Impassioned Icons: Alma Lopez and Queer Chicana Visual

Desire
by
Luz Calvo
University of California, Santa Cruz

The image of two recognizable cultural female figures appeared to

me: the Sirena/Mermaid from the popular loteria bingo game and the
Virgin of Guadalupe, the post-conquest Mother of Jesus . . .I am re-
imagining these cultural icons from my own worldview as a Chicana
Lesbian.

Alma Lopez, Visual Artist

In the cultural space of the Chicano/a community, la Virgen de

Guadalupe is everywhere: painted on car windows, tattooed on
shoulders or backs, emblazoned on neighborhood walls, imprinted on t-
shirts sold at the local flea market. For Chicana feminists, her
omnipresence incites feelings of ambivalence. Some, regardless of
religiosity, accept her as a guardian presence, as nuestra madre.
Others consider her to be that virgin who appears in the binary of
virgin/whore,a social construction that traps women in a phallo-centric
sexual economy. Sandra Cisneros, for example, writes "That was why I
was angry every time I saw la Virgen de Guadalupe, my culture's role
model for brown women like me. She was damn dangerous, an ideal so
lofty and unrealistic it was laughable. Did boys have to aspire to be
Jesus?" (1996, 48).

In their effort to re-signify la Virgen de Guadalupe, Chicana feminists

have used a variety of strategies. Many have sought to reclaim the
indigenous aspects of her identity, seeing her as the embodiment of
pre-conquest goddesses such as Tonantzin, Coatlique, Coatlalopeuh, or
Tlazolteotl. In Ana Castillo's collection, Goddess of the Americas:
Writings on the Virgen de Guadualupe (1996), Castillo along with Gloria
Anzaldua, Pat Mora, Cherrie Moraga and Sandra Cisneros deploy this
strategy, identifying the Virgin of Guadalupe as a syncretic symbol in
which Spanish Catholicism combines with Indigenous beliefs systems
featuring female deities. Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano elaborates this
syncretism:

[I]t is important to remember the semiotic richness of the Virgin of

Guadalupe in Mexican/Catholic culture, productive of both religious and
nationalist meanings. In her syncretic fusion of the Catholic Virgin
Mother and the preconquest fertility deity Tonantzin, Guadalupe
signifies the racial construction of Mexican national identity as the
mestizo or hybrid product of the sexual union of Indian woman and
male Spaniard. (1995, 185)

Thus, the Virgin of Guadalupe is a fusion of Spanish (the Catholic Virgin

Mary) and indigenous (Tonantzin) cultures in the same way that
Mexican national identity is defined by the racial and sexual mixture
that I have theorized as the primal scene of colonialism; that is, "the
sexual union of Indian woman and male Spaniard." Drawing on the
"semiotic richness" of the mestiza holy mother, Chicana visual artists,
in particular, have made important contributions to feminist re-
significations of la Virgen de Guadalupe. Ester Hernandez's 1975 print,
La Virgen de Guadalupe Defendiendo los Derechos de los Xicanos,
depicts the Virgin as a black belt in the martial arts. No longer the
gentle mother figure imagined in the traditional icon, this Guadalupe is
physical, active, and strong. While the title of the piece suggests that
her ability is put at the service of her pueblo (the Chicano people), it is
clear that she can also defend herself. Indeed, these two, the "me" of
individual interest and "we" of the Chicano movement are no longer in
opposition as is so often the case in the context of what Chabram-
Dernersesian calls the "Chicano Movement script."1 In this "script,"
Chicanas are asked to choose between their loyalty to Chicano values
and their affinity with feminism (often coded as "selfish."). Alicia
Gaspar de Alba confirms that this is struggle was replicated among
Chicano and Chicana artists:

Chicana artists, like their male counterparts,were resisting class and

race oppression and affirming their differences as colonized subjects
with their own cultural, historical and linguistic identity. But some of
the Chicanas were also resisting [gender] oppression, internal to the
Movement, and for this resistance they were labeled by the patriarchs
and their female allies traitors to the Chicano Movement. (1998, 125)

