Queer Relajo
Feeling the Nightscapes of Mexicanidad
An escapade into the nightly ambience of Mexico City
Description
In 2015, Mexico City declared itself a “gay-friendly” city and followed up with a gay tourist guide and new laws permitting changes to gender markers on legal documents, sanctioning same-sex marriage, and allowing joint adoption of children. At the same time, patterns of violence and discrimination against women, trans, and queer people have continued throughout the country. In Queer Relajo, David Tenorio argues that while Mexico City aims to bring visibility to queer sociality, the benefits of this visibility and legitimization of queer space remain unclear.
Combining readings of film, digital media, and performance with drag autoethnography, Queer Relajo quite literally plays with how relajo (or playfulness) structures the spaces of queer nightlife in urban Mexico City by revealing how nighttime intimacy can minimize the paralyzing effects of violence and precarity in a neoliberal Mexico. Considering the political implications of when a queer/trans person is present at night, Tenorio argues that queer modes of feeling and play are not only essential to queer liberation, but also resist neoliberal commodification and heteronormativity.
David Tenorio is Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, as well as in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program, at the University of Pittsburgh.
Reviews
“Queer Relajo is a beautifully conceived book that tours readers through Mexico City’s diverse queer nightscapes. With this book, Tenorio makes a major contribution to Latino queer studies, while being in dialogue with the broader field.”
- Kareem Khubchandani, Tufts University
“Through the activation of the concept of ‘queer relajo’ and a rigorous use of methods from literary, visual culture, and performance studies, Tenorio provides deep and powerful analyses of queer cultural works that circulate in contemporary Mexico. Tenorio’s beautiful writing, keen and sensitive eye, and consideration to feelings, situate the reader amidst the despair and the glamor (and everything in between) of queer and trans life, which is made possible by and despite the continued neoliberal encroachment and anti-trans and queer violence. An exciting and much-welcomed intervention in Mexican queer cultural studies.”
- Laura G. Gutierrez, The University of Texas at Austin