Building Cuir Utopias One Bug at a Time

Touching Insects through Time in the Cultural Production of Greater Mexico

Abstract

This article traces the figure of the insect across the cultural production of Greater Mexico to examine how bugs have shaped representations of gender and sexual dissidence from the colonial period to the present. Drawing on cuir/queer studies, animal studies, and trans* theory, I analyse the shifting meanings of mayates (figeater beetles), mariposas (butterflies), mariquitas (ladybirds), and cockroaches in literature, performance, and visual culture. I argue that while insects have historically functioned as symbolic markers of jotería and non-normative gender expression, contemporary trans* and cuir cultural production increasingly attends to their materiality, opening new ways of thinking about embodiment, affect, temporality, and memory. The first section reconstructs a genealogy of insect imagery in works by Juan Carlos Bautista, Luis Felipe Fabre, Luis Montaño, Rigoberto González, and others, showing how insects operate as liminal figures that both reproduce and destabilize heteropatriarchal norms. I then examine the work of Mixe performer Lukas Avendaño, whose engagements with the butterfly move beyond metaphor to imagine trans-species forms of belonging that connect muxeidad, migration, and queer futurity. Finally, I analyse Mexican trans* artist Lía García’s reclamation of the cockroach through “ternura radical” (radical tenderness). I propose that the cockroach functions as an affective chronotope through which touch and interspecies encounter render trans* memory palpable, challenging narratives that erase trans* histories and opening space for more-than-human cuir futures.