You will never be a Weye

2015

Video performance, 1920×1080, HD, 4:46 minutes.

The European conquest has denied us a plethora of knowledge about our own indigenous cultures, a denial that also is extended –by the patriarchy’s command– to the control of our own identities and bodies. Before the arrival of the Spanish to the lands that are now fenced by the political borders of the Chilean state, there were Machis Weyes: subjects that did not adequate to the gender binary structure. The Machis Weyes were able to transit from what is feminine to what it is masculine, what is political (bound to men) and what is spiritual (bound to women).

These practices were registered in the chronic of the Spanish Francisco Ñúñez de Pineda y Bascuñán, who describes the Machis Weyes in his 1673 book El Cautiverio Feliz: “This one looked like Lucifer in his features, size and costume. He was not wearing underwear because he was of those called “hueyes”

(“Weyes”), that is to say, loathsome, and of those considered despicable, because they adjusted themselves to the purpose of women”

The Weyes were wiped out almost entirely after the arrival of the Spanish to the lands. Their annihilation was based, mainly, on the accusation of committing the sin of sodomy, according to the command of the recently introduced catholic religion. As of the above said I propose a crossing between this chronic and my own biography that starts with the premise: “In the Mapuche culture there are no faggots”. This phrase, said by my paternal grandmother, a pure Mapuche according to herself, was her reaction before the presence of a possible encounter with a transvestite nephew. In this specific way, in the performance “You will never be a Weye”, what is sought is the reappropriation of an identity denied –through silence– by the history, the religion, and the patriarchy, mocking the garments that simulate the actual clothes –as a costume- along with a synthetic wig.

Video registro: Alejandra Caro Rivera