Refusing such a bifurcation, Hernandez's print portrays Guadalupe as a

woman who is strong for herself and her raza. Similarly, Yolanda M.
Lopez's Guadalupe Triptych (1978) represents the Virgin of Guadalupe
in various guises: marathon runner, seamstress, grandmother that
foreground women's strength. In Our Lady of Guadalupe (1978,), a
seamstress works at a sewing machine, creating the star-covered cloak
that traditionally covers the Virgin of Guadalupe. This image
underscores the unseen and under-considered labor of women who
sew not only the Virgin's cloak but our clothes as well. Another Our
Lady of Guadalupe (1978) depicts an older woman,the artistÕs own
grandmother Chabram Dernersesian sitting on a footstool that is
covered with the VirginÕs cloak. In her hand, the grandmother holds
snake skin in one hand and a knife in the other. The grandmother in
the image embodies the stoic strength and wisdom of the crone, the
older woman reclaimed by feminists. The last of this 1978 trilogy is the
Portrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe. In this image, the artist
portrays herself/la Virgen as a marathon runner. Her legs are muscular
and developed. She runs holding a snake in one hand and the Virgin's
cloak draped over her shoulder in the other. She stomps on a small
angel with red, white, and blue wings. Lopez describes this plump
cherub as "a middle aged agent of patriarchy" (Gaspar de Alba 1998,
141). Chicana feminist artists, like the writers, have thus reclaimed the
Virgin as a Chicana feminist icon, appropriating and re-signifying her
patriarchal rendering as the selfless mother. Gaspar de Alba put it thus:
"Both Hernandez and Lopez's portrayals of the Guadalupana alter the
passive femininity of the traditional image to communicate feminist
empowerment through change and physical action." (141).

As Chicana feminists have struggled with and against the persistence

of the la Virgen de Guadalupe some have dared to explore what is
perhaps the most taboo of topics: her sexuality. In her essay,
"Guadalupe the Sex Goddess," Cisneros reveals her desire to lift the
virgin's dress, to see her underwear and her sex:

When I see La Virgen de Guadalupe I want to lift her dress as I did

my dolls' and look to see if she comes with chones, and does her
panocha look like mine, and does she have dark nipples too? Yes, I am
certain she does. (1996, 51)

Cisneros's desire to see La Virgencita's sex reveals itself as a site

where race and sexual difference meet. Within a cultural context where
white bodies are the norm, Cisneros desires to find a body like hers. In
this instance, "lack" is not (only) lack of the phallus but the "lack" of
the "white slit" that Cisneros has seen in pornographic film: "Once,
watching a porn film, I saw a sight that terrified me. It was the film
star's panocha a tidy, elliptical opening, pink and shiny like rabbit's ear.
To make matters worse, it was shaved."(50-51)If the sight of the porn
star's genitals evoked in Cisneros a feeling of terror, it was because of
a difference that was at once racially and sexually coded. The very
word panocha playfully codes sexual difference in terms of color and
thus "race"2 for its literal meaning is a cone of brown sugar that is
used in Mexican cooking. Cisneros elaborates her reaction to this
difference:

I think what startled me most was the realization that my own sex
has no resemblance to this woman's. My sex, dark as an orchid,
rubbery and blue purple as a pulpo, an octopus, does not look nice and
tidy, but otherworldly.(51)

Thus, Cisneros's desire to lift the Virgin's dress is a desire to locate her
own body within the grid of racial and sexual difference. Difference is
coded as "lack" in a social symbolic order that values men over women
and whiteness over color. For Cisneros as for other Chicana feminists,
political and social consciousness means one has learned to love
yourself, not in spite of your "lack" but because of it.3

Citing Cisneros's essay on Guadalupe as inspiration, Los Angeles based

visual artist Alma Lopez has created a series Lupe Loves Sirena that
represents the Virgin in sexualized sapphic poses. Using digital cut-
and-paste, Lopez produces collages that challenge some spectators'
sense of propriety. One family, on seeing her art on public television,
wrote to the artist, claiming Lopez's work to be a "slap in Our LadyÕs
face." Yet, to focus only on the "shock value" of Lopez's Lupe Loves
Sirena series would be to overlook the complex articulation of
sexuality, national iconography, and post-colonial identity that this
artwork proposes.

In Encuentro (1999), which images the celestial meeting of la Sirena

and la Virgen de Guadalupe, we are introduced to three elements that
will recur in many of the other images in this series: la virgen, la sirena,
and la mariposa. The Virgin of Guadalupe image that Lopez uses in this
piece is a traditional religious rendering and is most likely Mexican in
origin. This exact likeness is found on religious cards available in stores
that sell Catholic paraphernalia. Her name, however, has changed from
the traditional "la virgen de Guadalupe" to the more informal and
intimate, "Lupe." The image of la sirena (the mermaid) is taken from
the popular Mexican bingo game "loteria." Finally, a Viceroy butterfly
replaces what in the traditional icon is a small cherub, often painted
with wings the color of the Mexican flag, green, white, and red. The
butterfly has orange wings with black markings, it closely resembles
the well-known Monarch butterfly but is in fact a Viceroy butterfly.
These three elements work together in Encuentro to suggest to the
spectator the importance of these motifs in the other images in the
Lupe loves Sirena series, images which are more richly layered. Before
we turn to these other images, it is worth our while to consider at more
length the significance of the sirena and the butterfly.

