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Orlando: The crossroads of queerness and Latinidad

Orlando Image Fist

A few days passed after the shooting in Orlando that claimed the lives of 49 Latinx members of the LGBTQIA community, and I woke up still feeling sick and unable to speak. But as I rolled over onto my side to look at my phone, I saw I had gotten a text from my Abuelo that said he was thinking of me. He used every color heart emoji to make a rainbow. This is a man in his early 80s, going through his damn emoji keyboard to connect and offer support to his queer Boricua grandkid. It filled me with all the love and tenderness and rage in the world. Through this act of love, I was jarred out of my spell of silent restlessness, and I began to remember the teaching of Audre Lorde that is important for any marginalized person to hold close in the face of oppression: My silence will not protect me.

This is a moment in which it is essential that we speak about the crossroads of queerness and Latinidad. Being Latinx is not a monolithic experience by any means, but I can share some of my own. I grew up in some pretty conservative white suburbs in Virginia where it was a challenge to be POC (people of color) and survive without assimilation into whiteness. My Puerto Rican family abandoned Santeria for Catholicism and Christianity, so I was no stranger to the anti-gay rhetoric that comes with that. I mistakenly thought it was something that came with being Puerto Rican. I carried my queerness and fear with me as I would go to our family parties in Brooklyn, where it was all salsa and smooth swivels. I was never quite able to let go of the internalized contradictions of my identity, never quite able to dance.

It is through queer dance culture that I have learned to love where my brownness and queerness meet. I am still an awkward dancer, but am learning my body the way we all are. The club represents sanctuary. This is where queer and trans bodies in motion—whose gestures and fluctuations speak their own languages of freedom, terror, ecstasy, and becoming—can absolve themselves of guilt and pain. We see the social barriers that entrap us daily being dissolved. We are stripped bare, exposed in the states of our purest desires and longings for freedom and love. It is a disgrace that this place of sanctuary and bodies in all their holiness was desecrated and destroyed.

I have come to realize that my family never truly hated my queerness, but were afraid for my safety. There’s already a terror and otherness that comes with being nonwhite, having a body that is contested by default and escapes standards of white perfection and normality. Add gayness and transness on top of that, and goddamn, do folks get trigger-happy. I am terrified. I’m mostly scared for my little sister, a Boricua trans girl who above all loves bugs and the Internet but one day might find herself wanting to dance (something she’s secretly very good at). I hope that when that time comes, the club can hold her safely.

I want to remind everybody once more of some largely neglected facts. It was Latinx night at Pulse. Ninety percent of the victims were Latinx, and most of those were Puerto Rican (some of whom were forced to migrate to Florida due to the colonization of Puerto Rico). One hundred percent of victims were people of color, almost exclusively queer and trans people of color. Trans women of color were headlining this event. Ignoring these facts and omitting them from discussions about the shooting is a continued act of violence against queer and trans people of color, who are not strangers to displacement and slaughter. I would never disregard folks’ very authentic pain. This event reflects a history of violence and trauma that the entire LGBTQIA community has to answer to again and again. But acknowledging intersectionality requires understanding the point at which identities intersect. In this case, it was where queerness and Latinidad merge to create their own unique brand of “other.” The idea that “these bodies could be our own” is terrifying and true on too many occasions. But, in this instance, it is not true for white queers. It was black and brown Latinx blood this shooter was after.

I am not asking anybody to stifle their feelings. Frankly, I’d be horrified and confused if folks were able to be unaffected by this murder. I am only asking of white queer allies and family that these feelings be respectfully channeled into empathy for an experience that you do not walk with. Be grateful that this wasn’t, could not have been, you. Recognize how whiteness, even when paired with queerness, can afford some level of safety in many cases.

I am asking, begging, that this event be used as an opportunity to reflect on the terrors faced by your queer and trans siblings of color, who are, according to recent statistics, the victims of the majority of anti-LGBT hate crimes. Carry the names of the dead in your hearts, and speak them into the world. Fight for those living, and center the voices of queer and trans people of color.

To my QTPOC family: Te quiero tanto, with my whole glittery, gay heart. We dance through this world together, even in death.



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