Gerber/Hart Library and Archives (Gerber/Hart) held a Latinx Activism and Journalism panel discussion Oct. 15th at Gerber/Hart.
The event was moderated Windy City Times Owner and Co-Founder Tracy Baim. Panelists included inaugural Association of Latinos/as/xs Motivating Action (ALMA) Executive Director Manuel Hernández-Nuñez, Illinois Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes Commissioner and Amigas Latinas Co-Founder Mona Noriega and City of Chicago LGBTQ+ Advisory Council member and former En La Vida contributor Robert Castillo.
Baim said En La Vida “started in July of 1996 as part of the family of queer publications” and “we are now selling a one terabyte flash drive that includes the complete En La Vida, BLACKlines, Identity, Outlines and the first 15 years of Windy City Times for $300. We want to distribute that history. We can’t put it online for copyright reasons. Both for photo copyright reasons and also for outing reasons.”
She added that many of those older issues are available at Gerber/Hart and the library does have the flash drive. She started the Oct. 15 conversation with the history of ALMA and the now-defunct Amigas Latinas.
Hernández-Nuñez said he “stands on broad shoulders” of those who came before him and cited ALMA’s Co-Founder and current Board Chair Julio Rodriguez who was in attendance that evening as one of those people. He said ALMA was founded in 1989 “in the midst of the AIDS epidemic” when the federal government didn’t invest in the Latino community and especially the men who have sex with men part of his community. Hernández-Nuñez said it was important for them to “create a space that was both culturally and linguistically relevant for our community.”
He added that some of the people who came to ALMA in the beginning were monolingual Spanish speakers, immigrants and/or mixed status families who hadn’t come out to their families yet; their organization provided space for, at the time, gay Latino men to support each other.
Hernández-Nuñez also spoke about the organization becoming visible in the larger Chicago community with their participation in the Mexican and Puerto Rican parades. He added that one in five queer people in the United States is Latinx.
Noriega said Amigas Latinas was the brainchild of her wife Evette Cardona that began with inclusive Women Of All Colors/Cultures Together group. She said Latinas in the community wondered if they should start their own organization; they did so in the summer of 1995 with the motto “that a girl’s got to eat.” Noriega added that Amigas was all about providing each other support. She said the issues they focused on were how to come out to their children, domestic violence issues and being in a mixed-status family.
Baim said that with ALMA, Amigas Latinas, Affinity Community Services and Chicago Back Lesbians and Gays organizations in Chicago there was more for the queer press to cover, which was the genesis of BLACKlines in February 1996 and shortly after that, En La Vida.
Castillo said the name choice is a direct translation of “In The Life” into Spanish. He said his focus was the Latinx organizations who were doing the grassroots work like Vida/SIDA and others. Castillo added that he covered World AIDS Day from the Latinx perspective. He also got Latinx politicians to declare, on the record, where they stood on HIV/AIDS and the LGBTQ+ issues and said one of his favorite interviews was with former Ald. Ray Suárez.
Noriega spoke about her time as a salesperson at Lambda Publications, which she loved since “it gave me the opportunity to sell people on the value of the gay community to people who were not gay, and gave me an opportunity to sell our community on ourselves.” She said when she would go into straight-owned business she became an educator to them about the LGBTQ+ community to convince them to buy ad space.
En La Vida and BLACKlines were reborn last October after being defunct for a time as newsletters and verticals on this publication’s website.
Attendees were also invited to view Gerber/Hart’s current exhibit in the Sandfield Gallery, “Windy City Times @40: Breaking News. Breaking Silence,” (which features En La Vida archival material, among others) before and after the event.