One-Dimensional Queer by Roderick A. Ferguson

Author:Roderick A. Ferguson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Published: 2018-11-28T16:00:00+00:00

Rather than the image of an always already homophobic neighborhood of color, Manalansan provides a glimpse into the complicated relationship that those neighborhoods have with queer sexuality.

In his article “‘That's My Place!’: Negotiating Racial, Sexual, and Gender Politics in San Francisco's Gay Latino Alliance, 1975–1983” the late Latinx Studies scholar Horacio N. Roque Ramírez cites San Francisco's Latino Mission District as an urban space that during the seventies and eighties made itself available for queer of color creativity and reinvention. Referring to the queer Latinx immigrants and American citizens who left their nations, regions, homes, and families for “radically new opportunities for queer collective belonging” (Roque Ramírez, 2003, p. 225), he writes, “Sexiles landing in the Bay Area met thousands of individuals who by birth or life experience had always considered the region and, in particular, San Francisco's Latino Mission District as their home … Whether homegrown or sexiled, these 1970s gay Latino activists were less interested in ‘transcending’ differences than in incorporating the multiple dimensions of their social experience” (Roque Ramírez, 2003, p. 225). Rebutting the white queer author Armistead Maupin's claim that San Francisco allowed queers to “‘[transcend] the usual boundaries of race, class, and region’” (quoted in Roque Ramírez, 2003, p. 226), Roque Ramírez suggests that the migration of Latinx queers to the Bay Area transformed urban space in such a way that particularities of race, gender, sexuality, class, and culture could commingle, producing new encounters, identities, and communities.

As an example of the ways in which the Gay Latino Alliance (GALA) attempted to make the Latinx space of the Mission District one that spoke to the needs and interests of Latinx gays, Roque Ramírez offers these remarks from Diane Felix, a founding Chicana member of the organization: “‘GALA was founded in 1975 in San Francisco in response to a need for an organization that would struggle for the rights of lesbian and gay latinos’” (quoted in Roque Ramírez, 2003, p. 239). Expounding on that need, Felix goes on to say, “‘We saw many Latinos driven into a Gay subculture where they were victimized by racism, sexism, and cultural alienation’” (quoted in Roque Ramírez, 2003, p. 239). Attempting to promote a multidimensional understanding of Latinx and gay identities, the group participated in San Francisco's Gay Freedom Day Parade, its celebrations for Cinco de Mayo, and the city's Carnaval Festivals, oftentimes carrying politicized placards with slogans such as “‘Gay Latinos Against Somoza,’ ‘Support Affirmative Action,’ ‘End Racism,’ ‘Puerto Rico Libre,’ ‘E.R.A. [Equal Rights Amendment] Now’” (Roque Ramírez, 2003, p. 240). Pointing to the ways in which the organization's political commitments were interwoven with its social ones, Roque Ramírez argues, “While GALA's public statements called for political change locally and internationally, it was the prominent live salsa orquestras or bands that kept hundreds of women's and men's bodies dancing in the nighttime merriment. Politics and dancing mutually supported one another; the funds GALA raised through the dances and other social events underwrote political activism” (Roque Ramírez, 2003, p. 241). As

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