Roberta Marrero, artist, writer and LGTBIQ+ reference, dies at 52 | Culture

Roberta Marrero (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1972-2024) said goodbye spreading love: “I love you all”. I love you all, this artist, illustrator, poet, writer wrote in her final note… A cultural icon—first known as a DJ, and later as a creator and activist—and a reference for the LGTBIQ+ collective. “The + has given us a lot: he has given us inclusive peace of mind without always having to be nervous in case we have forgotten some lyrics,” Marrero, who died on Friday night, argued with a smile. She took her own life at the age of 52.

Author of Dictators (Hidroavión, 2015), where he drew attention to various historical tyrants with his drawings; He stood out shortly after, in 2016, with The green baby (Lunwerg), graphic novel in which he narrated his trans childhood and youth: “Suffering bullying at school it’s shit. If you don’t die from a beating, you grow up hating. Your self-esteem ends up shattered and it takes a lot of work to rebuild it.”

An autobiographical story that, in her own words, “spoke about a reality that is not very explored: trans people telling our own story without victimhood, but without sugarcoating it.” A narrative path also investigated by authors such as Alana S. Portero, Camila Sosa Villada; or Valeria Vegas. “Indomitable people continue to exist, but they don’t appear in the media, we appear because we speak well, because we are not whores. It’s that horrible, but we are the good beasts,” Marrero told Portero recently, in an interview in Eldiario.es.

Always vindictive—as well as incisive and cultured—Marrero defended that “faggot has a street origin.” And he warned about the gentrification of the LGTBIQ + collective: “I consider it dangerous; It makes you forget that you are a minority.” “Pride is like gay Christmas: for a couple of weeks we are all very inclusive and defend rights, but then some forget,” he criticized the inclusive posture.

Marrero also defended a hedonistic LGTBIQ+ visibility, although he stings some sectors of society: “We are questioned when we let our hair down and that is LGTBiphobia. The more visible we are, the more violence we generate. There are many people who think that we already live in an oasis and that is not true. We have to keep fighting,” he recalled. She didn’t stop doing it.

In 2018, he published We Can Be Heroes. A celebration of LGTBQ+ culture (Lunwerg), in which he highlighted references who have been part of the collective: “There are many people in our collective who do not know the milestones of our history.” In the last two years she had released two collections of poems about herself, her life, her experiences and experiences: It was all because it was fire. Poems of pimps, trans and transvestites (Continued you have me, 2022); and, the most recent, Right to appointment (Continued you have me, 2024). “A real confession, with elements of fiction, literary devices, but they are quite confessional poems,” he described.

In one of his poems, Marrero warned about death: “If you find me dead / cover me with flowers.” “Take a photo of my corpse / and put it in a silver frame, / light a candle in my memory. / Tonight in this world / I will put on my makeup and comb my hair carefully,” he wrote.

“In the limbo of the poets, a new superstar is already shining,” Inés Plasencia and Víctor Mora, editors and friends of Marrero, have published on their social networks. “Today our friend, icon, artist, writer, diva, all that and an incredible human being has left us. She has left, she has wanted to leave because she has decided that she no longer wanted to live it. Because maybe they couldn’t make it easy for her despite being a woman of fire, despite all that she has left, because she wanted to or they forced her,” wrote politician Carla Antonelli, senator for Más Madrid and a Canarian like Marrero. “Goodbye friend. All the light”, Alana S. Portero said goodbye: “We will always love you, Roberta. Always”.