Elyla (Fredman Barahona) is a performance artist and queer activist. Their work critically explores the masculine lineage of the Sandinista revolution, the narratives of national identity, and the experience of being a cochon barro-mestiza in a religious, conservative society. Elyla developed a body of work addressing the exclusionary implications of the concept of mestizaje, whose narrative has erased—and converted into commodities—Indigenous and Black identities under the umbrella of inclusive rhetoric. The artist coined the term barro-mestiza to take distance from the traditional understanding of mestizaje and reclaim their Indigenous ancestry, in dialogue with tran-ancestral struggles of precolonial corpodivinities and the memory of the barro (land and soil). In 2013, Elyla co-founded Operación Queer, a collective that blurred the limits between academia, art, and activism, and took a public position against the persecution of sexual dissidence by the repressive government of Daniel Ortega. The artist’s early work consisted of actions in public space that usually defied the authoritarian restrictions and the acceptance of censorship imposed through persecution and terror.