As Central Florida prepares to celebrate Come Out With Pride, LGBTs of Hispanic descent are also amidst Hispanic Heritage Month, two cultures that don’t always easily mix.
Officially, Hispanic Pride month ends Oct. 15 and is dedicated to recognizing the contributions and achievements of the Hispanic community, its culture and its language.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Hispanics constitute 17 percent of the U.S. population as of July 2013, making them the largest ethnic or racial minority. It is estimated that by the year 2060 that proportion will increase to 31 percent. Among the total population, a report from the UCLA Williams Institute found that an estimated 1.4 million U.S. Hispanic adults—or 4.3 percent—are LGBT.
Personal Pride: Jorge Estevez
Jorge Estevez didn’t come out to his family until he was 31 years old. The WFTV-Orlando Channel 9 anchor struggled with how his parents would react to the news. Since he was raised in the Hispanic culture, many stereotypes were projected onto him rather than letting him define who he truly was.
“Gender roles are more outlined in the Hispanic community even to this day, so it is harder,” Estevez says. “Everyone’s cousin always knows first. I think that in our culture, and in every culture, we always tell someone you can trust and there’s always that female cousin in your family, and that person is so key in guiding you in that moment in time when you crossover and make that decision [to come out].
“When I told my parents, it was 2006…I didn’t know how they would react. To this day, my father still doesn’t speak to me.”
Fortunately, Estevez had the support of friends when he came out. Many youth aren’t so lucky.According The Trevor Project, suicide rates are two times higher among LGBT Hispanics than other youth.
“One of the fears was: ‘What will people think?’” Estevez says. “What will people think when the neighbor hears? And how will that reflect on those parents? That’s what a lot of people don’t realize— that a lot of parents take it on as a personal defeat. It reflects on them, so they take on this whole idea that it’s about them when it’s really not.”
Estevez grew up immersed in Hispanic culture. Nearly all of his friends were of Hispanic descent, and it wasn’t until college that he even knew he was a cultural minority.
“The idea that I was anything different than the rest of the country was foreign,” he says.
Estevez grew up in West New York, N.J., right outside of New York City, which is also where he began his broadcast journalism career. He learned early on that all Hispanic families aren’t the same.
“We’re all different; we aren’t the same,” he says. “Our beans are different colors, our seasonings are slightly different. The names of the food are all different, but we all have this one wonderful thing in common that we need to continue to explore to help unite us so we can succeed.”
Estevez continues to keep close ties to his Hispanic heritage and admits his ethnic background helps him relate to his broadcast audience.
“There’s that connection when I go into a home and horrible things have happened to this family, and they happen to be Hispanic,” Estevez explains. “It’s an advantage in that you’re that much closer in making a connection with someone and having them open up to you.”
He hopes to see similar connections among Hispanics and the LGBT community, especially concerning youth.
“I think there is a disconnect between the literature and the conversations that I think other communities may be having,” Estevez says. “We still have a lot of that old-school mentality about gender roles, so it would be better if there was more education toward minority youth when it comes to LGBT issues.
“As a voice, we are stronger together than we are fragmented, and we need to recognize that. As human beings, we share one thing, which is the betterment of our society.”
To empower and engage: Vivian Rodriguez
One thing the Hispanic community has in common with the LGBT culture is the diversity within each.
“It’s something that I really can’t describe, being involved in so many different communities and building that bridge,” says Vivian Rodriguez, president of the Democratic Hispanic Caucus of Florida and Equality Florida board member.
Rodriguez is a retired New York police first-grade detective, who had a 21-year career with the NYPD and educated the community about issues affecting both the Hispanic and LGBT communities.
The Orlando resident, who conducted LGBT sensitivity training while in uniform, met her partner while serving the City of New York.
“I would say one of my most exciting moments was walking in full uniform as a gay officer from 50th Street all the way down to The Village, and then—it still brings a tear to me—passing by Stonewall,” says Rodriguez, a former president of the Gay Officers Action League of New York.
After she retired and moved with her family to Florida, Rodriguez became involved in the political scene. In 2012, she was the Hispanic outreach campaign director for Rep. Joe Saunders (D-Fla.) and she was elected as the president of the Democratic Hispanic Caucus of Florida in August 2013.
“To me, I firmly believe in advocating for the rights of the LGBT community as well as the Hispanic community, and everything I do now is on a volunteer basis,” Rodriguez says. “What made me proud was the organization did not look at me as a gay person or a straight person. They looked at me for who I was and for what I could deliver or what they believed I could do for the organization.”
Rodriguez recognizes a fragmentation among both the LGBT and Hispanic communities. It makes her more focused on her mission to join the two and cross-promoting pride in each.
Rodriguez and her partner of 28 years have an 18-year-old son.
