By Charlie Vázquez
I was interviewed by CNN last year for their “Latino in America” coverage and was moved by a comment made by Lourdes Torres, a fellow “Latino in America” interviewee, professor, and president of Amigas Latinas, a lesbian and bisexual support group in Chicago. She was quoted as saying that “the notion that Latino people are more homophobic and its men more macho is not only false, but tinged with racism.” She added that “…men from all sorts of ethnic groups have long acted in a patriarchal manner, but only Latino men have the term “machismo” attached to their behavior…people tend to think that somehow, we’re more repressed and living in the Dark Ages.” Let’s take a look at this more closely.
As a gay Latino New Yorker who was disowned by his father and who has endured cowardly neutrality from other male family members, I happen to agree with this statement. I know men from various ethnic backgrounds who’ve been assaulted, raped and psychologically damaged by male family members—white families and black families alike. Following the brutal murder of Jose Steven López Mercado last year, this may seem like an untimely claim. Am I saying that homophobia (and all of its crimes) doesn’t exist in Latino communities? Of course I’m not, that would be ridiculous. But do others project their abuses onto the Latino (and other) working classes? Yes, they do. And this needs to be discussed, as many Latinos young and old don’t understand that everybody gains by passing equality legislation for LGBT people. Let’s wipe the lens clean and focus in.
Writer/activist Sherry Wolf reminds us (in her new book Sexuality and Socialism) that even the Puerto Rican Young Lords showed up at the famous 1969 Greenwich Village Stonewall Riots to protest the police brutality unleashed upon LGBT people in our own bars. The denial of gay marriage and all of its political advancements prevents many LGBT folks from attaining material equality. This should be of importance, to say, Latinos in the Bronx (such as my family), where more same-sex couples are raising children than in any other county in the nation. Are these children not being unfairly affected by the hate campaigns that keep their families from achieving equality? We have more to gain as allies and Latino men aren’t always the enemy. Homophobia exists everywhere and branding Latino men as the worst is unfair—excluding perhaps New York Senator Ruben Diaz Sr., who hurts more people than he’ll ever know.
One of my neighborhood bars in Brooklyn employs an openly gay male bartender and a transgender female bouncer. The lounge attracts young people of color, older folks who have lived in the area for years, gays, lesbians, white hipsters—every group at hand. It is not a gay bar. The customers treat one another with mutual respect and warmth and the young guys who dominate the pool table are—you guessed it—straight, working-class Latino muchachos. I have never once, in the year or so that I have gone there, witnessed even one instance of homophobia-related slurs or violence. These are the exact Latino male stereotypes that are reported to be more homophobic than their white and black counterparts. The “homophobic math” just doesn’t add up in this equation. And although the struggle is hardly over, much has been accomplished.
Charlie Vázquez is a criollo word-warrior of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent. His work has appeared in numerous print and online publications and his second novel Contraband will be published by Rebel Satori Press in spring 2010. Info: http://www.firekingpress.com
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