Literature & Literary Studies
November 2019
Ramonera
by Guerra, Elvis
In Oaxaca, in the Zapotec region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, gender binarism goes cross-eyed in front of the muxe', people who are born with male genitalia, but who give up their potential symbolic power to embrace the feminine. Elvis Guerra proposes in Ramonera a critique not only of the exclusion or violence exercised on bodies that are recognized in peripheral identities but also of the mythification to which the muxe' have been subjected. It is a radical revision of the epic that deals with a marginalized minority, in order to claim their Zapotec culture and practices absolutely in line with recent contemporary society. Because when the political significance of a body becomes a class struggle or dissidence, the hegemony, oriented to the maintenance of its power structure, shows its muscle to validate the same story as always, to leave some lives outside, to throw them out and, at the same time, to welcome them under some control mechanisms, like parasites, like a virus. That's why we need poetry to be an act of political resistance. That's why we need to listen to the voice of Elvis Guerra
