Manifesto Escrito pa’ Putis para la Liberación
What is a puti? If you ask our mothers, it is someone you don’t want to be. We write for the putis because we know what it is to be marked by those who hold us with fear. Yet, here we are; our existence is resistance.
We are Putis with a capital P, and we intentionally center ourselves, our pleasure and pain.
We struggled to make the colonizers’ language our own, working and reworking conjugates and fake grammar to arrive at our title. Spanglish being something so natural and foreign to us. We birthed a new being. We are its mothers.
We were guided by chakras because as putis, ours (Jess y María) are out of whack. Part of being a puti is embodying this while asking for what we need to unblock parts of ourselves.
What guides us is love, and love flows through all chakras. It reminds us that love is beyond a feeling; it is a verb.
Through this we learned we can make our survival* pleasurable/enjoyable/humorous/messy.
To be a puti is to be so “liberated.” Fearless and powerful while fearful and powerless. In this paradox we find who truly is about the puti life. Are you? Do you know what it’s like? We do what we want con amor, accountability, consent, and strive for liberación from the heteronormative patriarchal colonial gaze, to (re)imagine what our world can be.
We invite you to imagine with us.
Consciousness (Crown)
If you need to think of consciousness as a fluffy cloud the size and shape of my ass, that’s fine by me.
As putis, we want to (re)imagine our world as untouchable by white supremacy and also a place of creation. The puti is pro-Black, pro-Indigenous, pro-Palestine, pro-immigrant, pro-queer, pro-sex work, pro-abolition, pro-LOVE.* We are not sorry.
We challenge ourselves to level up in our consciousness. We rid ourselves of the labor to explain this process and transform the personal to the collective. We make room for this transformation while holding space for ourselves and each other.
Spirituality (Third Eye)
I want to feel love in all corners that I touch.
Our Divine Being is sacred. It connects us to one another through intimacy beyond the physical plane. We (re)imagine masculinities and femininities. Honor what it means to come to terms with both and their Divinity.
Our Divine Being contains universes, reminding us that the universe has us as much as we have it. The third eye connects us to Pachamama, Tara Buddha, La Virgencita and our diosas.
Allows us to celebrate our ancestors, honor the Indigenous wisdom our abuelitas have passed down through miradas, gritos, y abrazos.
Our collective wisdom builds a bridge through generations that lead to eventual forgiveness and understanding.
(Re)imagining (Throat)
I don’t know what this new world may look like and I don’t have to know. I just wanna know it’s happening.
We are constantly evolving. We will fuck up. So how do we honor where we’re at? How do we meet people where they’re at?
We communicate porque te amo y confío que estamos aprendiendo cómo hacerlo. Be honest with me and we can learn how to just be. We can learn what that looks like for each other, how to show up authentically, honor our boundaries and learn each other’s love language.
Sometimes we just gotta talk shit; talking shit is part of our survival. We are angry and we can be angry together. We are allowed to talk shit, especially throughout the transformation process. Ideas can come from talking shit. Self-reflection can come from talking shit. Amor can come from talking shit.
Feeling/Affect (Heart)
When I say I’m hurt, I want you to see my hurt. I want you to understand that I am hurt, even if you will never understand why.
Our reina, la Ivy Queen once said, “Muchos le llaman bachateo/ Yo le llamo sentimiento.” We see feeling as crucial. No longer hiding what is begging to be heard/seen. We honor ourselves and each other. Hold each other accountable when pain is caused. Understand that we evolve/shift/change and grant the space for those we love to do so as well.
We stand up for our puti selves. Acknowledge that words can still sting even after reclaiming them. Embrace our multitude of emotions without fear. We protect and share our corazones.
Decolonizing Ourselves (Solar Plexus)
I want to be free of LABOR. I don’t have a dream job. I don’t dream of labor.
Being products of colonialism, we work to patch up the holes in our quilt. Learn to dream of our homelands (para nuestro Perú y Honduras) as welcoming and safe. Free from violence, terrorism, blanqueamiento, y odio.
We take care of ourselves without feeling guilty or needing to explain that we need rest. Take care of each other without feeling like we need to compete with one another because we know that we are stronger together.
We are learning not to compare ourselves based on productivity or the ability to produce. Or compare ourselves at all. Fuck that noise.
Embod(i/y)ment (Sacral)
Stop policing my areolas, please. Stop policing me period.
WE GET TO LIVE FREELY. We exist. All races, all gender identities, all sexualities, all abilities, all statuses. We are not blind to the anti-Black and anti-Indigenous sentiments, and the multiple -isms and -phobias that aim to divide us. We see and experience the harm/pain/violence caused.
Thus, we reclaim “messy.” We want to be MESSY. Embrace the messiness of our humanness and its process. Watch it connect us to our Divine Being. We see you. Do you see us? We sing/dance/paint/write/create with our bodies. Make love with it. We celebrate with it. We mourn with it. We transform and transcend with it. Our bodies do it all.
Community (Root)
I need us to have frameworks of care in place that are sustainable for those doing and receiving the care.
Much of what we know has come from our relationships with grassroots. It comes from radical spaces continuously doing the work to dismantle systems of oppression. It comes from advocacy and activism. Navigating the walls of academia. Forcing the walls to come down when they try to keep us in.
Community grounds us. It is the root, our home. Seeds planted that bloom when watered.
We don’t want to be calling up 911 when our neighbor can patch us up with basic training. Have that be accessible. We need to make sure that when someone is in crisis there is someone in the building (or multiple someones) ready to step in without relying on the fucking cops.
You know what would be dope? To have spaces where literally all folx could exist in their Divine Being and party collectively. How beautiful to imagine a world where that can happen because of spaces that currently exist. We want to see it level up.
What does it mean for Putis to be writing this manifesto, for the Putis, when we have been imposed the mark of the Putis? Through and by love, we survive and thrive towards liberation--a world where we do not question the validity of the Putis’ existence.
With kisses and joy, tears and embrace, healing and mourning, celebration and honor. We shed the skin that suppresses the Puti and walk towards the horizon with open arms, with love and compassion. Welcome.
Con amor,
Jess y María
*Our asterisks welcome room for expansion. We cannot always capture everything, as we feel these words can translate so differently for everyone. We acknowledge the multitude of intersections of identities we can carry.