MIAMI, United States. – This week the website of Cubanecuir Archivean online collection “dedicated to preserving the legacy of Cuban people who have redefined boundaries and challenged social assumptions around gender.”
The “Get to know us” section of the website itself specifies that Cubanecuir Archive is “a collection dedicated exclusively to preserving the history of the trans community and cuir from Cuba”.
Likewise, it reports that the project was created by the researcher and archivist Librada González Fernández to organize and make accessible the historical records of the trans and cuir (whether on the Island or in exile) that “are often suppressed or ignored at the institutional level.”
Since 2019, the Archive is based in Brooklyn, New York, and has a physical and digital collection made up mostly of materials donated by the community, the web note details.
The physical collection of Archivo Cubanecuir has more than 500 pieces, including rare books, magazines, letters, newspapers, postcards, diaries, scripts, newsletters, photographs, drawings, videocassettes, DVDs, vinyl records, personal clothing, and uniforms.
The name of the file is made up of the terms “cubane”, a demonym of a neutral gender and cuir (of English queer), a word that means “weird” or “strange” and was initially used to offend people with non-conforming gender identities. Nowadays, cuir it is “a reappropriated term to represent the range of identities that transcend cisheteronormativity,” explains the Cubanecuir Archive itself.
Librada González Fernández, the creator of the archive, is a Cuban-born trans researcher and archivist. The young woman has presented Cubanecuir Archive at the Moreira Salles Institute in Brazil, at the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires, and the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan.
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