. Says Rachel Gutiérrez, "Fed up with the virgin-
whore dichotomy that's so prevalent within the Latino community, Alma is
flipping the script of female roles from dying princesses and bikini-clad Lowrider
models to uninhibited virgins and revolutionary freedom fighters. Yet, there's been
quite a bit of backlash to what some may call extreme creative license" (Gutiérrez).
López’s works conserve the sexuality, femininity, and familiarity of the well-
known images, while they integrate a sense of self-empowerment and
rebelliousness lacking in the original figures. This visionary merging of icons and
individual, personal characteristics is a powerful and visible form of
disidentification, which will be the principal focus of this study.

Undoubtedly a source of inspiration for her individual style, López is a member of

the collaborative artistic group called L.A. Coyotas, comprised of Aida Salazar,
Christina Fernandez, Consuelo Flores, Gloria Alvarez, Maria Elena Fernandez,
Patricia Valencia, Raquel Salinas, Reina Prado, and Sol Alvarez. The playfully
subversive nature of the name reflects the production of these Chicana visual,
literary, and performance artists. Their publicity provides a multiplicitous self-
definition:

Coyotas: known for their adaptability to any given habitat, from forests to cities;
[they] have survived for 40 million years despite human efforts to eradicate them;
tricksters; a racial category used in Colonial Spain to describe a person of mulatto
and Indian descent; a term used to describe those who help others cross the border.
(Alma)

By this definition, López is definitively a coyota. She shows the wily and
humorous bent of the trickster; the adaptability that allows her to cross over into
various cultural, geographical, and political arenas; and a sensitivity to the racial
mixing that is the reality of the Chicana/ Meztiza existence. Moreover, she and her
controversial artwork are surviving despite repeated attempts to close her shows
and ban particular pieces. Many of López’s individual pieces also integrate the
concept of border, be it physical, temporal, or ideological, a thread that I will
follow in the discussion of specific works. Her focus on the idea of border makes
her an ideal bridge between cultures, even when her transverse or queered gaze
makes her work troublesome to some people.

Ixta

One of the prominent images in Mexican art alludes to the Aztec legend of
Popocapetl and the Princess Ixtaccihuatl. According to one version of the story,
the warrior Popocapetl returns home victorious from battle to find that his princess
has committed suicide. He is usually pictured leaning over or carrying her limp
and tragically sensual figure. López explains her own introduction to this legend:
"Growing up in El Sereno, a neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles, I would see
this image of Popo & Ixta on murals, lowrider cars, and Low Rider magazine.
Every December, the local bakery or restaurant would give our family at least one
calendar with the image of this Mexican Romeo & Juliet myth" (Mermaids).

López’s project in Ixta (digital print, 1999) is to provide a counter-image, a re-

reading or re-interpreting, of the pop culture manifestations of the legend. Using
digital techniques, she superimposes two divergent representations of the legend
that seem to float in the air over the border between California and Mexico. The
no-man’s land of sandy dirt and graffiti-marked brick walls, and the glimpse of
swirling river water, grimly represent the reality of marginality that marks the
border. At the same time, the sparkling cityscape on the other side of the wall
suggests the pull of the "American Dream" as well as the economic injustice that
continues to characterize political relations between the U.S. and Mexico. At the
top of the print, a stylized pop-culture rendition of Popo and Ixta, fragmented and
fading away, point to the Indigenous and Mexican folklore that hold so much sway
in Chicana life. However, the ethereal quality of the image suggests that this hold
is tenuous in the present context.

