“The Future Is Ancestral”: The Environmental Cuir Utopias of Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

Argentinian author Gabriela Cabezón Cámara identifies as a “socio‐environmentalist and writer” and has been actively involved in the feminist movement #NiUnaMenos since 2015, alongside her growing engagement with environmental activism. She advocates for Indigenous land rights, water accessibility, and challenges offshore petroleum extraction and lithium mining in Latin America. Since her debut novel, La virgen cabeza [ Slum Virgin ] (2009), Cabezón Cámara has woven environmental, gender, and racial issues into her works. In Las aventuras de la China Iron [ The Adventures of China Iron ] (2017), she revises the gauchesca genre from a feminist socio‐environmentalist perspective, critiquing the patriarchal, extractivist, and colonial foundations that shaped Argentina's national ideology. Her 2023 novel Las niñas del naranjel [ We Are Green and Trembling ] continues this exploration, introducing a cuir (queer) character who, during a conquest expedition, encounters Indigenous worldviews through two Guaraní girls, challenging colonialism. Together, they form a multispecies family, further exploring alternative forms of community and resistance. This paper analyzes Cabezón Cámara's novels through a feminist political ecology lens, using the concept of cuir to examine how she portrays intersectional resistance and alternative socio‐environmental structures. By reimagining historical events and revising colonial legacies, Cabezón Cámara envisions pathways toward a more sustainable and equitable future for Latin America, informed by Indigenous cosmogonies and queer ideologies.