During the Somoza dictatorship (1937-79) in Nicaragua, the machete was a symbol of land work and colonial ranches; consequently, after the Sandinista Revolution (1979), the machete became a symbol of the liberation of the working class, maintaining the imposition of patriarchy, parallel to the new man project of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).

The memories of LGBTIQ+ bodies have been historically erased by liberation processes in Latin America. To generate personal and critical inputs to the construction of the left-wing revolutionary discourse in my country, I travel - after 18 years - to Villa Sandino, Chontales, where the use of the machete is still active, where I grew up and where they tried to ‘turn me into a real man’, sometimes, with machete work.

I meet with local people from the village, offering to exchange their machete for a new one, to then use it in the construction of a dress. The performance functions as a reminder that LGBTIQ+ identities have always challenged revolutionary projects, while also providing a horizon for new imaginaries of queer resistance in Central America, blurring the boundaries between art, activism and life itself.

This machete dress was supposed to intervene in the streets of my town and then create workshops with the local community regarding new masculinities and queer rights. This was not able to happen due to the uprising that happen in Nicaragua that year, still I wore that dress in mountain close to the town, to generate a visual representation of a “walk” that speaks about the possibility of doing the intervention and creating the workshops in the future.

This piece is not the only one that contains this type of artistic methodology, I’m very committed to establish an ongoing link with the communities I work with, one in which they themselves evaluate the impact, importance and efficiency of the artistic project.