Finally, the central figures are two women positioned to evoke a connection with
Popo and Ixta. The manner of dress (the reclining figure has ripped blue jeans
boots, and a black tank top; the other wears a sweater over similar clothing) is
contemporary and casual, a striking difference from the original. The "Princess’s"
sexiness is maintained, through the showing of flesh through ripped pant legs, but
the heaving and scantily covered bosom is changed to a serene and subtle line. In
addition, the subtle shifting of the bodies works on multiple levels to convey the
perception that neither woman is helpless, but rather both are warriors. Thus,
López disidentifies with the gender and sexual roles of the original legend and
corresponding artistic icons. The amulet worn by the kneeling figure is another
Mexican icon, representing a traditional method for healing or guarding against ill
fortune or spells. Given the solidity and centrality of the lesbian "re-reading," the
amulet is ironically working to protect the women from cultural confines. On the
contrary, the women cross boundaries even as they insert themselves graphically
into a scene with powerfully traditional cache. Pictorially, the women are riding
the line between eras, countries, cultures, and gender roles.

Our Lady

If there is a ubiquitous Mexican/Chicana icon whose image has even more impact
than Popocapetl and Ixtaccihuatl, this is without a doubt the Virgen de Guadalupe,
or La Virgen for short. Allegedly appearing to the humble Juan Diego in 1531, La
Virgen is the patron saint of Mexico and has come to embody the saintly half of
the virgin/whore dichotomy that influence Mexican (and Chicano) perceptions of
women. Regularly pictured with downcast gaze, hands folded in prayer, and
dressed in demure yet regal robes in blue, La Virgen is held up by an angel and
surrounded by an aura of golden rays. Feminist writers and artists have been re-
envisioning la Virgen for years, which has always been both a source of
inspiration for feminist women and a source of scandal for the more traditional
audience. A case in point is Yolanda López’s well-known rendition entitled
Portrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe (1978). She portrays herself, and
in herself the ultimately venerated Mexican woman, as strong, powerful, smiling
and confident. She sports tennis shoes, her strong fist grasps a writhing serpent,
and her well-muscled legs fly out from the conventional robes that adorn the
Virgin.

López’s portrayal of the patron saint is even more controversial, if that is possible.
"Our Lady (iris print on canvas, 1999), López says, was inspired by Sandra
Cisneros' essay entitled, ‘Gudadalupe the Sex Goddess,’" in which Cisneros
wonders what La Virgen wears underneath her robes (Rodriquez). López’s answer
is: roses. The work captures Chicana model Rachel Salinas in a two-piece bathing
suit covered with roses, standing atop a crescent moon and a bare-breasted woman
with butterfly wings. According to Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez, "The
image Salinas depicts is that of ‘a heroine, of a strong woman. ... That's who I
believe Guadalupe is ... a symbol of struggle,’ said Salinas [the model]. The image
symbolically refers to women's ‘moon cycles,’ how women connect each month to
life through menstruation" (González and Rodríguez). Our Lady reflects a detailed
and forceful disidentification with the religious icon. The work maintains the
magical aura, the symbolic roses that prove the Virgin’s miraculous apparition to
Juan Diego, and the traditional blue cape. She is clearly recognizable as La Virgen,
and these details suggest that Our Lady represents holiness, purity, strength of
character, and the miraculous. The changes, in addition to the butterfly, include the
stance and gaze of Our Lady, as well as the uncovered head and flesh. Salinas
appears to be independent, and her slightly raised chin offers a challenge to the
observer: do you know who I am, the ever present yet ultimately distant figure of
the feminine? Although the posture of the model evokes simple solidity rather than
sexual tension, the work as a whole inevitably begs a discussion of sexuality. If La
Virgen has a body underneath her sacred robes, if she exists as a corporal being,
then perhaps she feels her physical self as well. This idea is threatening to many.

To those opposed to the image, Salinas' body [and López’s work] offends. It is
violating and sacrilegious. On the surface, the controversy is about sacredness vs.
the freedom of expression. When these ideals clash, there can be no winners. Yet
look through the eyes of Salinas and you see something else raging: a desire for
justice in a world that hungers for it and a desire to honor the sacred feminine in a
world that daily dishonors women. (González and Rodríguez)

The concept of honor is another bridge extended by Our Lady. Here, López
integrates her own worldview (in which women are strong and sensual) along with
the Spanish Golden Age code of honor (in which women must protect their honor)
and Aztec mythology (in which some deities were female and deserved respect
and veneration). She creates an ideological and historical pastiche that blends
elements of California, the Aztec Empire, and Spain. Our Lady suggests that every
brown woman can be honorable and respectable, can be a part of her own
community and can claim her heritage, without having to deny her body or be
ashamed of her sexuality.