Lopez chooses her butterfly carefully. In an essay posted on her

website, Lopez discusses her selection of symbols: "The Viceroy
butterfly mimics the Monarch for survival purposes, " explaining that
the Monarch butterfly is poisonous to its predators while the slightly
smaller Viceroy is not. Lopez suggests the aptness of the Viceroy
butterfly as a visual metaphor for queer Chicanos/as:

"The Viceroy pretends to be something it is not just to be able to

exist. For me, the Viceroy mirrors parallel and intersecting histories of
being different or "other" even within our own communities. Racist
attitudes see us Latinos as criminals and an economic burden, and
homophobic attitudes even within our own communities and families
may see us as perverted or deviant. So from outside and inside our
communities, we are perceived as something we are not. When in
essence we are very vulnerable Viceroy butterflies, just trying to live
and survive. ("Mermaids, Butterflies and Princesses.")

There is a play of recognition and misrecognition suggested by the

metaphor of the Viceroy butterfly. Ultimately, the Viceroy must forego
the possibility of recognition; in order to survive she must mimic
something else. By others unlike herself, she will be mistaken for the
Monarch. In Lopez's artwork, the Viceroy butterfly is a visual metaphor
for queers, Chicanos/as and queer Chicanas/os (marimachas and
maricones).

In the loteria game, like its American equivalent bingo, players hold a
card with a grid. In the Mexican version the grid is filled not with
numbers but with images that map a particular national imaginary. For
example, el nopal, la chalupa, and la bandera are all signifiers of
Mexican national identity. The types of people depicted on the cards
reflect a particular (Mexican) racial, social, and sexual order; to wit el
negrito, el apache and el soldado on one hand and la dama y el
valiente on the other. Within the grid of mexicanidad mapped by
loteria, la sirena stands out as the hybrid subject: she is part woman,
part fish. The sirena appears to be of mestiza heritage, because
instead of the usual blonde hair this mermaid has long wavy black hair.
She is derived not from Mexican or indigenous beliefs but rather from a
European folklore tradition where she is marked as a seductress that
men cannot resist.

The image in Encuentro is structured by the combination of three

elements:the mermaid, the Virgin, and the butterfly. Semiotics instructs
that meaning is derived from two axis, selection (the paradigmatic
axis) and combination (the syntagmatic axis). Meaning is derived from
the manner in which elements are selected and combined. The string
of symbols on the loteria card is an excellent example of what
semioticians call a "paradigmatic axis." Out of a set of possible loteria
characters the artist selects one, la sirena. Just as the artist selects la
sirena instead of, say, el apache, she chooses the Viceroy butterfly
instead of the Monarch butterfly, and the Virgen de Guadalupe instead
of an image of Tonantzin, And yet, because the otherÑ-unchosenÑ-
elements exist in what Victor Burgin calls the "popular preconscious"
these elements linger in the field of meaning evoked by Lopez's
imageÑwhat Burgin calls the "pre-text."4 (1886, 60) Lopez suggests as
much in her explanation of the use of the Viceroy butterfly instead of
the more recognizable Monarch butterfly:

The Monarch butterfly is most know for its natural yearly migration
from Mexico to the northern U.S. However, the most remarkable aspect
of this migration is that on its flight back to Mexico or the northern U.S.
it is no longer the original butterfly, but it is the child returning on
genetic memory.(2)

Thus, these two butterflies exist on a paradigmatic axis from which the
artist chooses the Viceroy for her collage while the Monarch continues
to attach itself by a relationship of contiguity to the butterfly that
appears in the piece. While Lopez selects the Viceroy butterfly, she is
still able to allude to the MonarchÕs unique migration pattern.

Similarly, linguistic difference creates another set of elements on the

paradigmatic axis. The butterfly in the image is la mariposa in Spanish.
La mariposa is but one word that begins with the prefix "mari": others
that come to mind are marimacha (dyke) or maricon (fag). Thus, the
queerness of this image is suggested by the paradigmatic axis even
before the virgin fondles la sirena's breast in Lupe and Sirena in Love.

