Perverse Citizenship: Divas, Marginality, and Participation in “ Loca -Lization”

Ordenanza de Convivencia Ciudadana y Sancion de Infracciones Menores Articulo 1°. Objeto. La presente ordenanza tiene por objeto consolidar las bases de la convivencia ciudadana en el Distrito Metropolitano y ia preservacion de la seguridad, el orden publico, el ambiente y el ornato de la ciudad, . . . y la utilizacion pacifica y armonica de las vias y espacios publicos del Distrito Metropolitano de Caracas. Capitulo I. De las infracciones relativas al debido comportamiento en lugares publicos Articulo 13 (decimotercero). Ofrecimiento de comercio sexual. El que ofrezca servicios de caracter sexual en la via publica, sera sancionado con multa de veinte (20) unidades tributarias, o la realizacion de algunos de los trabajos comunitarios establecidos en el articulo 38 de la presente ordenanza por un lapso de cuarenta y ocho horas. Ordenanza de Convivencia Ciudadana, Caracas, Venezuela Although sex work is not a crime in the Venezuelan penal code, on the streets of Caracas, the Ordenanza de Convivencia Ciudadana is the law of the land.1 These few words, which happily proclaim the terms under which citizens might harmoniously together, also condemn many women, trans formis tas, and men to in a daily negotiation, expensive and at times violent, with the agents of the state, in this case, the Policia Metropolitana de Caracas (PM). Convivencia ciudadana (citizenly coexistence) implies a social harmony that respects all citizens as long as they respect the law.2 But some citizens live together better than others, and the law always values some existences while marginalizing others. I had to get to know the Ordenanza de Convivencia Ciudadana (or simply ordenanza), and its accompanying definition of citizenship, to understand the context of Avenida Libertador in Caracas, where dozens of transformistas undertake sex work nightly. I had to get to know the ordinance this way because it helped me understand the structural factors that overdetermine the violence and marginalization that are produced on a daily basis on these streets and upon these bodies. But the truth is that the ordenanza is just a tool for the PM. Before the ordenanza, there was the Ley de Vagos y Maleantes, before that another law, and always Morality, Order, and Good Citizenship. If the ordenanza is struck down tomorrow, the PM will find another way to police these transformistas. When I began my work in Venezuela, I didn't expect to engage with questions of citizenship and However, as I spent more time in an increasingly polarized environment where mechanisms of participation and collective action became more and more contested, I began to turn to these words as ways to talk about my concerns.3 There are some sectors of the so-called society (sociedad civil) within which I function, specifically, the work of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and activists to HIV/ AIDS and movements to articulate identity, community, and culture for people of color in the United States. However, the limitations of civil society, and in particular of NGOs, to respond to the concerns of queer and transgender people of color have informed the skepticism with which I approach such concepts as citizenship and Rather than approaching the survival of transformistas through theory, HIV prevention, or the traditions in anthropology that attend to non- Western sexualities and gender systems, I focused my work on bodily and imaginative responses to marginalization through mass media. My fieldwork, in fact, is about these mechanisms and not about what I refer to in this essay as society. But the distinction between those who see themselves as actors of el ambiente and those who are automatically excluded (or who exclude themselves) from political possibility recurred both in my interviews with members of GLBT society in Caracas, and in my work on Avenida Libertador. …