Queering Tupac Amaru II: Travestismo as Methodology and the Re-imagination of Andean Cosmology

This study examines the queering of Tupac Amaru in Javier Vargas Sotomayor's La Falsificación de las Túpac (The Falsification of Tupac) to discern how travestismo (transvestism) functions as a methodology and epistemology for working on and against the symbols that underwrite national identity. This essay treats falsification as a central precept of a travesti methodology by paying close attention to the role of fiction, falsity, and fabrication in the production of the hero and the nation. Roper argues that travestismo not only exposes the constructedness of its original but also functions as a tool of dissent and as a space for staging an encounter with the possible.