Pedro Segundo Mardones Lemebel (21 November 1952 – 23 January 2015) was a Chilean essayist, chronicler, performer and novelist. He was openly gay and known for his cutting critique of authoritarianism and for his humorous depiction of Chilean popular culture, from a queer perspective. He was nominated for Chile's National Literature Prize in 2014. He died of laryngeal cancer on 23 January 2015 in Santiago, Chile.A Surreal End for an Unforgettable Queen: Pedro Lemebel, 1952-2015
Life
Early career Lemebel was born in El Zanjón de la Aguada, a poor neighborhood in Santiago on the banks of Zanjón de la Aguada, an irrigation canal that flows into the Mapocho river; to the family of Pedro Mardones Paredes and Violeta Lemebel. In the late 1980s, he chose to be identified by his mother's surname, Lemebel, as his choice for surname instead of his father's (Mardones), as is the norm in most Latin American countries. He attended an industrial school of carpentry and metal forging at the Industrial de Hombres de La Legua High School and later studied plastic art at University of Chile's Art School. He subsequently became a high school art teacher but was let go based on the presumption of his homosexuality.
Lemebel attended writing workshops to hone his skills and network with other writers, his first writing recognition was in 1982, when he won an award for his short story, Porque el tiempo está cerca. In 1986, he published as his first major work, the book Incontables, a compilation of short stories under the feminist publication label, Ergo Sum. A year later, he co-founded a performance collective that used the tactics of intervention and disruption of events to raise public consciousness about the struggles of minorities in Chile. The disruption and performances of the collective brought Lemebel into the public limelight in Chile. In 1986, he disrupted a meeting of Chile's left-wing groups opposed to Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. He entered the meeting in high heels and with makeup on his face depicting a hammer and sickle extending from his mouth to his left eyebrow. At the event, he spoke about his manifesto, ‘Manifest: I Speak for my Difference’ criticizing homophobia in left-wing politics.
Lemebel was widely known as a communist. Being distant from the Communist Party, he was a close friend of its leader, Gladys Marín, until her death in 2005.
Yeguas del Apocalipsis In 1987, Lemebel co-founded a group with Francisco Casas, poet, artist and student of literature. The duo called the group "The Mares of the Apocalypse," or "Yeguas del Apocalipsis," a reference to the biblical "Horsemen of the Apocalypse" that appear in the New Testament. This performing duo made appearances sabotaging book launches, art expositions and even political discussions. Their appearances were usually surprising, provocative and demonstrated an aspect of counter-culture.
Around this time he decided to abandon his paternal last name, Mardones, and begin using that of his mother, Lemebel. In an interview the writer would explain his choice of name change as the following, "Lemebel is a gesture of femininity, to engrave a maternal last name, to acknowledge my (washer) mother in light of the illegality of homosexual(s) and transvestite(s)."
The first intervention/performance of "The Mares of the Apocalypse" was on the afternoon of October 22, 1988, during the second installment of the Pablo Neruda prize to poet Raúl Zurita in La Chascona. In the middle of the ceremony, Lemebel and Casas appeared offering Zurita a crown of thorns that the poet did not accept.
In 1989, both Lemebel and Casas recreated a series of vignettes under the direction of Mario Vivado. The portraits later became part of an exhibition at the D12 Gallery in Chile.Subero. P. 48 Casas and Lemebel posed as Buster Keaton, Marilyn Monroe, the sisters from Garcia Lorca's La Casa de Bernarda Alba and other icons of the Chilean gay community. In the 1990s, Lemebel returned to writing and published a string of urban chronicles.
The next year they appeared in the Cariola theater during a meeting of intellectuals with presidential candidate Patricio Aylwin, who the following year would be elected the first president of Chile after the restoration of democracy and the end of the dictatorship. Although uninvited, Lemebel and Casas arrived wearing heels and feathers bearing a sign that said "Homosexuals for change." In addition to that, Casas rushed over to, at the time candidate for senator and future Chilean president, Ricardo Lagos and kissed him on the mouth. A photograph of this event was included years later in his book Háblame de Amores(2012).
Both writers often turned into agents of their own text and created an interpretation of homosexual reality and an interruption of institutional discussions during the age of the dictator. Their work crossed over into performances, transvestism, photography, video and various art installations. With these they would advocate for a place for memory, human rights and sexuality in democratic talks. "Maybe the first experiment with plastic, the action of art...was decisive in the move from story to chronicle. It's possible that this corporal exposition in a religious frame was evaporating the generic form of the story...the timeless story to make for oneself and urgent chronicle..." explained Lemebel.
In 1994, Lemebel participated in the stonewall festival in New York, an LGBT pride festival.
Between 1987 and 1995, "The Mares of the Apocalypse" carried out at least fifteen public interventions and in total no more than twenty. The majority of these events were in Santiago but some were also in Concepción, Chile. Some of their public demonstrations included dancing the Cueca on broken glass, dressing up as Frida Kahlo and even dressing up as Lady Godiva and riding around naked on white horses for the art department at the University of Chile.
