Sovereign subjects : same-sex desire and national formation in the Ñuu Savi diaspora

The following dissertation is an Anthropological study that took place in the agricultural city of Oxnard, California, and in Oaxaca, Mexico (2017-2018). I examine sovereignty and community belonging among the Ñuu Savi people, commonly known as the Mixtec. I deliberately place same-sex desire among indigenous “queer” men as the focus to assess formations of indigenous nationalism and citizenship across the contemporary United States-Mexico borderlands. I do this through an ethnographic account of the queer-identified people among the Ñuu Savi. Between 2017 and 2018, I met informants who shaped their community's notions of belonging and sexuality based on their intimate and diasporic lives. I argue that same-sex desire, found within complex global and historical assemblages—geographical, political, economic, and cultural pluralities —is pivotal to understand contemporary indigenous community political formations, as desire— will, eroticism, and pleasure —, is interlinked with traditional notions of gender and sexuality. In turn, the reformulations of sexuality and gender in the diaspora shape traditional notions of indigenous citizenship, land acquisition, and national proclamations. I assert that indigenous sovereignty in the contemporary globalized world is rooted in a deep historical consciousness, a desire for pleasure, and a legitimate call for self-determination. This means that indigenous people who negotiate their gender and sexuality in a diasporic context also exercise their indigenous national sovereignty in Mexico and the United States.