Boricua and Queer in New York City: Conflicts and Struggles for Rights and Identity, 1964-1974 By Raaisha G. Castro Submitted to the Board of Study in Latin American Studies School of Humanities In fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts Purchase College State University of New York May 2016 Accepted _____________ Sponsor Leandro Benmergui _____________ Second Reader Paula Halperin  “The Young Lords Party articulated and verbalized for all to understand that to be Puerto Rican, to be Black, to be Latino, to be of Color, is to have the unique history and cultural combination that bestows on us the ability to function in any situation, under any circumstances and maintain our identity in tact.” -Marta Moreno Marta Moreno, “Introduction, The Need For Change: The Young Lords Party,” Caribe, n.d, 4 Introduction I have always been interested in Puerto Rican culture in New York City. I was born and raised in New York but could not make connections with its history. Maybe because every person of Puerto Rican descent I have met thus far has had an internal conflict on identifying themselves as Puerto Ricans or Nuyoricans. Puerto Ricans coming from the island to New York have a different identity than those that are second or third generation Boricuas in New York. The conflicts, problems, and struggles are not the same neither are the values and morals that later generations have run into in order to become more “American” and at the same time claiming to be “authentic” Puerto Ricans. I can certainly now see the tensions and conflicts of Puerto Ricans “negotiating” their identity as their struggles as they acculturate to American life in New York City. As for the LGTBQ community within the Puerto Rican community, I grew up under the assumption of “don’t ask, don’t tell”, and that it was “none of my business.” I never quite understood the stigmatization of gay, lesbian or queer identity, since I was raised in a Catholic home in which believed that a woman is to be with a man and a man is to be with a woman. I went to my communion classes and this was a constant reminder and in every book we were given to study to accept communion in the Catholic faith. Rather, I saw a person that identified with whatever made them comfortable and socially accepted within their own community. It was not until I became a student at Purchase, that during one of my history classes I would learn and be awed on the Queer Puerto Rican community, particularly by the figure of Sylvia Rivera. It awed me because I never read, heard or saw such radicalism, coming from a Puerto Rican who would be an iconic person within a movement. Especially in the 1960s and 1970s where transgender Puerto Ricans had to fight against the prejudices, stereotypes, and homophobia that characterized the Puerto Rican community and the larger public sphere during those years. The history of the struggles of Queer Puerto Ricans for visibilization and recognition of the their rights is part of the history of the Civil Rights Movement. The existing literature on the Civil Rights Movement in New York puts emphasis and attention to the struggles of different of groups usually taken in isolation to other racial, ethnic, or gender groups, but has underplayed in many cases the possibility of multiple and simultaneous forms of identity. Within the Puerto Rican civil rights movement in the early 1970s, the Young Lords (YL) and the Queer Puerto Rican movement, created by Sylvia Rivera, worked parallel with each other showing a mutual respect. They did not necessarily promote each other's agenda but by uniting groups, a louder voice would be heard to the masses thus creating attention to the cause, provoking questions, requesting answers thus making a change. The civil rights movement starting in 1964 were mainly known for causes of racial equality, but the YL and the queer movement in the 1960s, reflected the general radicalization within the larger civil rights movement, particularly its claims and position for social, economic and equality. Amongst Latinos and Queers, their daily lives were marked by the lack of economic opportunities, harsh living conditions, racial and gender prejudice as characterized by a constant police harassment and hostility. As the rallies of the YLP during the Garbage Offensive and the Stonewall Riots, both in New York City in 1969, show these tensions reached a point of political and social turmoil. This project will demonstrate that these two different revolutionary groups ultimately could relate and endured similar experiences despite their agendas and their inner tensions. They were tired of being oppressed by the police, they were tired of not getting equal opportunities as their perceived white American counterparts, and demanded not only the abilities and opportunities for accessible and a sustainable life but also the hopes for emancipation, in solidarity with those groups who shared the same experience of being marginalized. Puerto Ricans in New York City during the late 1950s and early 1960s struggled with racial and economic divide. During the second wave of Puerto Ricans migrating to New York City in the late 1940s through early 1950s, many managed to settle down in tenement housing on the Lower East Side known as San Juan Hill, between West 62nd Street and West 70th Streets. African Americans and Puerto Ricans predominantly lived in these tenements. With tight living quarters, infestation of rodents, roaches, ethnic tensions and violent territorial disputes between the Irish, Black, and Puerto Rican gangs, the general public identified this area as one of the worst slums in the city, a space of crime, pathological degeneration, and moral decay. The working-class African American and Puerto Rican population amounted to about 650,000. New York Senator Robert Taft and Mayor Robert Wagner facilitated a major urban renewal program that resulted in the construction of the Lincoln Center, a performing arts centered coveted for the local government and geared to upper middle class New Yorkers and real estate speculators. This was the era of major urban renewal programs in the United States, and in New York in particular under Robert Moses, working class Puerto Ricans and African Americans had to move to other areas of the city in East Harlem -known as El Barrio or Spanish Harlem - the Bronx, Brooklyn or the suburbs. As Aponte-Pares points out, “Latino barrios were scattered throughout the city, and certain neighborhoods have become closely identified with them.” Luis Aponte-Parés, “Outside/In: Crossing Queer and Latino Boundaries.” in Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York, ed. by Agustín Lao-Montes and Arlene Dávila (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), p. 367. The only public housing projects that still stand in the new area called Lincoln Square are the Amsterdam Houses. Out of this push of urban renewal, Puerto Ricans found themselves at the bottom of the totem pole, schools were in shambles, health care was inadequate, accessibility for aid was a challenge due to the language barrier and lack of community outreach programs within these areas of New York City. The lack of sanitation and irrigation on the streets of El Barrio, resulted in garbage pile up and made the area even more so of a slum. The city ignored theses areas thus creating a sense of isolation within a community that lacked structure, direction and persistence. Puerto Ricans were characterized as living in spaces of poverty, isolation, crime; a lumpen community under-employed due to lack of opportunity, education, with low social and economical standing. As Aponte-Parés argues, “this has not deterred them from mapping their identities in the cultural geography of the city. Indeed, their ability to imprint their identity in space remains a primary area of contention, as power struggles over mapping are therefore fundamental moments in the production of discourses.” Ibid, 368. While these Puerto Rican communities underwent evictions and were forced out the pressures