The riddle: Queer brown intimacies in the gentrifying barrio

Queer Chicane muralism and mainstream gentrification narratives bring about this paper’s analysis on placemaking, the politics of violence, and barrio landscapes. How might queerness inform our understanding of anti-gentrification activism? Two distinct yet interconnected visual projects guide this inquiry: (1) Gentefied’s “The Mural” episode, based in Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, and (2) the defacement case of Manuel Paul’s Por Vida (2015) mural in San Francisco’s Mission District barrio. Reading these cultural works together, the article traces the intracommunal contestations that arise in the gentrifying barrio when queer Chicane/Latine people make claims to public space. Critically examining the role of homo-normative affects (love), the article offers a critique of queerness as an identity, aesthetic and politics. By turning to the Por Vida mural, the article establishes that queerness within anti-gentrification activism must extend beyond the politics of representation.