Nicolas Guillen's El gran zoo (1967), illustrated by Fayad Jamis, was the first Hispanic bes-tiary to prominently feature humans in a space traditionally inhabited by beasts. Guillen's verses transform the bestiary from a didactic tool used for centuries to instruct and uniform society into a subversive text that openly denounces the injustices and idiosyncrasies of Cuban and American life in the 1960s. The portrayal of humans in bestiaries, independent of historical context or narrative aim, raises several biopolitical questions, with the most significant being: How are "persons" and "nonpersons" constructed? This article explores the consequences of Guillen's choice to place humans where beasts once resided, as well as his impact on three subsequent bestiaries: Bestiario de historia mexicana (2010), by Julian Meza, 200 anos de monstruos y maravillas argentinas (2015), by Gabo Ferro, Christian Montenegro, and Laura Varsky, and Bestiario medico (2000), by Carlos Ferrandiz and Carlos Baonza. Through a biopolitical lens, the article will analyze the mechanisms employed when constructing human animals, beasts, or monsters, (human "nonpersons"), as well as the pre-carious scaffolding on which this ideology rests.