of both governmental and real estate pressures, they still find ways to contest these spatial and political struggles for their right to the city. With this comment I am trying to bring the other half of the Aponte-Parés: “mapping” as an area of contention and political struggle. In other words: Aponte-Parés is giving agency to Puerto Ricans here to show how despite gentrification this was a contested process. Institutionalized racism and the lack of political representation of minorities made the government prioritize an agenda of urban reform that benefited affluent areas of the city, thus mapping Puerto Ricans in areas that would not progress and advance in social and economic productivity. Still, as Aponte-Parés explains, and my research shows, Puerto Ricans will make of this process a highly contested one, one in which they will seek to reassert their presence over space and, by so doing, building their identity as Puerto Ricans. The presence of Puerto Ricans in the United States and New York City, was not new but it reached to significant proportions by the mid-twentieth century. During the postwar era, the population of Puerto Ricans in the U.S. reached to 900,000; out of those, 600,000 were born on the island. When economic crisis hit American corporations in the U.S. in the aftermath of the Great Depression and the following decades, the main exports of the island, sugar and tobacco production, took a huge hit. The U.S. government came up with a supplemental reform for Puerto Ricans called “Operation Bootstrap”, known to Puerto Ricans as Manos a la obra. This program consisted of three components to benefit mostly US corporations and dig out of the economic strands of poverty. The first component of the plan was to have American companies relocated to Puerto Rico in exchange for tax benefits, secure emigration of Puerto Ricans to the U.S. and create jobs in industrialization sectors for cheap labor. Industrialization and agricultural mechanization in the island pushed farmers to urban centers. Industrial jobs, however, could not cope with the number of migrants that moved from the countryside to the city. In addition, a decline in exports and profit became a loss to the Puerto Rican economy, forcing many to leave their rural farms and el campo, and migrate towards more urban areas such as the capital city of San Juan, to find work. With such a high surge of unemployment on the island, many Puerto Ricans moved to the United States, predominantly to New York, via la guagua aerea. A Spanish adapted film based on the novel of the same title by Puerto Rican novelist, Luis Rafael Sanchez,1994. La guagua aerea depicts the tales of Puerto Ricans emigrating from Puerto Rico to New York City during the 1960s. This process, that Puerto Ricans popularly denominated as brincando el charco (Spanish for “crossing the pond”), arrived in what scholars characterized as the second wave of immigrants who arrived chasing their dreams for industrial jobs. Kelvin A. Santiago-Valles and Gladys M. Jimenez-Munoz, Puerto Ricans in the United States, 1945-2000 (New York, Columbia University Press, 2004) 93-94. The postwar Puerto Rican migration filled the ranks of cheap labor in the New York’s garment and food processing sectors. Ibid., 94. Since these positions required fewer skills with a high intensity of production, many under educated potential employees flocked to the factories looking for work. The garment industry in New York was a booming source of employment for Puerto Ricans, according to Santiago-Valles and Jimenez-Munoz who argue that, “the same narrow band of backward manufacturing companies, together with those leading corporate sectors riding the wave of postwar economic boom, began attracting large masses of low-wage labor.” Ibid., 92. In the 1960’s, however, the garment industry (and the city in general) began a tendency towards disenindustrialization that affected in particular the garment industry and its labor force which consisted largely of Puerto Ricans. Due to the closings of many companies, the economy started to suffer and many became unemployed. Unlike the Cuban immigrants who began to arrive to the United States at that same time as political refugees after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution and who received occupational training and economic aid from the U.S. government, Puerto Ricans lived under the poverty line and were classified to be poorer than African Americans. “Aprenda y Superese”, or “Training for Independence”, federal funded program during the Kennedy administration, to help unskilled Cuban women become self-supporting. Maria Cristina Garcia, The Cuban Communities of the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 155. Social problems amounted, for instance, due to the increase in the population of single mothers who required governmental aid to make ends meet. With the burgeoning Puerto Rican working-class in several areas of New York City, mostly located in the Lower East Side (Loisaida), East Harlem (Spanish Harlem), the South Bronx and Brooklyn, violence and informal economic activity, which in many cases constituted in illegal activities, spiked. New political groups connected to the independentist movement in Puerto Rico, including the Movimiento Pro-Independencia (MPI, est. 1959) began to articulate a language that spoke the experience of Puerto Rican communities in New York City. Specifically, these groups explained this social and economic situation as the direct result of the colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the U.S., and the colonial position of Puerto Ricans in the US. Framed within this new language that articulated present economic and social difficulties with more structural conditions (such as the colonialism), political groups like the MPI, consisting of Latino college students from various colleges in the New York City area, made the Puerto Rican community confront the issues of the level of poverty, illness, unemployment, dislocation and oppression that the Puerto Rican people were experiencing as a whole. The MPI thought to provide a political voice and a language to a group with little or none previous political representation. MPI participated in demonstrations, handing pamphlets and partaking in rallies. They also campaigned against the exploitative working conditions of workers and alerted against the granting Puerto Ricans American citizenship, understood as a death sentence to Puerto Rican men being drafted to the war in Vietnam. This awareness became part of a civil unrest, on July 25th, 1967, where Puerto Ricans took their grievances to the streets of El Barrio and protested in anti-police demonstrations. Chicago Tribune, “Rioting Breaks Out Anew in New York,” Tribune Wire Services, July 25, 1967, http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1967/07/25/page/1 They took out their frustrations of their injustices on property that resulted in a riot, setting buildings on fire, overturning cars and looting. There were more than twenty people arrested and 2 individuals were reported dead that night. This riot was compared to the race riots of 1964 that took place in Bedford Stuyvesant and Harlem. As poverty, inequality, political disenfranchisement, and state violence increased, the political organizations of the civil rights movement served as an example of what their African American counterparts demanded and will begin to show the articulation of new narration and the practice of emancipation and freedom. The research shows that life for working-class Puerto Ricans in East Harlem was difficult, how not only was this community subjected to inequalities of social and economic classes, but also treated inhumanely when it regarded medical practices, lack of advocacy and outreach for equality of other ethnic counterparts. The inequalities that the Queer (transvestite) community faced from gay and lesbian organizations, and the relationship that the men of the YLP had with the women of their organization would shift into gender equality