ABSTRACT
In his memoir, Mexican writer Salvador Novo recalls hosting sex parties in his apartment with San Polencho, a “large-assed” idol who presided over the sexual encounters with a gourd at his feet, which Novo describes “as the most appropriate vessel for the Vaseline required for our rituals.” Novo names these orgies as a scene of “extreme nationalism.” Accordingly, in this bodily crossing of sex and “extreme nationalism,” over seventy-five years later, San Polencho finds himself as the patron idol of Mexico’s new pop-up sexo diverso parties called Traición or betrayal. This chapter examines how the figure of San Polencho and his embodiment of the sacred, create a spiritual center from and through which to perform queer rites. It starts by approaching sex and the body from a material religion perspective and through the lens of a queer theological framework that constitutes a space grounded in the ritual imaginary of anality. Taking San Polencho as the departure point reveals that Mexicanness and the body’s materiality are at stake in placing the concept of an anal deity at the center of Aztec and Nahua cosmology and addressing the event of sex itself as ritualistic worship. This genealogical analysis can conceptualize a framework of “queer materialities of religion,” through a queer theological understanding of sex. By thinking through the Mesoamerican past and San Polencho as the most appropriate case study, this new lexicon is developed for further studies of transnational engagement with queerness, politics, and religion.
