Nany Guerrerx on living well in all of our possibilities
Community and pleasure activism for liberation
Image credit: Nany Guerrerx
Hi everyone,
This is a little update from me before we get into this interview with Nany Guerrerx. I apologize for the long delay between newsletters, but I have been feeling 10 different types of stuck, and writing and inspiration have not been easy (or happening at all). It’s not easy to be a freelancer during a pandemic, but the good thing is that I am naturally drifting towards healing activities and energies, like camping, swimming, reading, and music (my other job!).
Another reason why this newsletter is more paused this days and will pause yet again after this edition is because I have been exploring ways to migrate this newsletter off Substack. This is not only in light of the company’s clear politics on “freedom of expression” and financial support for writers who express transphobia, but because I knew that it was time to leave Substack a while ago. This platform prefers to support writers with larger followings, regardless of their values, and I knew that I would need my own platform to really develop my values, ethics, and practices more deeply and clearly. Plus, it would also really help people look through archives and find different essays or interviews with young feminists. More news coming about this soon, and in the meantime, I hope you’ll have patience as I navigate exploring my options.
Without further ado, here is a conversation with Nany Guerrerx.
- Ani
Where did you grow up and what experiences have you had with feminism in your life? How did you begin to identify as a feminist?
I was born in a place called Veracruz, México. Veracruz has a very large Afro-Mexican community - and I come from a family of normalista teachers. The normalistas are the teachers who train other teachers to give classes in public schools. So this whole school of school-teachers is very strong. My grandparents fought a lot for the teachers in the south, which is very different from the north, which is more industrialized. It has a lot to do with migration from Central America. But as for feminism per se, I think it's the moms and grandmothers that move us a lot. The situations that our mothers and grandmothers go through compared to those that our parents and grandparents go through feel very different, right? And I've always been involved in [activism] - but it never crossed my mind that I'm an activist. You go out and fight and you don't have a [special] name. But in Mérida, I met some rappers and I came to be part of a group called Las Hijas Del Rap (The Daughters of Rap).
In the world of hip hop, men largely created a discourse that we did not experience. But from the moment I started listening to my fellow [female] rappers, I said, ok, I like this rap. There is a very big difference between the hip hop that the guys do and the hip hop that the women do. And when we established ourselves as feminists, it's not that any answers came, but actually, more questions arrived. But those questions led us to more ethical questions and practices among ourselves. Feminism gave us a how, a how to work better, a how we can understand each other. A what is the importance of stories, and an understanding that there are pains that we go through but also that there are joys that unite us. So that's where I started to also identify as a feminist and deal with all the consequences of assuming that role - which range from everything from death threats, to having other spaces close the doors to us, and other things as well. When we began to identify as feminists, we decided that we no longer work with people who have allegations of abuse. And we saw ourselves without spaces, without possibilities. We decided to create our own platforms, create our own music, and our own message. It has been very interesting that the hip hop circles close the space for us but that women's spaces opened the doors for us. In the women's circles, they were really happy that there was a group of feminist rappers.
We started to work in the protests and we saw that there are many comrades exhausted from their work, tired - but when we go out to the march, we want to animate everyone! We started to think of our music as happier music, we start to think of the marches as joyful marches, dancing in the face of the police. It is just as powerful [as direct action].
About 4 years ago, I started my LGBTQ + activism too. I live in a very conservative city, and - to come out as non-binary, that idea shocks a lot of radical feminists who do not believe in that, people who are not willing with trans women. It was also a watershed moment. Working in the LGBTQ + community has been the most magical and also the most toxic thing that has happened to me. It is not a perfect community. We go through many difficulties. We keep repeating patterns of the system that make it difficult for us to have solid, lasting, meaningful relationships. That is where my activism moves a bit - to create spaces of pleasure and joy. Especially with parties.
Image credit: Nany Guerrerx
The party is a device that educates. It is very common that something happens in our communities and the parties are canceled. There are many obstacles so that we cannot celebrate. That is where my history of activism changed a bit. For people to be able to move their bodies, to perrear. To tap into your sexual energy. To recognize all the power that is through pleasure. I think that these activisms where you activate them we end up tired, exhausted, that cannot continue, without work, without life. It can't go on like this. We can enjoy these processes in the community, without feministmeters, without thinking about who is the “most” feminist, who is the “most” LGBTQ +. Because in the end, these activisms should allow us to heal.
You spoke of two moments in your journey as dividers, when you were 23 and 25 years old. Today, 29 years old, what do you think about your [activist] trajectory?
At first, you have a very romantic idea of what feminism is. But later you realize that, no. It’s not that easy. That it is much more complicated. And the [collective] construction doesn’t happen in a year ... we try to put dates to our processes when the truth is that the processes do not end. I have learned to observe more. I think that as the years go by, you become more patient. To look and look and try to understand. To allow when to know when and how to shout and to take care of my own voice. There are people who - why are you putting your body on the line? You sacrifice so much of yourself, and then you say, oh! There are people being much safer and doing things in a different way, taking care of themselves.
There is still that stigma that an activist has to sacrifice herself to be considered an activist. People take advantage of this, especially of young people. They ask young people for a lot of experience, but they don't pay much. There’s this common idea that young people do not get tired. Now that I am turning 30, I am asking myself, where is my space? Many activists end up leaving and the older activists disappear. In the LGBTQ+ community, we wonder, where are the older activists?
I, like many others from outside, saw the feminist occupations that took over many cities in Mexico in late 2020. How was that experience, if you were involved, and other activisms during the pandemic?