and open the door in discussion of inclusion of people of different sexual identities. The Young Lords Party of New York City: Their beginnings, the struggles and the movements. “I hadn’t never heard no Puerto Rican talk like this-just Black people were taking this way, you know. And I said, “Damn! Check this out.” - Pablo Guzman, Palante: Young Lords Party, 1971 The Young Lords started as an active gang in the streets of Chicago. In the 1950s, they were first generation and second generation Puerto Ricans raised in the U.S. During the 1950s, there were constant moments of racial unrest and division within many cities across America. Puerto Ricans began to live in areas that were predominately working-class Irish or Italian where ethnic differences were ethnic differences were traduced spatially in segregated areas. “In existence since 1959, the group’s goals were to defend Puerto Rican neighborhood and demand respect from rival Italian, Appalachian, and Latino gangs.” Frances Negron-Muntaner, “The Look of Sovereignty: Style and Politics of the Young Lords,” Centro Journal, vol. 27, no. 1 (Spring 2015):5, accessed September, 2015. Resorting to fighting for turf and areas to hang out became an ongoing issue within the neighborhoods of Chicago. Jose “Cha-Cha” Jimenez, co-founder of the Young Lords, was born to jibaro parents in Caguas, Puerto Rico. His mother worked most of her life in a factory and his father was a temporary migrating farmer picking tomatoes in Massachusetts for Campbell Soup (1946-1950). The Jimenez family, moved to Chicago in 1950 to be closer to family, and his father was then employed as a meatpacker for Oscar Mayer Foods for 16 years. Jose “Cha Cha” Jimenez, “National Young Lords, Founded Young Lords as Human Rights Movement: 9/23/1968,” www.nationalyounglords.com Due to urban expansion and renewal programs in Chicago in 1957, the community of Clark, populated by Puerto Ricans and blacks, became desolate, abandoned and runned down. Tenants left when rents were being raised and many landlords sold buildings secretly right underneath the tenants and owners without warning. The Jimenez family were forced to move to the section of Humboldt Park, then another urban renewal project was introduced, moving again, but this time to a populated Puerto Rican neighborhood of Lincoln Park. This is where the Young Lords went from a street gang to community outreach protectors and advocates by the late 1960’s. In Jimenez story, we can see the trajectories and challenges that many Puerto Ricans families endured in the late 1950’s and 1960’s, which will lead to a new generation of Puerto Ricans to become politically engaged at the end of that period. In the summer of 1968, Jimenez, fell into the drug culture of his neighborhood and was arrested for a possession of heroin charge, booked and sentenced to 60 days at the Cook County Jail. During his time in jail, Jimenez had a political conversion when a guard that was a member of the Nation of Islam gave him a book about a religious transformation, Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, articles and books about Black Nationalism, Martin Luther King Jr., and about the Black Panthers. This epiphany that Jimenez had, gave him the chance to question the things going on in society with other cell mates and articulate a political discourse and organizational practice that gave voice to the experiences shared by the poor, segregated minorities in urban America in those years. After his stint in jail, Jimenez was placed in a halfway program for prisoners to transition into civilian life and help get acquainted with employment via a War on Poverty program. He also enrolled in a GED (General Education Diploma) program for released offenders. Jimenez and the YL, set up rallies and demonstrations against the urban renewal of their neighborhood, Lincoln Park. He drew the approaches and organization as the leading group of the black movement, The Black Panther Party. Johanna Fernandez, “Civil Rights in New York City: From World War II to the Giuliani Era,” in The Young Lords and Late Sixties Urban Radicalism, ed. Clarence Taylor (New York: Fordham Press, 2011), 143 This was the time of the Black Power movement, the political radicalization of the civil rights movement after the failed policies of Johnson’s War on Poverty. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party (BPP) for Self-Defense in October 1966 in Oakland, California and Fred Hampton was the Chairperson in the Chicago chapter. This radical and revolutionary group organized and practiced their tactics in military defense. Using a militant form, they fought to have community-based programs for minorities. They were against the U.S. government and their policies for the ethnic, impoverished, working class and poverty stricken. The BPP’s agenda was to create a class-based than race-based movement. They were black radical activists that believed that blacks and minorities should unite in solidarity to fight capitalism and build a socialist society that would end economic oppression and the material foundations of racism. The BPP built a revolutionary Marxist organization influenced by wars of decolonization in Africa and the emergence of the New Left in the world, in order to debunk the established social order. The BPP were anti-imperialist and understood the poverty of African-American as the direct result of colonization and a long history of slavery and Jim Crow segregation that made racism a key to the oppression and mass poverty among African Americans. The only possible solution was not desegregation, an intended passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but rather the overcoming of capitalism. The BPP also challenged the use of state violence and identified the police as the institution that guaranteed the defense of capitalism and white privilege through the brutalization of African Americans. The BPP fought for freedom and wanted power to determine their own destinies within the black community, a black community should be monitored and directed by the black community itself. But in addition to these broad demands, the BPP also articulated a more immediate program for community development, including the demands for decent and fit housing for all, to be taught their true history and standing within this nation, end police brutality and murders of black people, freedom for all black men imprisoned in jails, fair trial by jury for blacks, and opportunity for land, food, housing, clothing, justice and peace. The influence of the BPP was key for the politicization of the YLO. Judson L. Jeffries, Omari L. Dyson and Charles E. Jones, “Militancy Transcends Race,” review of the Black Diaspora 1, no. 2 (2010): 4-30 The YLO in Chicago, studied and observed the many tactics and fashions of the BPP (holding demonstrations, protest, walking in unison in the streets, patrolling the neighborhoods.) when it came to their urban struggles such as urban renewals, police brutality, poverty, job opportunities. The YLO was able to get the attention of the masses during the Puerto Rican Day parade in Chicago in 1969 in protest to grant Puerto Rican self-determination. They were promoting and protesting the independence of Puerto Rico from the capitalists and Imperialists of the U.S. and wanting to grant equality in healthcare, education, housing, employment opportunities for Puerto Ricans in Chicago. Across the nation, in New York City, riots and upheavals of violence occurred. In East Harlem (El Barrio), an urgency of community control, police violence and riots started to break out and the police began to accuse Puerto Ricans as the criminals of vandalism and instigators of crime. According to Fernández, “in 1966 and 1967, Puerto Ricans were the major protagonists in riots that swept through East New York and East Harlem. Detonated in each case by the police shootings of Puerto Ricans civilians, these riots marked a turning point for Puerto Ricans in New York.” Fernandez, The Young Lords and Late Sixties Urban Radicalism, 