Lupe & Sirena in Love / Lupe & Sirena in the Sky with Angels

Also highly polemical is López’s series of images of "Lupe" and "Sirena." "Lupe,"
a nickname for the popular girl’s name Guadalupe, has clear connections with La
Virgen. The fact that so many girls (and boys) are christened either as Guadalupe
or María points to the Catholic veneration of the mother of Christ, whose most
popular representation in Mexico and Chicano communities of the United States is
the blue robed woman who is said to have appeared just outside of Mexico City.
The use of "Lupe" to refer directly to the iconic figure is more rare, demonstrating
the same level of intimacy and familiarity with her that characterize López’s Our
Lady. Nonetheless, the portrayal of "Lupe" is much more formal (and fully
clothed), providing an interesting twist to the artist’s message. Here, the traditional
icon is surrounded with other images (as well as words–i.e. the title) that break
down and redraw her possible meaning. In Lupe & Sirena in Love (digital print,
1999) and Lupe & Sirena in the Sky with Angels (iris print on canvas, 2000), two
of a series, Lupe is presented with Sirena, an image that has both a historical
significance in mythology and a cultural importance in Mexican and Chicana/o
communities. The mythological siren, often shown as a mermaid (half woman and
half fish), is a seductress who bewitches men with her beauty and her magical
song. La Sirena is also a figure in the popular game lotería, a sort of Bingo that
rather than numbers uses pictures of common objects and caricatures of
stereotypical characters, like the dandy, the lady, and the drunk. On the lotería
cards, Sirena is pictured with flowing black hair, large perky breasts, and half-
submerged in brilliant blue water; her fish tail is red and her hands are outstretched,
perhaps in a "come hither" gesture.

The mere juxtaposition of the two icons could be perceived as blasphemous or at

the least provocative, because they symbolize the virgin/whore dichotomy already
mentioned. However, López has created a retablo in which La Virgen, rather than
clasping her hands in prayer, is holding Sirena close, and seemingly caressing one
of her exposed breasts as well as her hip or buttock. Her downcast gaze rests on
Sirena’s nude torso, and the expression of contentment or pleasure of both figures
is now interpreted to be at least partially sensual. If a sexually aware Virgen de
Guadalupe treads on the sensibilities of the conservative audience, then the
representation of a possibly lesbian Virgen, one whom the title claims is "in love,"
supposedly with Sirena, the epitome of unreserved sexuality, must be twice as
dangerous. As an example of disidentification, the power and familiarity of both
icons is conserved in their individual adherence to a traditional visual code,
despite numerous new elements that are incorporated. La Virgen is no longer the
chaste and asexual mother, but rather an active subject narrating her own version
of a new story. As Lupe was originally a disidentification perpetrated by the
Catholic Spanish missionaries in order to obscure the local indigenous legend of
Ixtaccihuatl, this second move to recuperate the brown princess’s heat and vitality
is particularly satisfying.

Other elements worth a mention include the cherubs that frame Lupe & Sirena in
both works, as if they too were participating in the love between the two women,
or carrying an implied benediction from the divine and celestial presence of God.
Then, the borderland between the bright L.A. cityscape and the dark and dusty
Mexican landscape creates a dissonant background for the picture, once again
reminding the viewer of the political reality that informs the culture clash of the
artist’s creation. Finally, both Lupe & Sirena in Love and Lupe & Sirena in the Sky
with Angel incorporate the butterfly that also appears in Ixta, albeit without the
woman’s chest and head. This image is by no means arbitrary; on the contrary, its
clear symbolism is explained by the artist herself:

