Susy Shock embraces these struggles through her song and poetry. He has published the books Reflight Sur (2007), Stories in canechalon (2011), Poemario Perspirado (2011), Crianzas (2016) and Hojarascas (2017) and the albums Buena Vida y Tiempo Embarrassing (2014) and Traviarca (2019). The Fifth Edition of the Euskal Herria Championship, to be held on November 2 in Durango. At the Feminist Conference we will have the opportunity to listen to her second album and on November 4 at the Casa de Cultura de Bilbao (Urazurritua 7, Bilbao) we will learn more about her songs, poems and stories.

Together with Marlene Wayar and other colleagues, you claim the word “trava” and, giving it another meaning, you have made it yours. How have you experienced this process? How do you embrace this word?

In Argentina, in Río de la Plata, in Brazil, he began to turn the meaning of the word “trava”, first to be part of a group, to organize politically, placing us within a community. Not only is the person against the world, there is something that unites us, something that crosses us. Starting from the class, from where we live in the world. Then, this word began to be elaborated, handled, embraced, to make people feel as part of a community and be political referents. We are this, that is why we love it, we will talk from here, we will relate from here, because they also want us from here, they want us because we are “traits”, they kill us because we are “traits”. They don't read us differently. And as we defend and fight for all self-perception, we claim our right to be a “trava”, to call ourselves, to read. We do not want to hide within a binary, we want to cross the world “trava” through the body, through the feeling “trava”.

 

 

 

 

Phrases like “Let others be normal” (“let others be normal”) and “a lot of life and little shame” (“a lot of life and little shame”) have led many to meet you. They have been the motto of many demonstrations and we also see it often on social networks, on drawings, etc. His manifesto “I claim my right to be a monster” (“I claim my right to be a monster”) has also been widely disseminated among young militants. Why do you think that's what happens? How do you defend the right to be a monster?

The right to be a monster is done as self-perception “trava” is defended. By making our own right and transferring it. This is how we realize that this identifies us and thus makes this relationship or link possible. Hence, for example, desire becomes possible. The other loves and desires us, we love and desire from that body, which is a repugnant body for normality, proclaiming that body as territory or space to think other forms, other logics. Because if normality has brought us to this point, to this defeat of humanity, then we will resort to what normality has put aside, and surely there will be many screams and possible dreams there, to create and cross something else.

In Crianzas (2016) you go to the youngest: “These words are for naughty, for boys and girls... to see if we once and for all make desserts, hugs and crib songs to be able to fly their wings..” And as a political action, you talk about embracing inequalities. How can we help boys and girls live freer?

I find the policy that puts adults at the centre unthinkable, and I think that too has failed. I think the only and most true way to help all ages is to do it from the child who was, from the child who feels offended, from the child who needs revenge, from the child who has to rise to reclaim himself. From there and showing the failure of the adult policy that we have today. This is the only way to hug these little shores, to do it from our wings, although those wings are being repaired, although they are still sore, they need to be hugged. Thinking that the adult I am now had also been a child who had been offended, a child who had been trampled, disciplined. These are the children to be claimed.

Argentina's statistics indicate that the average life expectancy of transvestite is 35 years. And often you are “nameless”, invisible olvidados.Ante that, we hear you saying that “our revenge will be to become old.” How do you imagine that future in which space, time, in this case old age, are going to conquer?

It is impossible to represent ourselves alone in old age. I believe that we trace the abandonment of this hegemonic family, which brings to the bodies the failure of this motherhood and paternity. So we've created a lot, we've done it with others, and I think we need to continue to collectively create the future. I think there's no way to enjoy a friendly old age and not feel alone, not a personal loneliness, but a political loneliness, a social loneliness, if we're not in community, if we don't think like tribes. I imagine that and I fight for it.

 

 

 

 

 

This year, along with La Bandada de Colibries (Solana Bidman, Caro Bonillo, Sole Penelas and Horacio Vázquez) and the dancer Carla Morales Ríos, they presented their new album, Traviarca, in tribute to Lohana Berkins and to the aforementioned “without name”. What do you think your butterfly flight has left?