147 It was a chain reaction to the underlying frustration and anxiety that underprivileged Puerto Ricans experienced in those days. On the July 23, 1967, El Barrio lashed into a storm of violence and rioting. Police were called to the scene to see about a dispute between two men, one of them being Renaldo Rodriguez. According to Police reports, Rodriguez was involved in a knife fight, upon the arrival of the police, Rodriguez lunged at officer Anthony Cinquemani. Ibid., 147 The policeman announced himself, while taking out his gun and shooting Rodriguez multiple times in the chest. This news created such anger towards the police, the youth of the neighborhood took their frustrations to the streets and commenced riots that lasted three days after the initial shooting. The same night of the shooting, over 400 Puerto Ricans and African Americans gathered on 111th Street and Third Ave and started to throw rocks and bottles at the police. Twenty-four city blocks were closed and 160 officers were deployed to the area. The second wave of riots started when someone threw Molotov cocktails from a tenement window aiming towards the police. The standoff included throwing garbage cans and bricks to the police. The riots spread over to the South Bronx on the third day, resulting with four dead Puerto Ricans. Following these riots in 1968, the elders in El Barrio community began to organize teenagers and college students of the community and formed an anti poverty organization, the Real Great Society (RSG). Miguel Melendez was a member of this organization in which was also able to recruit those who understood the importance of Puerto Rican nationalism and militancy. Puerto Rican college students of El Barrio also formed the Puerto Rican Student Union (PRSU) which travelled to many campus, including CUNY City College, to promote Puerto Rican nationalism. These groups had a great purpose, but yet a lot of work ahead of them, Melendez having known this, took action in getting his friends from college and some associates to plan a stronger front against the crime, poverty, drugs and injustices of El Barrio. Recently, Melendez recalled how groups were formed in college and the connections he made in aiding to become advocates for the community of El Barrio. “Well you know, it’s like I had known these people from different parts of my life. And to me, I felt thought they were the, you know brightest, young, energetic bunch of guys that I had known. I met Felipe (Luciano) at Queens College when I was at the SEEK Program, (Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge) and he was coming out of jail. I met Juan Gonzalez on the steps of Columbia University, the Low Library. I had played basketball with his two cousins, so that gave me some credibility with him. Pablo, I met at Westbury. David Perez, we met when I went to Chicago to recruit for the state university at Westbury.” During a 2009 interview on a program, Democracy Now! The original Young Lords Organization of Chicago, leader Jose “Cha Cha” Jimenez, reunited with the Young Lords Party of New York, Juan Gonzalez, Miguel “Mickey” Melendez, Denise Oliver-Velez, and Pablo “Yoruba” Guzman. This formation of student organizations would later become to be an essential social and radical change of El Barrio. It was on June 7th, that the BPP printed a newspaper with a story about an alliance between the BPP and the YLO, from this article they found out that the YLO were Puerto Rican revolutionaries. “Cha Cha was talking about revolution and the socialism and the liberation of Puerto Rico and the right to self-determination and all this stuff that I ain’t never heard a spic say. I mean, I hadn’t never heard no Puerto Rican talk like this-just Black people were taking this way, you know. And I said, “Damn! Check this out.” Michael Abramson, Palante: Young Lords Party (McGraw-Hill, 1971), 75 When the BPP made an alliance with YLO and the Young Lords Patriot Organization (a street gang of white youths, turned political activists), forming the Rainbow Coalition. The Rainbow Coalition sent out their representatives to a Students for a Democratic Society (SDC) in Chicago May of 1969. A representative of SDS, Jose Martinez met with Cha Cha at the convention and mentioned to him that he was going back to New York and asked permission to open a New York Chapter of the Young Lords. With other groups such as SAC (Sociedad de Albizu Campos), RSG and SDS popping out of different places of New York, on June 7th, they all met and decided to merge. It became a group of working-class, street people and students coming together for the greater cause of the Puerto Rican community in El Barrio. On July 26th, 1969, the Young Lords Organization of Chicago recognized the New York State Chapter of the Young Lords Organization. In the very beginning of the New York chapter, the YLO were focused on servicing the community and the first project that the New York Young Lords got on was the “Garbage Offensive”. In the summer of 1969, El Barrio lacked basic sanitation services that other affluent neighborhoods enjoyed. The city was not putting out enough garbage trucks to service the community and do appropriate clean up. “There is glass sprinkled everywhere, vacant lots filled with rubble, burnt out buildings on nearly every block, and people packed together in the polluted summer heat. There is also the smell of garbage, coming in an incredible variety of flavors and strengths.” YLO newspaper, 1969, volume 1, number 4 With the frustration of being denied access to sanitation services because of the racism and classism, the YLO came up with a different approach. They walked up to the storage depot took the brooms and walked out. For three consecutive Sundays, the YLO and people of the community gathered to clean the streets of El Barrio. And on Sunday, July 27, the community doing the work of the city workers, had had enough of it and reached their breaking point. When the members of the YLO came back to the block, they decided they were going to collect all the garbage and dump it in the middle of the street. Garbage was dumped and set ablaze on Third Ave between 111th and 112th Street blocking traffic and access to the area in retaliation of ignoring the area and the issues that the YLP had been requesting for assistance on; sanitation services, now the city had a bigger issue and mess to deal with. Alarmed with the level of organization achieved by this Puerto Rican community, mayor Lindsay and the police concocted a plan to regain social control instead of aiding in social reform, in what will become a tactic that usually implied the use of public force and undercover police to intimidate and arrest political activists. The City of New York Police Department, Special Services Division, August 19, 1969. By the end 1969, the YL in New York will develop their political program, the Thirteen Point Program and Platform, modeled from the BPP. The YL wanted and believed that Puerto Ricans on the island and mainland had the right to self-determination, and that Latinos in general had this right as well and shouldn’t be oppressed by the US government. The YL believed that persons belonging to the Third World were not free and faced equal or more challenges and that each nationality within the US borders had the right to govern their own people. They believed that machismo was a revolutionary idea, not an oppressive one. The meaning of machismo was to have a strong masculine pride, strong characterization in strength, determination, ability, to be exaggeratingly strong and aggressive. The program also states the need for communities to have access to public institutions, and within the institutions, to learn the true history of their culture and learn their natives languages. It also stated that capitalism was taking over people and race and American imperialism, was dividing communities. They believed that once capitalism falls; class, racism and oppression, were going to disappear giving birth to a new man. As the YL became a more organized