The reason I chose to use the Viceroy butterfly was because I wanted to allude to
more than the Monarch’s migration pattern and its genetic memory. I thought it
was interesting that the Viceroy butterfly mimics the Monarch for survival
purposes. The Monarch butterfly is poisonous to predators, the Viceroy is not. The
Viceroy pretends to be something it is not just to be able to exist. For me, the
Viceroy mirrors parallel and intersecting histories of being different or "other"
even within our own communities. Racist attitudes see us Latinos as criminals and
an economic burden, and homophobic attitudes even within our own communities
and families may see us as perverted or deviant. So from outside and inside our
communities, we are perceived as something we are not. When in essence, we are
vulnerable Viceroy butterflies, just trying to live and survive. (Mermaids)

In other words, in spite of the daring and commanding images that López creates,
she is aware of her own exposed position, of her own need to search out and
nurture a community that accepts her full hybridity, her multi-faceted self.

"López says that Cisneros' essay [about La Virgen de Guadalupe] and her piece,
Lupe and Sirena in Love, represent attempts by Chicanas to find personal
connections with this celebrated cultural icon" (Rodríguez). I would also mention
the ludic element that is present in these two works. If Sirena recreates the
Malinche, or the traitorous and betrayed sexually active woman, then she does so
in a light and playful manner. While the subject matter of the digital renderings
may still be offensive to some, the works hold the promise of a bridge across
cultures that allows for a mischievous yet loving coming together. . The topics of
Lupe & Sirena in Love and Lupe & Sirena in the Sky with Angels are serious: the
transcendence of political, racial, gender, cultural, and sexual oppression.
However, they are rendered with a celebratory and baroque ornamentation that
both affirms and lightly makes fun of Mexican and Chicana/o religious art. It is as
if the artist were saying: "These icons and this heritage are valid and valuable, but
they are inherently more complex that anyone realizes. The only way to access the
complexity is to relinquish the necessity of viewing them in all seriousness and at
arm’s length. Let us embrace and transform these images so that they are us,
today."

Tattoo

The last work under study here is a further complication of the Lupe & Sirena
image, in the form of a tattoo. The cultural context of this work is crucial, in that it
brings together a series of contemporary images with divergent and distinctive
significance. Just as Popo and Ixta have been reproduced on perhaps thousands of
calendars and other artifacts, the image of La Virgen has found her way onto any
number of relics, such as candles, matchbooks, and murals. Nonetheless, one of
the most interesting artistic traditions involving the Virgen de Guadalupe is that of
a tattoo, either in full color or simple indigo, that covers the entire back. Most
commonly chosen by young Chicano men, this tattoo is symbolic not only of their
intense respect and worship of the historical religious figure, but also of their
macho ability to withstand (and even search out) the pain caused by the tattooing
process. One might even compare the adrenaline rush sustained by the long and
arduous piercing and dyeing of thousand of points with the ecstasy of a spiritual
experience, thereby reinforcing the figurative piety of the action. Somewhat akin
to a pilgrimage to the Basílica de la Virgen de Guadalupe on one’s knees, the
opulent offering of physical suffering is supposed to make possible the redemption
of even the inveterate sinner. In this way, the paradoxical sight of Virgen tattoos
on some youth, who may have chosen a less savory way of life, or who at least
prefer to appear "cool" to their peers rather than "respectable" to white middle-
class society, offers no real contradiction. The Virgen, in her purity, protects her
devotees from external harm, and especially from themselves.

In Ester Hernández’s 1988 work entitled La Ofrenda, the Virgen de Guadalupe

and her angels are tattooed on the back of a woman nude from at least the waist up.
This work originally served as cover for Carla Trujillo’s anthology Chicana
Lesbians: The Girls Our Mother Warned Us About, and the tattooed figure’s short
stylish hair and crystal earring declare that she indeed shares the sexual preference
of the book’s subjects. In the picture, a hand holds a rose in front of the Virgen, in
the area most suggestive of her (a)sexuality. Yarbro Bejarano, commenting on La
Ofrenda, sees the reconstruction of: "One lesbian body out of two, displacing and
rearranging its anatomy (back/ hand/ sex). . . While "La Ofrenda" in this context
repositions the sacred image for lesbian representation, it also derives power from
it, sharing in what Mesa-Baines calls ‘the transfigurative liberation of the icon.’"
(Lesbian 185) Yarbro Bejarano mentions multiple readings of Hernández’s work,
which reflect on the idea of the lesbian body and the obvious visual
correspondence between the traditional pictorial representation of the Virgen and
the female genitalia. The Virgen is freed to have a body, to represent sexuality,
and to escape her oppressive role as the epitome of abnegation and chastity.

