Patería and Contemporary Puerto Rican Queer/Trans Performance

Patería is a Puerto Rican Spanish-language vernacular synonym for “queerness” as a sign of gender and sexual transgression. It invokes stigmatized LGBTQIA+ local language practices that coexist in tension with the modernity, paradoxes, and challenges of other words such as mariconería, locura, and faggotology. Patería signals a universe associated with the condition of being a pato (duck, faggot) or pata (female duck, lesbian, dyke) or even loca (effeminate homosexual, madwoman) and of moving through the codes of gender nonconformity, of inhabiting the realm of other Spanish-language words like maricón (Mary), its diminutive mariquita (ladybug), mariposa (butterfly), and marimacha (a macho Mary). In this keyword essay, the author engages a SPIT! (Sodomites, Perverts, Inverts Together!) manifesto, a column by Karla Claudio-Betancourt, and scholarly pieces on queer language. He also analyzes Macha Colón’s song “Jayá” (2012), Eduardo Alegría’s song “Farifo” (2004), and Villano Antillano’s song “Pájara” (2020).