In 1995, Lemebel published (in addition to his first book titled La Esquina es mi corazón) his first collection of Chronicles some of which had their first appearances in newspapers and magazines titled "Página Abierta," "Punto Final," and "La Nación." In these chronicles Lemebel referenced the many marginalized setting of Santiago which he linked to themes of homosexuality, prostitution and poverty, some of which were taboo to talk about at the time. The following year he created the program "Cancionero" for the radio show "Radio Tierra." In this program he would read his chronicles accompanied by sounds or even music. That same year he published "Loco afán: Crónicas de si dario," his second book of chronicles that spoke about themes like AIDS and the marginalization of transvestites.
In 1997, in some of their final appearances "The Mares of the Apocalypse" were invited to Bienal de la Habana, in Habana Cuba. In 1998 he published his third book of chronicles titled "De Perlas y Cicatrizes" which was composed mostly of the stories he told on the radio program. After the arrest of Augusto Pinochet in a London hospital, he created "The Clinic" whose editor Patricio Ferrández he asked to leave everything in it uncensored.
Urban chronicles and other writings
Earlier in his career, Lemebel had attended workshops of the Society of Chilean Writers and gained the friendship of some feminist writers such as Pía Barros who later helped published his first book, Incontables. He returned to writing in the 1990s starting with a series of urban chronicles that were published in Chilean newspapers, and magazines and read on the radio. In 1995 and 1996, Lemebel wrote two books in a chronicle and hybrid literary style, a combination of reportage, memoir, public address, fiction and socio-political historical analysis. In 1995, he published La Esquina es mi corazón: Crónica urbana (The Corner is My Heart), writing about Chilean history from the perspectives of young adults raised in poor neighborhoods and those who are stigmatized socially. In 1996, he published Loco afán: Crónicas de sidario (Mad Urge: AIDS Chronicles), a piece of 31 short texts and images that detailed the journey of a group of marginalized gay youths in Chile through the period of dictatorship to the outbreak of AIDS. Lemebel was given a Guggenheim Foundation scholarship in 1999 for his literary accomplishments leading to increase appearances in forums and seminars in Chile and US.
He gained international recognition with his novel Tengo miedo torero which was his first book translated into English. In 2013, he was given the José Donoso Award. He died of laryngeal cancer in January 2015.
International recognition
In 1999, thanks to the influences of his friend, Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, who had immigrated to Europe from Mexico in 1977 and has since lived in Spain, his book Loco Afán: Crónicas de Sidario was published for the Barcelona-based Spanish editorial Anagrama, becoming his first work published abroad. Since then, his written work began to attract the interest of various universities and international educational institutions.
That same year he also participated in the Festival of Guadalajara, Mexico, in replacement of Bolaño who had rejected the offer, and accepted praise for his work of the famous writer Carlos Monsiváis.
In 2001 he published his first novel Tengo miedo torero a difficult story of contextualized love during the attempt on the life of Augusto Pinochet (7 September 1986). For the presentation of the book, Lemebel arrived in a red dress with a feathered headdress, at a ceremony with many people that was public including politicians, filmmakers, journalists and a few writers. The book would later gain international recognition after being translated into English by Katherine Silver, then French and Italian.
In 2003 he continued his work as a journalist, publishing his anthology of Chronicles Zanjón de la Aguada, that spoke of the gay community in neighborhoods of distinctive social classes in Santiago and where appeared some real people like the social leader and president of the Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (AFDD) Sola Sierra. This work was followed a year later by Adios Mariquita Linda, another anthology of chronicles that maintained the same tendencies of his previous works.
In 2008 his sixth book of chronicles appeared, titled Serenata Carfiola.
On November 29, 2012, Lemebel participated in the "Feria del Libro de Guadalajara," publishing his new book of chronicles, titled Háblame de amores, showing a dramatization of his work "Susurrucucu Paloma."
On September 4, 2013, Lemebel was awarded the "Premio José Donoso," which he dedicated to his mother, the deceased Gladys Marín, and his readers belonging to the working class.
List of works La esquina es mi corazón. Loco afán: Crónicas de sidario (chronicles). Santiago: LOM, 1996. De perlas y cicatrices (chronicles). Santiago: LOM, 1998. Tengo miedo torero (novel). Santiago: Grupo Editorial Planeta, 2001. (Translated as My Tender Matador by Katherine Silver, published by Grove in 2005.) La esquina es mi corazón (chronicles). Santiago: Seix Barral, 2001. Zanjón de la Aguada. Santiago: Seix Barral, 2003. Adiós, mariquita linda. Serenata cafiola. Háblame de amores. Poco hombre. Mi amiga Gladys. Tengo miedo torero (script), 2015. (Translated as My Tender Matador for the film.)
Unedited works and posthumous publications
In an interview in 2013, during the publication of the anthology Poco Hombre , Pedro Lemebel announced he was working on two literary projects that would soon see the light and then, after his death, they were truncated: one of them is Mi Amiga Gladys, a book of chronicles about Gladys Marín, leader and representative of the Communist Party of Chile and was deceased in 2005.