Where’s Our Queer Community?
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by atlas katari

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Every summer around the world comes a month intended to uplift, celebrate, and bring attention to the LGBTQIA+ community — June is Pride Month once again! But not everyone in our community can celebrate each June equally. For every person marking a new beginning this month, numerous others struggle to find their place in their community right at home. I will refer to this lost community as the Queer Latinx community throughout this article, as requested by my interviewees. And for these artists, small business owners, and innovators, some never find their community at home.

“Culturally, we’re all raised in a heavy religious home,” says Karina Liranzo (they/them), queer community facilitator with The Queen’s Guard and small business owner. “When I first came out, I was one of the very few queer Hispanics. And that [news] rolled out like fire.”
That was over twenty years ago. This generation’s queer community still feels the same pressure. The decision comes down to one of two options: either keep their identity a secret or tell everyone. “The Latinx community is very gossip driven,” says Amable Junior-Rosa (they/she/he), local drag queen and entertainer, now living in Seattle. “They want to know everything. Everything,” they say. Add that Spanish as a language is “so binary” (says Liranzo) onto the gossip-driven culture, and you’ve got a recipe to make anyone who doesn’t fit into that binary uncomfortable.

But the problem isn’t just Spanish or gossip. Alaska’s Hispanic community is pushing out its most vibrant members. Estrella “Star” Northcutt-Rodriguez (she/they), owner of Cafecito Bonito off Baxter and Debarr, expresses the constant identity shift, also known as code switching, she experiences in a day working at the café. “Even in our own culture, we have to code switch,” she says, “especially with our parents and elders.” Amable explains it further, too, by saying, “As I was experimenting, and learning who I truly was, I realized that I couldn’t be that old little Dominican from down the block. So now, when I go see my friends and my family, it’s a total code switch.”
This is the core of what’s pushing the queer community out of the same communities they grew up in: Queer Latinx people can’t be themselves at home.

If the problem was as simple as gossip, though, no one would feel a part of their cultural community. No one — not just the queer community — would feel at home with their extended families. So what’s explicitly outcasting the queer Latinx community? “It’s the uncomfortable questions,” Liranzo says. “[The way the community sees it,] there has to be a reason why we’re not cisgender, straight, and having babies. Or, in Amable’s case, why he’s not sleeping around with twenty other women.”

The fact is these old expectations are still pushed on today’s generations. Culture and tradition are absolutely important to sustain a community’s rich understanding of their history, but outdated expectations don’t have to come with. As time moves on, cultural expectations (and language) should develop with progress — not actively work against it.

The Queer Latinx community has already proved that it can thrive with and without help from home. “So, unless we’re literally going to dismantle the entire culture that is surrounded by the patriarchy, misogynistic religious aspects, and racism within our countries,” Liranzo says, “the reality is there is no going back.”
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This Pride month, consider whether you’re supporting the queer community or not. Are you uplifting queer artists? Donating time, money, or other support to local non-profits? Are you showing your children that you’d love them even if you don’t understand them?
Because if not, they aren’t the ones that’ll be left behind in the end. It’ll be you. ​

Amable Junior Rosa (they/she/he). Photo: Catie Bartlett.

Karina Liranzo

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