The place for difference in Chile: Circus and cross-dressing. The case of the Timoteo Circus

Abstract

The Chilean social model has traditionally left little room for formal differences. In certain marginal spaces, however, there are instances in which some niches of freedom and tolerance have been able to flourish. This article aims to understand how the marginal role of the circus was instrumental in popularizing cross-gender roles.
The Timoteo Circus is the result of a cultural syncretism between the European and Mesoamerican heritage around humor and sexual roles and is much more complex than a simple and unambiguous formal social reality. In this Chilean circus, the cross-gender figure adopts its own space based on the ambiguity of sexual and social roles through cultural syncretism. Difference occupies a place thanks to the margin of formal ambiguity.
We first attempt to theoretically examine the ambiguous role of cross-gender in the Chilean circus from its stigmatization of gender to its empowerment through mockery. Secondly, we explore the ambivalence of the Timoteo Circus from both a historical and ethnographical viewpoint as both a genuine element of the Creole Chilean circus and as a social disease. Thirdly, we analyze the discourses of the Timoteo Circus cross-dressers to demonstrate their complex ambivalence as a way to build a specific space for difference.