Centro Journal ISSN: 1538-6279 [email protected] The City University of New York Estados Unidos Aponte-Parés, Luis; Arroyo, Jossianna; Crespo-Kebler, Elizabeth; La Fountain-Stokes, Lawrence; Negrón-Muntaner, Frances Introduction Centro Journal, vol. XIX, núm. 1, 2007, pp. 4-24 The City University of New York New York, Estados Unidos Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=37719101 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative Intro(v3).qxd 6/3/07 3:44 PM Page 4 CENTRO Journal Volume7 xix Number 1 spring 2007 Puerto Rican Queer Sexualities: INTRODUCTION LUIS APONTE-PARÉS, JOSSIANNA ARROYO, ELIZABETH CRESPO-KEBLER, LAWRENCE LA FOUNTAIN-STOKES, FRANCES NEGRÓN-MUNTANER Guest Editors Elizabeth Marrero and Arthur Avilés. Photographer Johan Ebbers. Reprinted, by permission, from Arthur Avilés. [ 4 ] Intro(v3).qxd 6/3/07 3:44 PM Page 5 In the making since 2002, the current volume of CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies on queer Puerto Rican sexualities represents the culmination of diverse efforts by Centro and many academics, researchers, artists, and community activists to support and disseminate scholarship that focuses on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual (LGBTT), and queer lives.1 This special issue can also be seen as a testament to the vitality of the relatively new field of “queer Puerto Rican studies,” which is to say, the crystallization of diverse forms of scholarship in the humanities and social and natural sciences focusing on the production of sexualized identities, divergent gender expression, and how sexualized identities and practices form a part of and challenge dominant notions of Puerto Rican culture and society. Although it was not until the 1990s that there was a true explosion of Puerto Rican queer discourses, the foundation of the current interest begins in the post- WWII period. With the increase in urbanization, consumption, and migration following World War II, Puerto Ricans in general, including queers, became more visible in urban spaces. This visibility began to catch the attention of researchers, particularly in the U.S., who began to produce new “scientific” discourses about Puerto Rican sexuality. Among the most emblematic of these early studies is Oscar Lewis’s well-known ethnography La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York (1966). Consistent with much social science of the period, studies such as this one tended towards the pathologization of non- heterosexual practices that were also not aimed at procreation. The pathologization of queer Puerto Rican sexual practices of course had a contradictory effect: while partly aiming to dismiss and stigmatize Puerto Rican queers, it also produced a public position from which to challenge those very same assumptions. Overt challenges to dominant social science and generalized (and acceptable) homophobic public discourse were not slow in coming. In the U.S., not only were many Puerto Ricans part of New York’s vibrant gay and lesbian and trans communities, they were also part of the 1969 Stonewall riot, the queer, sex- and gender-radical uprising that symbolized the arrival of Gay Liberation in the U.S., as well as part of the most radical leadership of the newly formed LGBTT organizations. On the island, Comunidad de Orgullo Gay was founded in 1974, and the women’s group within this organization, Alianza de Mujeres de la Comunidad de Orgullo Gay,2 along with other lesbian-feminist and gay activists, in different ways and with different strategies, sought to challenge the symbolic, legal, and everyday discrimination and exclusion suffered by women, lesbians, and gay men. At the same time, it is important to note that while Puerto Ricans organized against homophobia in our historic homelands, that is, Puerto Rico and New York (symbolic capital of DiaspoRico), fundamental differences between the two geographies generated different responses, reflecting the material, social, and cultural conditions of each. Many island gay and lesbian activists focused on the eradication of discriminatory legal statutes, the homophobia and lesbophobia of the press, police harassment, and gay youth suicide and homelessness. In New York, queer Puerto Rican activism tended to focus on additional targets, including the racism of the mainstream gay and lesbian movement, transvestite and transgender discrimination, and the end of violence against queers. In both contexts, however, organizing was sporadic and unequal. This was the case due to homophobia and sexism within other movements in Puerto Rico, as well as the racism and elitism of U.S. mainstream gay and lesbian organizations, and homo- phobia and sexism in the racial and ethnic movements in the U.S. Puerto Ricans in New [ 5 ] Intro(v3).qxd 6/3/07 3:44 PM Page 6 York also had the need to battle other fronts such as racial and ethnic bigotry, class and cultural biases, and economic barriers. In addition, since the 