group and membership grew, they sought out and implemented plans to aid the people of the community of El Barrio. Innovations such as a free breakfast program for the youth, food and clothing drive, vaccinations, lead poisoning detection and TB testing. In order for these plans move forward, the largest space for this and the place to get the most outpour of the community was the Methodist Church on 111th Street and Lexington Avenue. “The Central Staff decided that we would shift Organization’s tactics from street fighting to programs which served our people and which would build the Organization’s theoretical level.” Pablo “Yoruba” Guzmán, Archive :A Guide to A La Izquierda: The Puerto Rican Movement, vol. 2, no. 1-vol.3, no.20, text-fiche, reel 8. Members of the YLP attended services at the church and were making the efforts through permissible channels to obtain the church space for the programs, but were turned down on a consistent basis. On December 29, 1969, after the Young Lords felt that they’ve exhausted their channel of pleading with the church for a community use under the Lord's directives, the Young Lords took over the church. The YLP blocked all entrances and chained doors. The name of the church was changed by the YL to The People’s Church, and for 11 days, they offered programs to El Barrio community. By this take over, made this event one of the catalyst to make waves to a bigger public, it put them on the map, thus changing the agenda of a cause of not just Puerto Ricans, but for all people of the community. This initiated many programs such as the Free Breakfast program, clothing drive, and assistance for mothers on welfare and Tb testing. Towards the end of 1969, the YLP began to publish and distribute their journal, Palante. This packet was a very pivotal source of information not only within the organization, but throughout the different chapters the YLP had established across the US, such as New Jersey, Philadelphia, California, etc. In the spring of 1970, Palante transitioned into a full bilingual newspaper, it contained articles about the Puerto Rican revolution going on in New York City and the revolutions and economic strife that were going on in Puerto Rico. It also featured articles about key figures of the Black Power Movement Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Huey Newton and the Rainbow Coalition. As the central communicational dispositive of the YL, Palante also taught its members the mission of the YLP and explained the ideologies of Marxism, Mao, Che Guevara and other socialist theorists formed the ideological core of the YPL and its revolutionary aspirations. A weekly radio show followed soon after also with the same name, Palante on station WBAI-FM. With all the changes the YLO of New York were going through and the increase of membership due to Palante, the chapter of New York had decided to break away from the YLO chapter of Chicago in 1970. Reasons among the YLO of New York was going in a more political and radical direction learning and reading Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Marxism, Che Guevara, and applying this into their political practices, making a name for themselves not only within El Barrio but all of New York City. The YLO of Chicago was more into helping their local community by offering similar services as the YLO of New York, such as a breakfast program, clothing drives, food drives, a community health center. And some members of the YLO of New York felt that members of the YLO of Chicago could not make a disconnect with gang member lifestyle and activities. New York chapter did not believe in that after all the hard work and on-going growing membership, and sought best to part ways. The YLO New York Chapter now became the Young Lords Party of New York (YLP). A Shift in Gender “When you look to any group to find out who’s the most oppressed, it’s always gonna be the women.” Denise Oliver, Palante: Young Lords Party, 1971 While the primary focus of the Young Lords Party was to provide a place where the community could come together and be fed and educated on social and health issues and push for an agenda for equality amongst the Puerto Rican community of El Barrio, a new movement within their own was about to take place. The women of the Young Lords Party were a very big influential, and a key component branch of the organization. And during the raid of the police against the YLP at the People’s Church, the women of the organization felt that they have had enough of the police but within the same people they worked for. Being the women of this organization, they joined for the same reasons as the men did: to take care of their community, to fight for the injustices of the people, to change the public's perception on Puerto Ricans in El Barrio. And not being allowed in the forefront with their “brothers,” not being able to give opinions was not where they wanted to stay. The Women’s liberation movement of the early 1970s was an ongoing matter and the women of the Young Lords Party of New York City took a look at the 13-point program that the men had put in place for all members of their organization to seek change into it. As the New York Times put it in 1970, “the women of the Young Lords are not called the Young ladies. They are Young Lords, too, and to hear them tell it, they are probably the most liberated women in town.” Judy Klemesrud, “Young Women Find a Place in High Command of Young Lords,” New York Times, November 11, 1970, accessed December, 2015, The women were tired of not only being oppressed by the police for being part of the YLP, but also for being women and the sentiment trickled into the party itself. The point of the Thirteen Point Program and Platform that the women wanted to change was regarding machismo and how it was to be a revolutionary and not oppressive. This was according to Denise Oliver-Velez, a Sargent member of the YPL and one of the front line leaders, “the oxymoron of the century,” as she remembered decades later. Oliver-Velez, was appointed the organization’s Minister of Finance, the women of the YLP were aware of the push in politics for the women’s liberation. The women of the YLP began to “force” the issues of this movement and started to have their brotherly comrades within the party see their female counterparts as more than a group of women. As Oliver recalled, “We started reading and doing our own political education about transforming ourselves, because not all of the sisters’ opinions were anti-chauvinist either-they had been raised to be passive-servant-Puerto Rican-housewife-doormat- type and undoing a history of accepting oppressive and sexist behavior from men, which required working with some of these sisters.” Denise Oliver in Darrel Wanzer-Serrano, The New York Young Lords and the Struggle for Liberation: We Refused to Cave In (Philadelphia: Temple Press, 2015), 97. They wanted to be seen as women that could hold their own, lead and take charge as well as the men. The women had set schedules when it came to their duties and cadres. From the early morning the routine for the women of the YLP was to attend Political Education classes, then split into cadres for community services such as picking up kids for the breakfast program, taking them back. Another cadre would be in charge of selling a certain amount of newspapers, that money helped maintain the organization. Then come back to the office, regroup and split up again and go around the neighborhood collecting urine samples from children to get them tested for lead poisoning, come back and take a political education class on how to teach others on politics and then attend study hall and read on Lenin and repeat the same schedule the following day. According to Oliver, “Machismo is a word that is used to depict a certain tendency among Latino males. It does not mean that machismo does not exist among white males-it’s just not that obvious.” Abramson, Palante: Young Lords Party, 48 The women of YLP had endured enough of this contradiction. This challenged