UTD hosted award-winning Mexican novelist, feminist activist and goth fashion icon Dahlia de la Cerda as part of the international Hay Festival forum celebrating literature, film and the art of translation. De la Cerda is a co-founder of the organization Morras Help Morras, a feminist collective in Mexico dedicated to sexual, reproductive, economic and political emancipation for marginalized women. De la Cerda is the author of two fiction books; her first book, “Perras de reserva” — Spanish for “reservoir bitches” — is currently being adapted into an Amazon miniseries.
Q: What are the issues that influenced you when working on “Perras de reserva”?
A: I wanted to talk about the topic of femicide in Mexico and I wanted to talk about three major types of murders. The first one I wanted to talk about was instances where a woman goes out for an evening party and is intercepted by a group of men who murder her, and these instances of women being sexually assaulted and intercepted while traveling between two points is all too common. Because of the indifference in which women are targeted, many of these victims will fall within a category that the society considers that of the perfect victim, someone who doesn’t experience any specific type of stigmatization within society.
The second kind of story I covered was that of trans-femicide, in which trans-women are targeted and killed because of their trans identity, and how even after their brutal deaths, their family will often work to disrespectfully remove all traces of their trans identity — particularly during funerals, when only a victim’s deadname is used and their body is prepared to appear masculine.
And the third kind of story I wanted to cover was that of the women who die while involved with cartels. Rarely, if ever, is any sort of sympathy extended to these women, with common remarks from people being that “she had it coming” or “she deserved it” because of their involvement with drugs.
Q: In “Perras de reserva,” you don’t just tell the stories of victims, but you also place the audience within the viewpoint of violent and powerful women. What role does this play within the narrative of the book?
A: After I had finished writing the chapters about victims of violence, I wanted to analyze the role of women who go out and enact violence themselves and what would motivate such behavior. With narcotrafficking in Mexico, you see the line between political figures and organized crime blur, and I specifically wanted to write about the women involved in the drug trade and those who directly benefit from it. In these organizations, women typically work in more administrative and financial roles, and this was the role of the “protagonist” character, Yuliana, who eventually rises to the highest position in her cartel — something which is a complete fantasy since the vast majority of cartel bosses in Mexico are men. Through the character of La China, I also explored what it meant for a woman to work as an assassin. These darker topics were some of the most complex to incorporate into the story itself, but I think they helped add a typically disregarded perspective.
Q: What kind of impact did writing about these traumas and this violence have on you?
A: Writing about the violence women are subjected to daily and researching the violence women also enact was emotionally draining, to say the least. After getting through the first set of stories, my therapist said that while I should continue my work on this book, I could not keep writing exclusively about the kind of violence women face because of the toll it was having on me. At this point, I started work on some more relaxed topics like abortion rights, spirituality and the LGBTQ experience. My exploration of all these topics emphasized how incredibly diverse the ways women live their lives are. Some women are capable of exercising extreme forms of violence and others are just trying to make it to the next day.
Q: What roles do race and class play within your work and your activism?
Over 60% of the population of Mexico is mixed race, but echoes of Spanish colonialism continue to permeate modern Mexican society in the form of colorism and the predominance of people with more European characteristics within the upper echelon of society. The character of Constanza in “Perras de reserva” is trying to help her new husband become president of Mexico, but she believes that because of her light skin, blonde hair and blue eyes, she will be seen more critically by the populace. This concern leads her to use her extensive wealth and privilege to erase record of her past and transform her entire appearance to be more in line with the common Mexican person, going so far as to portray herself as the new “mestiza.” It is well documented that in Mexico, people with lighter skin are given more opportunities while people from indigenous communities in Mexico live in conditions of extreme marginalization and poverty.
These notions of race and class intersecting also directly apply to how immigrants are treated in Mexico. For instance, Mexico has recently been receiving immigrants from Haiti, who are typically darker in complexion, and when they are even acknowledged by society, they are forced to live up to unreachable standards of how and what they should be contributing — while immigrants and tourists from America, who are typically light skinned, will actively disrespect Mexican people and culture while gentrifying communities with impunity. And then when you throw in female identity into this racialized caste system, societal criticism is thrown against women at a far higher rate, requiring many to either change themselves to more closely appear like the Mexican population or to further exacerbate these racial and class divides.
Q: What kind of reception have you seen for “Perras de reserva”?
A: The response has entirely varied by country. In Mexico, the book has been incredibly divisive. It looks like half the readers absolutely hate the book while the other half adore it. Common criticisms in Mexico have been that a work of literature can never include slang or variations based on dialect, and that by using colloquial language, the book forsakes established tenants of Spanish literature for the sake of being a weird sociological experiment. And those who love it do so because the book deviates from your typical Spanish novel and incorporates the words we use in everyday language. Ultimately, in Mexico it has been seen as a necessary book because of how it engages with the topic of female suffering in the wake of violence and femicide. This topic of suffering really only appears in Mexican discourse about the book, since readers from other countries have seen the book more about vengeance and how women react to things, and I think that seeing it as a book about just revenge is inaccurate because it misses out on how pervasive the suffering and fear is. While I don’t personally fear for my life every day, I have friends who will make sure to never walk alone at night or travel in an Uber alone; I have friends who will only do home repairs if their uncle or cousin is present since they don’t want to risk possibly letting in a repairman into the home while they are alone. Many women are terrified, but it isn’t unlivable as some of the readers have perceived it. In places like France and Poland, the main response I have seen is that it is an exotic tale about a third-world backwater which could never happen in Europe.
Q: We have spoken about how others see your books, but how do you perceive them?
A: I see my books as very punk. They don’t conform to the established standards of Spanish literature, and I have really liked how I have been able to personify characters and explore new ideas through my use of slang and dialect. When I received my degree in philosophy, the only kind of books I read were these super specific polemics and arguments which adhered to a very consistent formula in their presentation. I also worked as an essay writer and tutor, specifically for those working on their upper-level theses. I know that I have the skills to work within this realm of academic language, but I don’t want to. I grew up in a rural community, and I constantly heard people ridiculing how the people I loved spoke just because they had different speech patterns that didn’t perfectly adhere to academic standards of grammar.
Language is not some rigid concept that is decreed down to people; it is fluid and transformed by the people who use it. Language is a living thing, and it is constantly changing. I think it is imperative that within my work I push the boundaries of written language by expressing how some people communicate, even if it deviates from professional literary standards. I also see my writings as something that can make people uncomfortable because my work is inherently political. I write about the struggles of women within an unjust system. Criticism of power structures is at the core of my work, and this helps place it within the punk world.
Q: What has the Amazon adaptation process of “Perras de reserva” been like for you?
A: Because of the anthology structure I gave “Perras de reserva,” there was a part of me that thought that it would make an interesting short film or indie series. At no point did I ever think it would get as big as having a company like Amazon buy the rights to it and begin work on it. I have never felt particularly tied to things and I happily sell everything — whenever I was done with clothes or trinkets, I would go and sell them at the local flea market — and I felt a similar detachment when they bought the rights to make the series about “Perras de reserva.”
The money has been nice, it pays far better than writing a book does, but I am not a fan of how separate they have kept the project from me. They do give me periodic updates about their progress, but I feel that this series has a different vision than what I had within my book, even just with things like casting choices. I would love to contribute to the creative choices, but it has definitely been surreal to see how the project has evolved separate from me. A part of me is glad to see the issues I wrote about amplified to an audience far larger than what I ever expected to reach, but another part of me is also worried that they will fuck up the stories I have worked hard to try to tell.