At first, the pandemic left the communities very isolated. But within the first months of the pandemic, feminist groups began to occupy the Commission of Human Rights in Mexico City [as an outcry against gender-based violence and disappearances]. And soon, feminist organization organized occupations of more commissions across the country.
Here in Yucatán, the Human Rights Commission was also taken. And here there were also complaints about the message about peace. Because in particular, Mérida is a city that lives in silence. Many people say, oh you should be thankful that you have peace. But peace for whom? Many of those messages about peace are only for politicians, the rich businessmen. But there is no peace for the rest of the population.
If there is a transformation towards the virtual [for activism] right now, it also worries me at the same time. But it means that now there are other ways to organize ourselves. Now activists wonder, how to protect themselves online, how to do activism from a distance? Now how do we keep the privacy of others? We are still in the process of regulating ourselves, to see how the movements continue to advance. There is still a long way to go, to create our own systems.
I was also going to ask you about the campaign against the Mayan train that I know you’re involved in. What can groups do in the context of such a large State-drive megaproject?
Well, I think we are learning how to fight beyond the body. How to defend ourselves when we cannot put our body out there. Regarding the Mayan train, I think this kind of activism has allowed the discourse to go further. At the moment, what we have been doing is seeing how to organize ourselves. There is a collective that is directly overseeing the whole issue of the Mayan train in front of this that we trust a lot. Because in the end I am a person who is in the city, it also affects me, but it affects me in a different way, and it affects rural people much more. We are relying on the speeches of this group in the field. It is up to us to be at the ready, to share information. From the governments, only speech that celebrates the Mayan train comes out.
The Mayan train is a very big blow for the indigenous communities. These communities are still trying to survive and resist, without internet, access to the city, and everything. In the crisis, they leave us unarmed and so we are more concerned with survival than with fighting back. When you are focusing on surviving one more day, you are less focused on your activism, no? For those of us who have a certain amount of stability, it’s up to us to spread this message. From the villages, it will be very difficult for them to go out to the city to fight, because it makes them vulnerable to the virus; it exposes them a lot.
We talked about some of the good consequences of shifting towards organizing over the internet, even more so during a pandemic. But what do you think has been some of the consequences of using social media and the internet to organize?
Large social networks have completely taken over our communication. And it’s interesting - before, protesting was frowned upon, going out to march was frowned upon, but now right-wing people go out to march. The people who are against abortion are called activists, imagine? People are activists on Vogue now - to make it work for them. With expensive t-shirts that say ‘feminist’ that don’t pay living wages to the people who made the shirts - we have this great task now to figure out when the system is manipulating us. When it is telling us to celebrate things that should not be celebrated. But I think the LGBTQ + community is becoming more politicized, the feminist community is becoming more politicized.
But, now that we are concentrating on the issues of race and gender, which is very beautiful and necessary, there is also the issue of class. I think that this will become even more important to understand. This is fundamentally a matter of power and the revolution of wealth. Especially with the [COVID-19 pandemic] crisis. More and more, we should be supporting the local, the small. I think many activists and feminists are putting on their shirts and criticizing the internet - many people make meme and humor an easier way to get the message across. But the results are very great. I believe that if they are appropriating us, then we are also realizing it. It is no longer so easy to hide the truth, and to “see our faces”, to make fools of us.
I am less optimistic. Neoliberalism still misleads many people, it also has an effect. You talked about the good consequences of using social networks in your favor, for your communities, but what do you think about this wave of neoliberalism, the impact of social networks on movements?
All those platforms are made in the global north. We will never create a revolution on the platforms of our oppressors. I'm not waiting for Vogue to change and get politicized. I want independent media, which are not bought. I think we need to create our own platforms. At any point, Instagram can close our accounts. The algorithms aren’t in our favor. And we are understanding more and more how technology affects all of our activities. The war is also digital, now more than other. But I believe that we have to have our own virtual spaces, otherwise they are going to continue manipulating us.
That was all of the questions that I had for you. Is there anything you wanted to share?
I love these virtual spaces that we can create for ourselves. To flirt, to share, to practice pleasure and enjoy time together. It’s so important for us to be healthy, calm right now. This crisis is affecting us so much in terms of mental and physical health. I think that the system really wants to kill us from sadness… look at the increased suicide and depression rates here, especially, during this pandemic.
We realize how fragile our minds are. We’re in the middle of a moment where maybe - the most revolutionary thing that you can do is to be well, flirt a little bit, and continue fighting. The LGBTQ+ community has developed really interesting healing processes that are n’t considered necessarily as healing - but using sexual energy, for example, is very healing. It’s something that’s still quite repressed or manipulated. But just eating fruits and vegetables, washing up, such basic things - and thinking about these forms of energy and community - is going to help us get through this. We are fighting to stay alive, but it’s not just this. It’s to live well, to be well. In all of our possibilities.
NINA NINA (@nanyguerrerx). One foot at the party, one foot at the protest! Nina is a transfeminist artivist and educator. Vedette alien, they are also a DJ and rapper at @lashijasdelrap, a feminist hip hop collective in Yucatan, Mexico; and finds themself in vogue, dancing, music, performance, urban intervention and the constant flow of their identities. Sexy and powerful, Nina is also committed to the creation of spaces of pleasure and joy for womxn and the lgbt+ community, the micro-politics of the party, to explore the narratives of protest and the struggles of their home, the Global South.
Ani Hao is a young feminist writer, journalist and media consultant. She reports on young feminist activism and youth-led social movements globally.
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