1970s, the relative invisibility of lesbian sexuality, the greater influence of feminism on lesbians, and the conflicts between lesbians and gay men within gay organizations, led many women to concentrate their efforts on the production of alternative discourses on lesbian sexuality as part of a more general critique of not only homophobia but sexism, racism, and other forms of social subordination. This tendency is evident in both Puerto Rico and the U.S. and can be appreciated in works such as Hilda Hidalgo’s pioneering studies on Puerto Rican lesbians in the U.S. as well as in Compañeras: Latina Lesbians (1987), an anthology edited by Juanita Ramos, the pseudonym of the sociologist and activist Juanita Díaz-Cotto. An influential work, Compañeras brings together essays and oral histories of seventeen Puerto Rican women, most of them residing in the U.S. As other lesbian works of this period, this book was also intimately informed by the sharing of experiences, stories, and work among small groups of women. In Compañeras’ case, these groups were the Colectiva Lesbiana Latinoamericana formed in 1980, the Latina Lesbian History Project, and Las Buenas Amigas, both founded in 1986. Individual Third World, Jewish, and white women were also closely involved with the project. Undoubtedly, the 1980s was a particularly productive time for lesbian cultural production. Poets Nemir Matos-Cintrón and Luz María Umpierre published much of their most important work during this time and the voices of Puerto Rican women were also part of pan-Latina efforts such as Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga’s groundbreaking This Bridge Called My Back. Yet the AIDS epidemic made it a difficult time for queer communities in Puerto Rico and in the U.S. In many ways, the AIDS epidemic significantly transformed the political and discursive terrain of queer activism, particularly for gay men. For gay men, initially targeted as the “cause” of AIDS by Christian fundamentalists and other conservatives, AIDS imposed the need to “come out” as intrinsically linked to survival. As captured in the ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) slogan “silence equals death,” many Puerto Rican gay men began to speak about their lives as never before, participated in national movements to take care of their own in the face of government negligence, and insisted on their inclusion within the nation to claim essential services and treatment. Despite of, or perhaps because of, the devastation that AIDS brought to many Puerto Rican communities, coping with AIDS facilitated the formulation of more inclusive discourses on community and family, integrated many gay men into state structures such as health care facilities, and transformed them into part of a specific political constituency. The epidemi- ological research on HIV/AIDS (especially on the behavior of Men who have Sex with Men/MSM) by Alex Carballo-Diéguez and José Toro-Alfonso and their colleagues also dramatically transformed our understanding of Puerto Rican sexualities as it produced empirical knowledge that would have been nearly impossible to obtain in the pre-AIDS era. Moreover, the AIDS epidemic produced important cultural practices that sought to disrupt victimization, offer a critique on homophobia, and formulate alternative ways of telling queer Puerto Rican stories. AIDS was, for instance, an important subtext to the work of major writers like Manuel Ramos Otero, who died of AIDS complications in 1990, and a key theme in the hybrid essays by critic and writer Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez, which combined personal narratives with poignant cultural analysis. AIDS was also at the heart of the early work of co-editor Frances Negrón-Muntaner, [ 6 ] Intro(v3).qxd 6/3/07 3:44 PM Page 7 whose documentary AIDS in the Barrio (1989) was the first Puerto Rican film to address the cultural and economic context of the epidemic; she also promoted dialogue on the epidemic’s impact through interviews with gay and AIDS activists Luis “Popo” Santiago (1991) and Robert Vázquez-Pacheco and Juan David Acosta (1994), published in Radical America and CENTRO Journal’s special AIDS issue. Although the 1980s produced a great diversity of work by and about queer Puerto Ricans, during the 1990s and 2000s, queer discourse found a new home: academia. This was the result of political struggles of LGBTT scholars (including graduate and undergraduate students) to be out on their campuses, address sexuality as a topic of inquiry in their classrooms, and gain recognition of queer scholarship as a legitimate area of academic inquiry. Although the 1980s produced a great Even if acceptance is still a struggle in many academic diversity of work by and around queer contexts as it meets with “ differing degrees of resistance Puerto Ricans, during the 1990s and depending on the discipline, 2000s, queer discourse found a new the conservatism of the faculty home: academia.