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).
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Research Article|
July 01 2024
Patería and Contemporary Puerto Rican Queer/Trans Performance
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes is a professor of American culture, Romance languages and literatures, and women’s and gender studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author of Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (2009), Escenas transcaribeñas: Ensayos sobre teatro, performance y cultura (2018), and Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance (2021). His books of fiction include Uñas pintadas de azul / Blue Fingernails (2009) and Abolición del pato (2013).
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Small Axe (2024) 28 (2 (74)): 115–129.
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Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes; Patería and Contemporary Puerto Rican Queer/Trans Performance. Small Axe 1 July 2024; 28 (2 (74)): 115–129. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-11382530
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