Alma López’s Tattoo (1999), an iris print on canvas, goes even further along the
path of liberation. This work portrays a strong, confident, and beautiful Chicana
standing in front of the familiar López border scene in a stance that is reminiscent
of Hernández’s piece. However, in Tattoo, the woman is turned in such a way that
a breast is partially revealed in silhouette, her long hair defies easy categorization
of her sexuality, and a pair of faded blue jeans make the statement that she is
definitely not either naked or sexually vulnerable. Most importantly, her half-
closed eyes and satisfied grin suggest that she is enjoying being entered and
marked by the tattoo artist who is captured on canvas plying his trade. Now it is a
woman who is transcending earthly limitations, reaching an epiphany and
expiation through physical pain, and proclaiming to the world her affinity with and
veneration of La Virgen and Sirena intertwined. She is disidentified with the
passivity of La Virgen, the Chicana who takes second place to the Chicano, the
shorn lesbian of the 1980’s, and the Mexicana immigrant who must cross the
geographical border as well as all of the others. This one image gathers the force
and movement of López’s work, concentrating into one canvas the coyota creed
and identity. All of this is accomplished with the complicity of the (assumed) male
tattoo artist, himself covered in images, a fact which suggests that yet again,
López’s main objective is not to shock, but rather to construct a meeting point of
culture, gender, and sexuality. Again, as Moraga could have foretold, it is the body
of a woman that provides the bridge for this crossing.

Both Moraga, an established writer who still creates relevant and innovative work,
and López, a young artist whose oeuvre combines older methods of painting and
photography with newer digital manipulation, send an unmistakable message to
the reader and observer of today. The juxtaposition of traditional cultural icons
and images with female (lesbian) sexuality is an artistic technique of inclusion
rather than exclusion, of honoring the Mexican and Chicana/o heritage, but in a
way that also venerates the contemporary Chicana lesbian identity. Their work has
shock value, but perhaps this is necessary to capture the attention of those who
have looked in the other direction for too long. If their brash and unapologetic
style will never be acceptable to some, it will nevertheless serve as a bridge to
those who are willing to walk part way across, if only they notice that the bridge
exists. Muñoz suggests that "one possible working definition of queer that we
might consider is this: queers are people who have failed to turn around to the
‘Hey, you there!’ interpolating call of heteronormativity" (33). Cherríe Moraga’s
and Alma López’s work is an example of what might happen if the queer subject
turned on her heels and retorted, "hey you, yourself!", thus interpolating the
traditional Mexican and Chicana/o culture into her own queer sensibility.

Works Cited

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"Alma López." L.A. Coyotas Online. Internet. March 10, 2001.

Foster, David William. Gay and Lesbian Themes in Latin American Writing.
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Kosofsky Sedgewick, Eve. The Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: U of

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L.A. Cultural Affairs Department's COLA (City of Los Angeles) Individual Artist
Grant Exhibition Catalogue, 1999. Online. Internet. March 10, 2001.

López, Alma. "Mermaids, Butterflies and Princesses." Online. Internet. March 10,
2001. Available: http://home.earthlink.net/~almaLópez/idx/idxtxt4.html

Miller, Beth, Ed. Women in Hispanic Literature: Icons and Fallen Idols. Berkeley:
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Moraga, Cherríe. Giving up the Ghost: Teatro in Two Acts. Los Angeles: West
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---. "Expanding the Categories of Race and Sexuality in Lesbian and Gay Studies."
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---. The Wounded Heart: Writing on Cherrie Moraga. forthcoming from UT Press,
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