Todas las Flores

This essay places in context Todas las flores, a film by the Puerto Rican filmmaker Carmen Oquendo-Villar. As an illustration of the Santa Fe neighborhood in Bogotá, Colombia, a bar/hostel called Tabaco y Ron, as well as trans elders and leaders of the community, this very localized film is connected to what the author calls a Latin American travesti sensibility. One way this is accomplished is by the use of furia travesti, a phrase that continues a lineage of unapologetic Latin American travesti and trans activism emergent from the spaces where transgeneristas and trans women have been most marginalized—oftentimes connected to prostitution. The author explores the meaning of todas las flores (all the flowers) in the context of language (travesti, transgenerista, and other local categories) for a strong sense of a Latin American travesti collective that stands apart yet in relation to the increasingly global category trans.