the long ideology and institution of patriarchy, and how this establishes a hierarchal system within an environment that pens men against women. Women of YLP were influenced by other political groups, they’ve heard about Puerto Rican activist and patriotic leader of the Puerto Rican independence movement in the 1860’s, Mariana Bracetti, they’ve read books about revolutionary women in China, the women in Algeria, and the women in Vietnam. The women of these societies fought side by side with the men in the front lines of war, they carried weapons, the fought and protected each other. Oliver-Velez argued also that the machismo of the men was demonstrated as a punishment, “At one point in time we were told that we could not even have any meetings, they tried to shut us down, and we defied them. We said we’re gonna meet, we met on Sundays because that was the only time we had from “you are a Young Lord 25 hours a day”, that’s what we say 25 not 24. And we busted our asses working. And we had that little space on Sunday that we would get together and meet and told us we could not meet. And they took us in the Defense Ministry, who were martial artists, and they took us in where we umm, we used to do training in martial arts. And umm, they told us, “down on the floor, give us 100 push ups, down on the floor give us another 100 push ups, down on the floor gives us another 100 push ups.” And we did it, then they got us up, they threw punches to here. I got hard core belly from then still, muscles. They punched us, we looked at them, and we did not flinch, and we kept on meeting.” Women of the Young Lords, Part 2 of 5 (video lecture, Bronx Musuem of Art, July 23, 2015), accessed March 3, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR4ro0yb7pE. Their relentlessness and putting a stop to machismo behavior within their own organization, took some time and during their wait for change, they’d continued their community work, assignments and their still kept their women meetings. In 1970, the men of the YLP, revised their 13 Point Program and Platform and changed the women's point from being in tenth place to fifth, and it declared and acknowledged that the women were also in the struggle alongside them creating them equals and that machismo and male chauvinism was not welcomed nor practiced anymore. With the question of where women belong within the revolution, the question of sexuality was also brought up to the surface. The YLP internal struggles with the accustomed machismo, now headed towards an open platform in where they could discuss and promote issues such as abortion, contraception, prostitution and gender and sexual identification. Yoruba, one of the head leaders of the YPL stated “Since I’m talking about sexism, the second thing that made perhaps a greater impact on us was when we first heard about Gay Liberation. That’s a whole other trip, because we found out it’s a lot quicker for people to accept the fact that sisters should be in the front of the struggle, than saying that we’re gonna have gay people in the Party. There’s this whole thing about faggots, you know, and queers, and this and that. From the time you were a kid your folks told you the worst thing you could be was gay. I was told, man, that if I turned out gay, I would be disinherited, beat up, kicked out- and my father was big, you know, and fear, man, it kept me from being gay. And when you think about fear keeping you from being anything, you realize there must be something wrong with it.” Abramson, Palante: Young Lords Party, 46 Guzman goes on to explain on his own personal reasoning and explanation on the differences between the negative context that a queer man is given versus a lesbian and how their analysis of the gay struggle in liberation is that of rounding out the person. And that people are born with certain traits, and these traits only designate half of who a person really is, and in order for a person to know themselves in a complete essence, may that be sexual identification, there has to be a level of comfortability and experience within society that completes the person. Guzman continues, “Being gay is not a problem; the problem is that people do not understand what gay means. See, there is a biological division in sex, right-however, this society has created a false division based on a thing called gender.” Ibid., 47 There was anxiety in bringing the gay liberation conversation to the YLP, Guzman states, “the gay liberation struggle has shown us how to complete ourselves, so we’ve been able to accept this and understand this. Now, it is rough-it’s going to be very rough, bringing this home to the Young Lords Party. But I have a lot of faith and hope in the Lords-’cause the Lords are already talking about it, and people are getting their minds blown about this. As long as people have the ability to want their minds blown, we will always survive as a party, we will always be able to move forward. When people start getting old minds, forget it-no matter how young they may be. An old mind is a mind that refuses to accept changes, right. If that should come down, the Party either has to get some new people with young minds, or we better find a new party.” Ibid. Due to the opportunity and change the women's caucus of the YLP created, the gay and the lesbian caucuses of an organization that solely practiced patriarchy, now conceded to the changes within society with the gay liberation movement. In the fall of 1970, during a demonstration in East Harlem, a very radical Queer Puerto Rican activist, Sylvia Rivera, would be a member of the gay caucus of the Young Lords Party, representing her community, the Queer, transvestite people of New York City. The Gay Liberation, its struggles and activism “Mainstreaming, normality, being normal. I understand how much everybody likes to fit into that mainstream gay and lesbian community.” - Sylvia Rivera, LGMNY talk 2001 Lauren Galarza and Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, “Sylvia Rivera’s Talk at LGMNY, June 2001 Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, New York City,” Centro Journal, no. 19, vol. 1 (Spring 2007):121 In order for us to understand how the Sylvia Rivera’s alliance with the YLP and her meager beginnings before and during the movement, we first must understand the beginnings of gay and lesbian organizations in the late 1950’s and the Gay Movement of the 1960’s. And how this played a part within the YLP, thus creating a shift and a change in gender relations and sexual identity. We can explore and define the complex issues within the gay community and the impact from one event, which forever changed the perceptions of not only gays, but the Queer community as well. Social radical movements of the late 1960s, were the foundation and catalysts of the black power movement. Primarily demanding equal rights for persons of all walks of life, including Puerto Ricans, Gays, Lesbians, Transgender, etc. Radical movements were defined as left-wing transformations that defied societal norm and gender norms and expectations. The members of such groups believed that the laws and rules set for their society were discriminatory. Many Puerto Ricans felt that they had to give up their identities of being Puerto Rican to assimilate to the American identity. But their American identity was challenged not only by their ethnicity, but by the color of their skin, many Puerto Ricans and closeted gay, lesbian and queer Puerto Ricans, lived in below par conditions, drug infested areas, high crime and vandalism, were outcasted, unemployed, became the lumpen of their communities. With the widespread belief that Puerto Ricans were just street people, the poverty level, crime and inequality presented in an unrest and social anxiety. If the life of a Puerto Rican was to be subjected to colonial oppression, living in the most depressed, under privileged, areas of New York City, were not promised the best paid jobs, or opportunity to advance without receiving a college education, then how would life be for a gay