Reenacting Latinidad and remembering Loreta

Abstract This essay explores the processes of Latinx identity formation in performance-based recollections of the nineteenth-century figure Loreta Velazquez. Velazquez has received increased attention as a figure of the Latinx past, a vexed affiliation due to her pro-Confederate leanings. To understand how Velazquez is imagined as Latinx, I introduce the concept of Latinx reenactment , which characterizes performance-based practices of summoning figures of the past to fill gaps in popular understandings of Latinx history for contemporary audiences. I examine a genealogy of these Latinx reenactments across various retellings of Velazquez’s life, from her 1876 narrative The Woman in Battle to two contemporary adaptations of her story: the 2013 docufilm Rebel and the 2017 play Latin History for Morons . These works, I argue, engage in a recuperative project of Latinx recognition that ultimately reinforces ethnic homogeneity at the expense of a true reckoning with racist dynamics in the category of Latinidad itself.