“People are moving forward, and of course you are going to have some individuals who are not as tolerant as others,” Rodriguez admits. “But I think that time will change them, and as they get exposed to others they know and love, their ideas will change.”
Breaking stereotypes: Alex Borrego
Gender-roles are incredibly important in Hispanic families, which can make the coming out process for transgender people even more difficult than their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.
St. Petersburg resident Alex Borrego knows that first-hand. She remembers the disappointment her father expressed when, as a young male, Borrego would help her mother with household chores.
“My uncles would make fun of me and they would say I’m a little ‘faggot’ and stuff like that, obviously in Spanish terms,” Borrego recalls. “They didn’t understand why I wanted to help her cook. And even now that I am transgender, they still don’t understand why I would want to be a woman because in their mind, being a man is so supreme. And I still notice it. It is very much engraved in the culture, especially among Caribbean-Hispanics.”
When Borrego came out in her teens as a gay man, she found acceptance from her female relatives. But she recalls that her father and uncles never understood, which put a strain on her relationship with the male figures in her family.
By the time she fully transitioned in July 2011, her father had passed away.
“I think that the most difficult part of the whole process was making my family realize that this wasn’t just me putting on a dress or that it was my current mood,” Borrego says. “I think that a lot of them felt, ‘Okay, just let Alex put on a little nail polish, put on a little makeup and put on a dress, and in a year he will go back to being a boy and this will all be a phase.’
“I think that’s my biggest struggle because still to this day, I have family members who don’t take me seriously.”
There aren’t enough role models in the LGBT/Hispanic community, Borrego believes, which makes it more difficult for Hispanic LGBTs to come out.
“We need more positive role models because when Hispanic people think about LGBT, they think about the very feminine guy who sleeps around or the transgender woman who has all these fake body parts and works the street in order to support her lifestyle,” Borrego says. “So when they see someone like me, who is transgender and works a nine-to-five, they don’t know how to process me. They don’t know how to put me into their equation.”
Florida boasts the country’s third-largest Hispanic population, according to 2013 Census Bureau statistics, meaning the LGBT contingent within that population is also seeing growth. That means acceptance will have to come, even if it happens slowly.
“The Spanish culture, especially the Caribbean-Spanish culture, is much infused with that chauvinism—and if you’re a man, you should behave in a certain manner,” Borrego says. “Growing up, that was difficult.”
The Hispanic Modern Family: Tatiana Quiroga
As the saying goes, “Family is everything.” This is true, especially in the Hispanic culture. Major holidays mean family gatherings and with Catholicism as the major religion in the Hispanic culture, the Church is the focal point for the family and for raising children.
So how does an LGBT Hispanic family fit into this mold?
“There’s a baby boom in the LGBT community and within that, Hispanic LGBTs want to start families,” says Tatiana Quiroga, the southern regional manager for the Family Equality Council. “Because of the strong influence that our culture and our heritage has, sometimes we have special challenges because a lot of us were raised Catholic.”
Quiroga deals with Hispanic LGBT families on a daily basis. But she also deals with her own “non-traditional family.” She and her partner of 10 years are raising a son together. But the journey to acceptance wasn’t a smooth one.
“I was raised in a very multicultural experience because my parents were still very close to their roots and to their heritage,” recalls Quiroga, who was born in La Paz, Bolivia, “so I was raised in a very Hispanic culture but in the United States.”
It’s taken nearly two decades for Quiroga to find acceptance with her sexuality, and she says that’s because there were few—if any—LGBT people that crossed her family’s path before her.
“They didn’t know any gay people and they never met any gay people,” she says. “At the same time, they couldn’t wrap their head around the fact that I was a little girl who loved to play with Barbie, loved to play with dolls, wore makeup, loved jewelry, got my nails done and I was gay. To them, there was a direct connection between gender and sexuality.”
Quiroga uses her own experience to help the Hispanic families she works with understand their LGBT family members. She also uses her cultural roots to help LGBT couples who adopt Hispanic children understand the cultural differences.
She recently met with families in Austin, Texas. There, Quiroga met gay Caucasian couples raising Hispanic children. Those couples, she says, wanted to learn about Hispanic culture so their children would grow up appreciating their ethnic heritage.
Quiroga believes there is a need for more LGBT parent role models of Hispanic descent, like Ricky Martin, for example. But more need to come out to show traditional Hispanic families that an LGBT contingent exists within the culture.
“I had a very negative response from my parents coming out. It has taken the birth of my son for my parents to finally accept me and my relationship,” Quiroga says. “It was a very long drawn-out process. It’s ended in a way I could never imagine because my son is almost three years old and he’s best friends with my parents. They are our number one supporters now. We definitely have a happy ending to a long painful journey.”
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