La ciguapa y el ciguapeo: Dominican Myth, Metaphor, and Method

This essay considers how the myth of la ciguapa—an “indigenous,” usually female creature with backward pointing feet—both suggests a metaphor for the contradictory coherence of Hispanic Caribbean history and society and becomes a method for contestatory movements. Beginning with a brief historicization of the myth's development in Santo Domingo, the author goes on to consider how the most recent decade of anti-Haitianism, negrophobia, misogyny, and homophobia in the Dominican Republic have inspired ciguapeo as an authoctonous method deployed by queer, black-identified, anti-racist, feminist movements.