In Lupe and Sirena in Love, we find the three elements of El Encuentro,

the mermaid, the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Viceroy butterfly, along
with new elements: the city scape of Los Angeles, the wall at the
Mexico-US border replete with the image of la virgen and the year
1848, a photograph of a man being chased by an agent of the migra
(US immigration and naturalization "service"), a faint image of the
volcanoes that tower over Mexico City (Ixtaccihuatl and Popocapetl).
The entire scene is framed by three blond cherubs holding a gold
ribbon and bouquets of roses.
Lopez's collage might suggest a Chicana lesbian primal scene: the
fantasy of nuestra madre in a sexual embrace with a woman. This
imagined scene stages the metaphoric conception of queer desire in
explicitly Chicano/a terms. In this image, queer desire is inseparable
from its racial and cultural context and from it geographic location in
the Mexico-US borderlands. As a young urban artist, Lopez's artwork
reflects a highly developed sense of place. This image, like many other
in her ouvre, layer the Los Angeles cityscape, the fence at the Mexico-
US border, and the volcanoes that tower over Mexico City. By arranging
these various geographical markers within one frame, Lopez begins to
map Chicana lesbian desire as a transnational formation that is not
fixed by the "logic" of the border, but that is situated within a complex
history of colonization and struggle.

Note: See Alma Lopez's website featuring her artwork and critical
reviews of her work.

Endnotes

1Chabram- Dernersesian capitalizes the "O" at the end of ChicanO to

signal the gendered nature of the referent-the as yet un-reconstituted
male-centered Chicano movement. The more contemporary term
Chicano/a or Chicana/o is meant to signify the reconstitution of the
movement in gender-inclusive terms. Of course, the mere name
change does not mean the reconstitution was successful or complete.
2Here as elsewhere in this dissertation, I use the term "race" as a way
to signal a process of racialization that is social and historical not
reducible to biological difference. In the US, Mexicans and Chicanos/as
are racialized. Within Mexican and Chicano/a culture, the diversity of
skin tones also carry complex social and racial meaning.
3I am well of aware of the challenge Lacan's conception of "lack" poses
for many feminists. I find it useful in this context, however, to use it as
a marker of sexual and racial difference in a social symbolic where
such difference in marked by social inequality. I do not believe the
equation of difference with social inequality is immutable, inevitable, or
ahistorical.
4Popular preconscious is defined by Burgin as "those ever-shifting
contents which we may reasonably suppose can be called to mind by
the majority of individuals in a given society at a particular moment in
history; that which is 'common knowledge'" (58). In the case of the
elements in Lopez's work, the pre-text is not common knowledge for
hegemonic US subjects, while it most likely is common knowledge for
Chicanos/as. I do not mean to suggest that the image is, then,
unreadable to non-Chicanos/as but simply that their pre-text will most
likely yield less developed set of images along the paradigmatic chain.
Subaltern artistic practice will make use of what I might call a post-
colonial preconscious that is distinct from the "common knowledge" of
the society at large and that the subaltern's specialized knowledge
produces a particular kind of viewing pleasure for those who "get it."
Works Cited

Anzaldua, G. (1996). "Coatlalopeuh: She Who Has Dominion Over

Serpents." Goddess of the Americas: Writings on the Virgin of
Guadalupe. New York, Riverhead Books: 52-55.
Burgin, V. (1986). The End of Art Theory: Criticism and Postmodernity.
Atlantic Highlands, NJ, Humanities Press International, Inc.
Castillo, A., Ed. (1996). Goddess of the Americas. New York, Riverhead
Books.
Cisneros, S. (1996). "Guadalupe the Sex Goddess." Goddess of the
Americas: Writings on the Virgin of Guadalupe. New York, Riverhead
Books: 46-51.
Gaspar de Alba, A. (1998). Chicano Art Inside/Outside the Master's
House: Cultural Politics and the CARA Exhibition. Austin, University of
Texas Press.
Lo Mora, P. (1996). "Coatlicue's Rules: Advice from an Aztec Goddess."
Goddess of the Americas: Writings on the Virgin of Guadalupe. New
York, Riverhead Books: 88-91.
Moraga, C. (1996). El mito azteca. Goddess of the Americas: Writings
on the Virgin of Guadalupe.New York, Riverhead Books: 68-71.
Yarbro-Bejarano, Y. (1995). "The Lesbian Body in Latina Cultural
Production." Entiendes: Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings. Durham,
North Carolina, Duke University Press:181-197.

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