In principle, what Lohana has left is a better world for all children, and that's a lot. I mean, Lohana was not only fighting for trans children, but for a world in which Lohana knew how to embrace all children. And at the same time, we've left a better world to this hegemony that today has better tools for early childhood education. And those kids who grow up within hegemony have better tools to rebel and rise up with dignity in favor of inequality. Lohana has abandoned that world and that arrogant pride and courage that has made herself stand before the powers and institutions to claim all rights.

Today Argentine groups like Sudor Marika or Cumbia Queer (with whom we have seen you collaborated) express their struggle and pleasures through music. These groups have created paths for transformation based on their genders or mergers. You do it through folklore. This style attracts the older than they are attracted by music styles rap, cumbia, rock... However, much of your audience is young. How do you live from your role as a singer-songwriter that rapprochement between adolescents and young people? What do you think your songs are given to Argentine folklore?

I like to see myself as a singer-songwriter of this time. And this time I really like it. When I say this time, in Argentina, from the return of democracy, from the 1980s, to the present day. At that time, after a period as harsh as the military dictatorship, we began to say what is not said, those who left began to return, we began to heal the gigantic and deep wounds, the gigantic and profound wounds that we are still healing. I was a teenager at that time, I felt like a generation of “Never again!” and from there I live my other searches, my other definitions were there, from human rights, hugs of those rights.

The transvestites proclaim us from there, we rise up from there. So, it's very powerful to think that what we do, in this case, art, music, songs, books, poems -- they're there, it's impossible to think about it without taking into account that time. I feel that this time is continuing, that it is changing and that it has joined a time very similar to that which has been inaugurated. With an era that is taking place in the most interesting part of the world, with an era that is being dismantled. So, we have a mix of speech in our music, and we've begun to call ourselves with our own voice. That's also a legacy that Lohana left us. We've been interrupted and we've begun to talk, first to shoot, and little by little, learning strategies, growing up, training ourselves, to be us, to have our own theories, songs, books, poetic postures. Strategies. And our music is that too. I sing when chanting as it is sung in any province of Argentina, but I am a transvestite, sings a transvestite and, furthermore, the biggest difference is that I will not repeat the patriarchal and machista scheme that this popular music and in general any music follow. That's the difference, and I think that for that reason, many young people come up and feel touched, excited, hugged, because even when it comes to dancing, we put our bodies, but not stupidly, we're not anesthetized, we know that when we dance, we also dance our ideas.

 

 

 

 

 

These days you will have your first tour of Europe. You will be in Barcelona, Madrid, Basque Country, Lyon and Belfast. What would you like to live these days?

I want to join this entire tribe. Even though history, biography and different socioeconomic situations are passing through us, in this perspective, I want to join with that tribe that we are engaged in these debates. That fills me with joy and I've already begun to pick up the desires of those tribe members to welcome us, to meet us, to relate, to celebrate, to share, to exchange. I am sure it will be a pleasure to live all of that.

Euskal Heriko V. Durango Tocarya Fair at the Feminist Conference on November 2. The days of this year have as motto Salda dago. What do you think you will be able to offer to that stock that is in the background?

Our travesti force. And the feeling of belonging to this cyclone. Hurricane, cyclone -- everyone will call you as they like, but it has a lot of strength. We want to weave a lot of new relationships, to sing that we are part of the transfeminism that is circulating.

Then, on November 4, you will be at the Casa de Cultura de Bilbao (Urazurrutia, 7) sharing your poems and songs. Feminist poet and activist Jule Goikoetxea, in his book of poems Tratactus, says: “Poetry is the place where we have/are/introduce...”, what is poetry for you?

For me, poetry is a great opportunity to express ourselves in other ways, in other ways, in other ways, in other ways, in energy. At least to reflect a lot of what we dream of.