Trans misogyny in the colonial archive: Re-membering trans feminine life and death in New Spain, 1604–1821

Abstract

Traces of trans feminine pasts are scattered all across the colonial archive. In New Spain, glimpses of Indigenous trans women's lives can be found in the records of conquistadors as early as the sixteenth century. While such early colonial representations of trans femininity span myriad religious, imperial and literary contexts, they are all underpinned by one harrowing reality: the widespread, colonial pursuit of trans feminine death. To ‘re-member’ – á la Saylesh Wesley – trans feminine pasts in the colonial archive, this article traces structures of, and resistance to, colonial trans misogyny in the sodomy criminal trials of Mexico (1604–1771) and the Catholic missions of California (1769–1821). Pushing against an extant ‘cistoriography’ that has simply archived these stories within the history of sexuality, I ask: What may be gleaned by centring trans femininity and womanhood as core to not only the lives of historical subjects, but the reason many of their lives were so violently taken? By re-membering trans misogyny in this way, we may finally name and centre the long-erased trans feminine historical subject, illuminate the complex, changing structures of her past worlds and trace the oft-forgotten lineages of not just trans feminine death, but trans feminine survivance in its face.