Venezuela is a factory of beautiful women and military men. There is an aspiration to achieve that enigmatic beauty of a miss or to obtain that unbreakable strength of a military man. Both archetypes share visions and languages. In these relationships there is a transversal component: binary violence. This 'national genetics' proposes performative coincidences: uniformed bodies, defiles, distinctive bands. To be Miss or to be a soldier, one has to train and adapt the body. These identities are crossed by aesthetic violence and are constructed through different procedures to exalt the homeland. A country dominated by beauty pageants and the omnipresence of the armed forces.

 

To be born a woman in Venezuela is to feel the weight of beauty. To be born a man in Venezuela is to feel the weight of strength,

what weighs more? ​

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Beyond the camps and operating rooms, there are several horizons that remind us that Venezuela is beautiful and indestructible. 

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Of my diary:

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1992, a failed military coup d'état. 1993, I was born beating my mother's womb. 1995, four crowns transformed Venezuela into a universe.

1999, the arrival of a future dictatorship and a new century.

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I remember my family in front of the TV watching the opening of Miss Venezuela or the July 5th parade. My grandmother worked in the National Guard. There she met Borges and Perez. From those two relationships her 4 children were born. Julio and Manuel attended the Monseñor Arias military high school. Bélen was always a promising queen, she won some pageants locally. Olinda, my mother, was the last to be born. She was also called Oly, she could never wear heels because she was born with spina bifida. 

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Between symbols and national metaphors I make a queer catwalk to visit the past and understand the binary violence that operates from the archetypes of the Miss and the Military in Venezuelan society.

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