La fraternización con los árboles: La ecología queer de Alberto Nin Frías

Abstract: This article examines the identification between the figure of the tree and the male homosexual in a selection of essays published by Uruguayan-Argentinian writer Alberto Nin Frías (1878–1937) in the early 1930s. Through the lens of queer ecology, the study explores how the relational bonds between humans and nature express subjectivities that challenge both human-centered and traditional sexual norms. The first section discusses the connection between Nin Frías's queer discourse and queer ecology, exploring the sensitive nature of environments that encourage affective and intimate multispecies interactions. These interactions, which Nin Frías describes as bonds of friendship ("vínculos amistosos"), allow for and validate relational forms deemed non-normative or deviant. The second part of the study illustrates the interplay of nature, sexuality, and gender through the writer's reading of Walt Whitman's "I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing". Inspired by the environmental eroticism in Leaves of Grass , Nin Frías challenges the predominantly anthropocentric attitudes that enforce heteronormativity on both humans and more-than-humans.