Death is an episode that marks our lives overwhelmingly; we know it is the only inevitable truth and that to live is to accept that we will die. However, when death comes suddenly, without warning, and pushed by systemic violence framed by racism, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, and classism, the pain multiplies.
It brings us deep sorrow to know that Johan Mijail is no longer on this plane with us; that at 36 years old she departed due to a stroke and type 2 diabetes. We feel her passing could have been prevented if those systemic violences had not been inflicted upon our friend’s body, if she had been treated on time and provided with the necessary care at the hospital where she was admitted.
There is nothing more we can do to protect that body she fought tooth and nail to keep from being boxed in—that body she claimed and loved despite a system that denied her (“I am a woman with a penis,” she declared). Our Diva is gone, but today it is up to us to remember her, celebrate her, multiply her, and keep conversing with her.
To converse with Johan is to inhabit the living memory of what we built together. From that first encounter in 2022 during ‘MÁS Conversaciones para MÁS Orgullo,’ where she shook our certainties with her embodied approach to exploring spirituality and dissident intellectual concepts, we knew her call was an inevitable alliance. From that complicity between MÁS and Catinga Ediciones, the autobiographical writing workshop “Metresas and Dissident: Imaginaries to Coloniality” blossomed for three consecutive years (2023, 2024, and 2025).
Through this free space for Black, Afro-descendant, gender-and-sexuality-dissident, racialized people, and allies, Johan didn’t just teach how to write: she opened a sanctuary of healing and a trench of reparative action against dispossession. Year after year, this gathering birthed three editions of the fanzine “Torcer las Palabras” (Twisting Words), where testimonies of erasure metamorphosed into manifestos of insurgency, joy, and future.
Johan is not entirely gone as long as we keep twisting words to name freedom. She remains rooted in her texts: “Pordioseros del Caribe,” “Inflamadas de retórica. Escrituras promiscuas para una tecnodecolonialidad”, “Manifiesto antirracista. Escrituras para una biografía inmigrante”, “Chapeo”, and in the voices of everyone she helped bloom. Her fire will remain lit within us.
We lost a great one, a diva whose mouth emanated a scent of anise that spread consciousness and power. Fly high, goddess; merge with Anaisa, the force that was always by your side. Descend in pleasure and power. We will invoke you in every moment of struggle and creation. Rest in power, Queen.
