Queer Anthropophagy: Building women-centered LGBT + space in Northeastern Brazil

Through an ethnographic study of a party for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)+ women, this article examines contemporary sociospatial practices LGBT+/queer women utilize to build community during the festas juninas in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte. While these popular festivals associated with the rural space of the Brazilian Northeast may seem to replicate colonial, religious, and traditional structures, they have also have become fertile ground for queer contestations of heteronormative structures in the Northeast. I argue that LGBT + women in Natal engage in a cultural and spatial anthropophagy: devouring, absorbing, and hybridizing different cultural influences and types of space to create new community formations. By consuming many of the symbols, images, and cultural productions of the festas juninas they actively construct a hybrid anthropophagic space for LGBT + women and challenge moralistic values associated with rural Northeastern culture.