Moléculas Malucas
Reviewed by: Zelda Montes
Review start: February 22, 2024
Review last updated: March 13, 2024
Site Links: https://www.moleculasmalucas.com/
Archive Link: https://archive.ph/928az
Data Sources
- Interviews
- Images
- Artwork
- Letters/Correspondence
- Newspapers
- Government documents
- Articles/blogs
- Biographies
- Editorial
- Zines
- Manifestos
- Flyers
- Books
- Posters
- Poems
- Videos
- Audio
Processes
- 51 articles are written and accompanied alongside artwork, posters, images, and newspapers
- 15 interviews are shared textually, alongside written text, artwork, images, zine clippings, flyers, and occasionally audio, video, and government documents for contextualization
- 27 archives are organized as separate posts on the site
- 1 editorial written by the editorial collective providing further information about the digital archive
Presentation
Moléculas Malas is a Spanish-only, searchable Wix blog site. Upon entering the site, viewers of the digital archives don’t get much information about the project beyond the self-description as “archivos y memories fuera del margen” (English translation: “archives and memories outside the margin”). Instead, users are led to the main landing page that contains all the interviews, articles, and archives as separate posts to navigate to. Each post has a date, title, short description and left-aligned image. Clicking on a post brings you to a separate page with a date, title, short description, long description, author, and long-form content. Alongside the contextualizing text on each entry page is a plethora of digitized and/or digital accompanying materials such as images, artwork, correspondence, newspaper & zine clippings, government documents, flyers, manifestos, videos, and audios. The visual presentation of the site is very clean, sleek, and easy to navigate. The digital archive is brought to life by the bold, captivating images for each post. A navigation bar on the site leads viewers to five different pages: main, editorial, interviews, articles, and archives. Each page contains posts that users can scroll through and click on for more information.The search box towards the top right of the page helps users navigate the contents of all entries on the site.
Digital Tools Used
- Wix
Languages
- Spanish
Review
Moléculas Malucas began in March 2020 as a digital magazine by activist-archivists Juan Queiroz and Mabel Bellucci with the aim of politically rescuing queer memories and archives “outside the margin” (Editorial). Written entirely in Spanish, with a focus on Latin American/Hispanic counter-cultural LGBTQ+ history, the “deviant” digital archive was created as an oppositional, democratic alternative to private, institutional archives that operate in elite circles and have been intentionally withheld from their respective communities. The project seeks to “traffic knowledge, teachings and journeys,” and as such the Moléculas Malucas Editorial Collective historically contextualizes primary sources from independent and institutional archives in hopes of preserving and making these documents more accessible.
The Moléculas Malucas project contains many posts that highlight a multitude of Latine/Hispanic, queer, marginalized narratives, many of which I had never read about. As someone who is Latine and queer, it was remarkably moving to read about and see the historical persistence of queerness in marginalized identities often systematically obscured and silenced. The interviews, articles, and primary source archives throughout the site fit into the larger goal of the project to resurface, preserve, and increase visibility and access to the teachings and resistance of marginalized, Latine/Hispanic, queer elders.
Upon initially interacting with the site, I found it unclear on where to learn more about the project. Eventually, I navigated towards the Editorial page, which contains a single post from 2021 that included information about the project origin, theoretical framing, and archives referenced. Another challenge I encountered while reading through the site was that it was difficult for me to tell the difference between Artículos (Articles) and Archivos (Archives).
Given the premise of Moléculas Malucas as an alternative counter-cultural archive, it is understandable that the focus of the archive isn’t to inherently focus on primary sources devoid of rich contextual narrative. Nonetheless, I would have enjoyed being able to browse through all the sources referenced throughout the site in one place, with linked references to the posts that help to provide the incredibly well-written and crucial historical socio-political prose.
Unfortunately, it appears that Moléculas Malucas is no longer active, since the last entry was posted over a year ago in January 2023.