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Abstract ; ¿How does one re-member the histories of those whose sex has been denied by History, or, in the words of Judith Butler, "the sex that cannot be thought, a linguistic absence and opacity" (Butler 1999: 13)? This essay explores this question in the two poems annexed to “El retablo de sodomitas novohispanos” and incorporated into La sodomía en la Nueva España (2010) by the Mexican poet, Luis Felipe Fabre: 'Villancicos del Sto. Niño de las Quemaduras' and 'El monumento fúnebre a Gerónimo Calbo'. More specifically it demonstrates how, through a combination of intertextual parody and ekphrastic writing, the two texts activate an anti-heteronormative, transgressive, irreverent, and simultaneously poignant reflection focused on the burning at the stake of fourteen persons for the sin of sodomy in Mexico City on the 6th of November of 1658. Through this story of persecution from the era of Colonial Mexico, finally, the essay argues, the poems invite consideration of the persistence of the same repressive heteronormative powers in the present that determined the horrors of the past.
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