Latino/a Visibility and a Legacy of Power and Love

The massacre in Orlando has left me thinking about our visibility as queer Latinos and Puerto Ricans in America. Having lived in New York City my whole life I tuned into the Latino radio stations. Being gay made me the butt of many jokes, something to be ridiculed and not taken seriously. The morning after the Puerto Rican pop star Ricky Martin came out in 2010, the general media reported a collective “Duh,” but popular Spanish radio stations stopped the jokes, even if for one day, and talked seriously about homosexuality with parents calling in to talk about their queer kids. Queer Latinidad was in the spotlight, a moment when the Latino/a community paused to see its queer people. Ricky Martin made us visible on a national scale.

A year before Ricky Martin came out, he made an impassioned plea for tolerance when the story broke of the brutal murder of Jorge Steven López Mercado, a gay young man who was decapitated, dismembered, and burned in Puerto Rico. The story sparked protests and vigils, organized by queer Latino/as but also coalitions of anti-violence groups, in several major cities in the United States and Puerto Rico. Even the mother of Matthew Shepard, the white young gay man who was tortured and murdered near Laramie, Wyoming, attended the vigil in New York City. Jorge Steven’s story didn’t have the same visibility as Shepard, but it put queer Latino/as into mainstream media with stories denouncing the vicious crime.

The gay Puerto Rican reporter Juan Mendez, in the early 2000s, wrote an editorial in El diario/La Prensa that talked about the irony of how June was the month where both the Puerto Rican Day Parade and the Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade occurred. He said he marched with a Puerto Rican flag in one back pocket and a rainbow flag in the other. Juan Mendez’s stories and editorials made our gay, Latino identity visible in New York City. He passed in 2006, and I don’t know if he could have imagined that on June 12, 2016 the National Puerto Rican Day Parade would honor GLBTQ Puerto Ricans for the first time in its history. (Gay groups have marched officially in the parade since 1990.)

That same sunny Sunday morning, a little before 8 a.m., I learned about the shootings in Orlando. The man I was dating had spent the night and we safely lay side by side searching for information on our phones. Soon it was reported that 90 percent of the dead were Latino and 23 of the deceased were Puerto Ricans. In Puerto Rico, the flags flew at half-staff and Queer Latinidad was again in the spotlight in the United States, Puerto Rico, and internationally.

The response to the Orlando massacre has had one of the biggest impacts in Latino visibility as the victims were humanized through their personal stories. Their lives, therefore our lives, were covered for weeks by every major media outlet and President Obama even issued a statement. All across the country GLAAD listed nearly 500 vigils in over 41 states, Puerto Rico, France, Mexico, and the Netherlands. And although there were several vigils in New York City, the one in the Bronx, organized by BAAD! (The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance) with the staff of local officials, focused on the Latinidad of the victims with the majority of the speakers and participants being Latino/a.

Suddenly, queer Latino/as were visible everywhere, even at the Democratic National Convention, where a prime-time spot was given to the mother of Christopher Andrew Leinonen, the victim who most knew as part of the couple killed who were planning to get married. The gay Puerto Rican actor, Wilson Cruz, was jettisoned into a spokesperson for Orlando victims. His relative, Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, died in the massacre shielding her gay son who survived. Cruz spoke at national platforms and delivered a keynote speech at the National Council of La Raza, a major Latino advocacy group. His queer, brown face was...