Exhibit language:

Cardboard Cutouts

Examples from the Benson's Cartonera Collection

LGBTQ Voices

A pink cover of a cartonera.

Working with small and independent presses allows a greater diversity of voices to be published and disseminated. As we saw in the previous section, there is a need to create more publications in Indigenous languages, yet at the same time, larger publishers often prioritize materials in European languages. Unfortunately, this has been historically true regarding gender and sexuality as well. Publishers have privileged cisgender, heterosexual men of the middle to upper class. Cartoneras present a way to contest that privilege, as seen in the following examples.

Vivane Vergueiro uses essay to point to dichotomies around gender and sexuality as stemming from European colonization in Brazil. Because these dichotomies create differences through hierarchies, they lead to violence and other forms of oppression.

Fragment of an essay that subverts cisgender binaries.

An essay that frames the work of Jose Carlos Monroy Rodriguez within LGBTQ subject matter.

Erik Meneses (2021) considers the intersectionality of Indigeneity, gender, and sexuality and seeks solidarity among communities that have been socially and systematically excluded.

The purple cover of the cartonera "Gay.o" by Manuel Tzoc.

A warning, here told as a joke.

A poem that questions the categories that exist to talk about sexuality.

A textual piece playing off the word "gay".

Tzoc (2015) is more playful with his interrogation of sexuality and labels. However, his message echoes that of the other authors in this section: we must view the current constructions of sexuality and gender as a legacy of colonialism.