Bodies on the Front Lines: Performance, Gender, and Sexuality in Latin America and the Caribbean

Revolutionary feminism, queer, and trans activist movements are traversing Latin America and the Caribbean. Bodies on the Front Lines situates recent performances and protests within legacies of homegrown gender and sexual rights activism from the South. Performances--enacted in public spaces and intimate venues, across national borders, and through circulating hashtags and digital media--play crucial roles in the elaboration, auto-theorization, translation, and reception of feminist, queer, and trans activism. Movements such as Argentina’s NiUnaMenos (Not One Less) have brought masses of protesters and ＂artivists＂ on the streets of major cities in Latin America and beyond to denounce gender violence and demand gender, sexual, and reproductive rights.

The volume’s contributors draw from rich legacies of theater, performance, and activism in the region, as well as decolonial and intersectional theorizing, to demonstrate the ways that performance practices enable activists to sustain their movements. The chapters engage diverse perspectives from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, transnational Central America, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Mexico.

Rather than taking an approach that simplifies complexities among states, Bodies on the Front Lines takes seriously the geopolitical stakes of examining Latin America and the Caribbean as a heterogeneous site of nations and networks. In chapters covering this wide geographical area, leading scholars in the fields of theater and performance studies showcase the aesthetic, social, and political work of performance in generating and fortifying gender and sexual activism in the Americas.

Brenda Werth is Associate Professor of Latin American and Spanish Studies at American University.
Katherine Zien is Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at McGill University.