closeted Puerto Rican? Devoid of accepting one's sexuality, having to avoid sexual markers to family and the general public, suffering from emotional and sociological issues, made it a complex and in depth struggle. An organization that started to take action amongst it’s black people and want change and empowerment were the Black Panther Party was the pioneer on social, radical activism and exemplified a united front against oppression and subordination to Imperialism and capitalism. The Gay community wanted their rights as the Blacks did with Civil Rights, and the turn in Women’s Liberation. The surge for the Gay Liberation Movement was another revolution born out of the Black Power movement just as the YLP movement had taken model from the BPP. Gay rights activist existed since the 1950s when two organizations were founded, the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis (DOB). The Mattachine Society was founded and led by Communist Party members. K.A.Cuordileone, Manhood and American Political Culture in the Cold War (New York, Routledge, 2004), 71-73 During this time, the US was undergoing the Red Scare, in which the federal government was after people, organizations and traitors that would jeopardize US intelligence and compromise US civilian safety at the hands of Russians. The leaders of this society were kept under wraps for fear of the exposure and ties within the Communist Party. Members had no idea whom were the ones in charged but lead to believe that they were modeled after the Freemasons. After pressure and investigations by US federal government and intelligence within the organization, its leadership started to crumble. The resignations of their Communist leaders shifted the mission from a political stand point to a social one, advocating for the homosexual community and conforming them into society. ONE was the first publication for homosexuals in the U.S. This resource was used to inform the gay communities of police harassment and brought up topics that were not in the forefront such as cross-dressing as well as articles on “homosexuality as a socially-cohesive identity.” Ruth Pettis, Homophile Movement, 2008 The context and literature was not very well liked by many communities and member of the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. The Daughters of Bilitis, (DOB) was formed by Lesbians, they branched out because lesbians within the Mattachine felt that their rights were not fully supported or acknowledged and lacked female leadership. The Mattachine and DOB promoted and worked alongside each other in many social events but always kept as separate entities. Both the Mattachine and DOB, were in agreement with assimilating within social norms and blending with society and not making one's sexuality obvious in public, they approached the complexities of the gay community with conservatory representation such as talks and promoting mainstream values. This was done to avoid public humiliation, harassment, losing one's job and even death, as society during this time was not accepting of gays. This was an insult to blue-collar and masculine looking lesbians. These organizations started to pursue their own entities within the U.S. and would heed on a bigger platform with a new revolution to come. One example of this rhetoric ideology was Antonia Pantoja, Puerto Rican activist, educator and closeted lesbian. During the “don’t ask and don’t era,” it was the generation in which she belonged to, it was customary to keep quiet about one's sexuality, but lived in constant fear of someone finding out and ruining her career in politics. Pantoja never advocated or promoted gay rights, “In order to serve the Puerto Rican community, she apparently felt that her sexual and emotional relationships with women could not be publically acknowledged. At the same time, she lived her life with female companions and found acceptance in the community as long as the nature of her relationships with women was not verbalized.” Lourdes Torres, “Boricua Lesbians: Sexuality, nationality and the politics of passing,” Centro Journal, vol. 19, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 234 In 1969, The Stonewall Inn located in the neighborhood of Greenwich Village in New York City, was the epicenter of a revolution that many of the gay community have been waiting for. During the early hours of June 28, 1969, a riot broke out between the patrons and the New York Police Department. The Stonewall inn was a bar ran by the mafia in which accepted and catered to the counterculture and marginalized groups within the Gay community, such as Drag Queens, Butch Lesbians, Transgender, male prostitutes, poor minorities and effeminate men. The police were sent out to raid gay bars in New York City on a regular basis. And during these raids, the police harassed and abused these people because they were the misfits of society. The popular of arrest were the men in full drag queens garb. In order for the police to distinguish between and man and a woman, the women were required to wear three pieces of clothing, if not, she would be arrested. Some were taken to the bathroom with female police officers and were threatened to be striped search to determine their actual gender. Leslie Feinberg, “Cops Raid the Stonewall Inn,” Lavender and Red, part 63, http://www.workers.org/2006/us/lavender-red-63/ (May 25, 2006) If it was an exposed man in women’s clothing, she was arrested, more so if he was a Latino or a man of color. Patrons weren’t the only ones harassed by the police, if the employees of the bar did not comply, they would be arrested too. A common dilemma was that gay bars at this time were not allowed to sell alcohol because they had no state issued license to do so, police would seize the alcohol, money along with arrests and assaulted patrons. But in the early hours of June 28th, another raid pursued as any other only this time the management of Stonewall were not tipped off ahead of time, as they usually were accustomed. There were police and detectives working undercover in the bar as patrons gathering evidence to use against Stonewall to shut it down. The police rushed in yelling that they were going to take over the place, lights were turned on, music halted. Those patrons who had experienced raids prior, started to flee, but Police had the entire bar braced and surrounded. As police began to arrest unidentified patrons or those who did not comply, and seize alcohol, the paddy wagons to round up the arrested and evidence, were not there. So the police began to let several patrons go thus forming a crowd of onlookers that multiplied to hundreds. As the wagons came, the first to be put in were the drag queens, when the public saw this, “Gay Power” was shouted and onlookers began to throw coins at the police symbolizing the illegal payoffs that the police would get to keep the gay bars running. Bottles were hurled at the police, then they barricaded themselves inside the bar seeking refuge, but the crowd wouldn’t have it and charged the door. Inside, drinks, punches were thrown, police defended themselves using their nightsticks. One of the patrons who was lead out of the Stonewall Inn, was Sylvia Rivera, a Puerto Rican transgender, pioneer Trans Activist and founder of STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries). The Beginning of Someone New “In Spanish cultures, if you are effeminate, you’re automatically a fag; you’re a gay boy. I mean, you start off as a young child and you don’t have an option- especially back then. You were either a fag or a dyke. There was no in-between. You have your journey through society the way it was structured. That’s how I fit into it at that time in my life. Those were the words of that era.” - Sylvia Rivera Sylvia Rivera, “Queens in Exile, The Forgotten Ones,” in Genderqueer: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary, ed. Nestle, Wilchins and Howell (New York: Alyson Books, 2002), 67-85 Sylvia Rivera, was born, male and named Ray Rivera on July 2, 1951 to a Venezuelan mother