Until 2022, same-sex marriage was unrecognized in the country. Same-sex civil unions were not legally recognized until 2015, when socialist president Michelle Bachelet signed the Agreement on Civil Unions (AUC) law. Contributing significantly to this victory was the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation (MOVILH), which had spearheaded a successful public-awareness campaign. Legalized “therapeutic abortion,” in which procedures are only permitted in extreme cases where the mother’s life is at risk, the fetus is unviable, or the pregnancy resulted from rape, was not legalized until 2017, three years after HdP’s death. Abortion rights were a central concern of HdP’s work and became a catalyst for a number of her performances and activist interventions.
The Center for University Critical Studies was the first to publish one of her texts, which appeared in a collection of essays on gender theory titled En Reversa (2010). HdP was prominently featured on the book cover. Additionally, Revista Punto Género, a magazine dedicated to gender and sexuality issues at the University of Chile, published two of HdP’s essays. The first, “The End of the Retrograde Idealization of Sexuality Is the Magical Spiral of the Eternal Multisexual Apocalypse,” was published in 2012, while the second, “Filthy Interpretations: How ‘Queer Theory’ Colonizes Our Poor, Aspirational, South American, Third World Context, Perturbing People Enamored of Heterosexual Norms with New Gender Constructs,” was published posthumously in 2014. The latter appears in this issue of e-flux journal, in both the original Spanish and in English translation.
Hija de Perra, “Arte en Acción, Temporada 2,” interview by Pato Munita, Arte en Acción Chapter 4, ArTV, 2013 and 2015. Author’s translation.
Juan Pablo Sutherland, interview by Julia Eilers Smith, Santiago de Chile, November 28, 2018.
“Entrevista Hija De Perra & Wincy,” Revista Fill, YouTube video, January 23, 2013 →. Author’s translation.
Hija de Perra, “Interpretaciones inmundas de cómo la Teoría Queer coloniza nuestro contexto sudaca, pobre aspiracional y tercermundista, perturbando con nuevas construcciones genéricas a los humanos encantados con la heteronorma” (Filthy Interpretations: How “Queer Theory” Colonizes Our Poor, Aspirational, South American, Third World Context, Perturbing People Enamored of Heterosexual Norms with New Gender Constructs), Revista Punto Género, no. 4 (2014): 11. All translations from this text by Casey Butcher.
HdP, “Interpretaciones inmundas,” 9.
The lecture was presented in 2012 at the 3rd Queer Art Fair of Mendoza, hosted by the National University of Cuyo in Argentina.
HdP, “Interpretaciones inmundas,” 9.
HdP, “Interpretaciones inmundas,” 12.
HdP, “Interpretaciones inmundas,” 10.
HdP, “Interpretaciones inmundas,” 13.
HdP, “Interpretaciones inmundas,” 10.
HdP, “Interpretaciones inmundas,” 10. The term “mariconas” derives from its masculine form, “maricón,” which is akin to “dyke,” “fag,” or “faggot” in English, conveying the idea of sexual deviance. “Mari” serves as a references both Mother Mary and Marianism, which play an important role in many Latin American societies. Words such as “maricón,” and “mariconas” provoke a displacement, or a carnivalization, of the revered and sanctified figure.
HdP, “Interpretaciones inmundas,” 14.
HdP, “Interpretaciones inmundas,” 15.
HdP, “Interpretaciones inmundas,” 14.
HdP, “Interpretaciones inmundas,” 16.
José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopias: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (NYU Press, 2009), 87.
“Entrevista Hija De Perra & Wincy.”