and Puerto Rican father. Her mother remarried and had a daughter, but the marriage had many issues, one being that Rivera’s stepfather, was a drug dealer. When Rivera was three years old, her mother committed suicide, and during her desperate act, tried to kill Rivera by giving her the same poisonous concoction. “She mixed rat poison into milk, drank it, and gave some to me.” Ibid., 67. Rivera was rushed off to a hospital with her mother and her stomach was pumped and survived the brush with death, her mother died three days later. Sylvia’s stepfather was not interested in raising children and abandoned her and her half sister who were taken in by her maternal grandmother in the neighborhood of El Barrio in New York City. Rivera’s grandmother was Venezuelan and despised that her grandson was Puerto Rican because Rivera’s father was a dark skin Puerto Rican and dark skin people scarred Rivera’s grandmother. The grandmother would have preferred Rivera to be a white, pure blood Venezuelan. Ibid. Sylvia sought out to get out of the viejitas apartment, and at only eleven years old, started to hustle alongside her uncle and had sexual relations with her 14-year old male cousin. Rivera was teased by the women in the neighborhood for being feminine instead of being and acting like a boy and was labeled a “despicable hustling maricon.” Jessi Gan, “Still at the back of the bus: Sylvia Rivera’s Struggle,” Centro Journal, vol. 19, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 129 The terminology maricon comes from the root word, mariquita, which mean ladybug in English, it is given this due to ladybugs can be a male insect, yet flies like fairies in a delicate motion. Mariquita is a word used in many Spanish speaking Caribbean countries such as the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Puerto Rico. “According to the Puerto Rican anthropologist, Rafael L. Ramirez (1993), pato is a synonym for maricon, although with a softer, less aggressive charge.” Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, “Queer ducks, Puerto Rican patos, and Jewish-American feygelekh:Birds and the cultural representation of homosexuality,” Centro Journal, vol. 19, no. 1 (Spring 2007):202 Ramirez gives the explanation of the word maricon is to defined as of superficial or peripheral appearance that cannot define himself whether in his actions or looks to be a real man, not man enough or lacking masculinity. The viejita (grandmother), kept physically, mentally and emotionally abusing Sylvia. The breaking point was when a neighbor had claimed to have seen Sylvia on 42nd Street and told her Grandmother, Rivera attempted suicide and was hospitalized for two months for slashing her veins on her arms. Rivera was hurt, frustrated with the labels that she was given by her own community, a gay maricon, that she left home at the age of 10 years old. “But I believe that growing up the way that I did, I was basically pushed into this role. In Spanish cultures, if your are effeminate, you’re automatically a fag’ you’re a gay boy.” Rivera, Queens in Exile, The Forgotten Ones, 69. Being a desolated child in the streets of New York, Rivera remembered something that her family pointed out when they’d traveled by 42nd Street when she was a child, “I had found my way to 42nd Street by the comments made when my family used to go to Coney Island. The adults would say about people who got on at 42nd Street who were effeminate and wearing makeup, “Oh, look at the maricons,” and I would have to turn my face away because it would hurt me to hear that. They would say, “This is where the maricones come and they make money.” Rivera, Queens in Exile, The Forgotten Ones, 69 Those comments would stay embedded in Sylvia’s mind and found her way to her new home with the transvestite prostitutes on 42nd Street. Rivera found solace and was cared for by the drags queens, many of them black and Latinas, she grew to love and was christened Sylvia Lee, which she states, “just like being reborn.” Jessi Gan, “Still at the back of the bus: Sylvia Rivera’s Struggle,” 130 Sylvia was not a veteran of the streets and had to learn quickly how to sell her body to make money, at the age of 10. As the years passed, Rivera was also into taking drugs and was incarcerated multiple times at Rikers and was sexually accosted by the police and physically and sexually assaulted by other straight male prisoners that shared her cell. When Rivera was 18, to avoid being drafted to the war in Vietnam, Rivera dressed up in full drag and went straight down to the military induction center. Thus proving that she felt that she was more of a woman than a man and making her stance against another revolution of war. Gay, Queer and Activist “The general membership is frightened of Sylvia and thinks she’s a troublemaker. They’re frightened of street people.” Sylvia was from the wrong ethnic group, from the wrong side of the tracks, wearing the wrong clothes-managing single handedly and simultaneously to embody several frightening, overlapping categories of otherness. By her mere presence, she was likely to trespass against some encoded middle-class white script, and could count on being constantly patronized when not being summarily excluded.” - Arthur Bell Deborah Rudacille, The Riddle of Gender: Science Activism, and Transgender Rights (New York: Edition Books, Random House 2006), 154 To get a clearer sense the general consensus that was embedded to the public on homosexuals during this time in history in the U.S. we must explore the laws and beliefs that were widely spread by doctors and medical experts about gays in general. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) classified homosexuality as a mental disorder during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1953, a doctor by the name of Evelyn Hooker received a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to conduct studies on people to see if homosexuality was a form of a mental disorder. Katharine S. Milar, “Myth Buster: Evelyn Hooker’s Groundbreaking research exploded the notion that homosexuality was a mental illness, ultimately removing it from the DSM,” Monitor on Psychology, vol. 42, no. 2 (February 2011):24 Doctors of this study were also used as medical experts to testify in cases related to homosexuals that they were not capable to take care of their children, homosexuals were not fit to work or teach children and that homosexuals could not be in positions of employment that dealt with “security and intelligence.” Anti Defamation League, 2011 The belief was that as gay person “sodomized” during sexual intercourse, this was a deviant behavior and therefore could be inflicted on children and on coworkers. Gays were seen as sexual predators and outcasts. From all of these studies and opinions of doctors and other medical professionals, many states ruled homosexuality to be a crime and, therefore, against the law. Making this widespread notion difficult for gays anywhere who were employed, they could be fired and ostracized because of their sexual orientation. This ideology and theory carried from the 1950’s throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Riviera argued that, “everybody thinks that we want to out on them street corners. No we do not. We don’t want to be out there sucking dick and getting fucked up the ass. But that’s the only alternative that we have to survive because the laws do not give us the right to get a job the way we feel comfortable.” Lauren Galarza and Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, “Sylvia Rivera’s Talk at LGMNY, June 2001 Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, New York City,” Centro Journal, no. 19, vol. 1 (Spring 2007):121 By this we see, that the lack of employment opportunity, which then leads to lack of housing for the people of the gay community, especially Latino, black or other minorities was difficult and resulted in homelessness, drug use and prostitution for survival. Rivera became an activist after she was arrested on 42nd Street Times Square in New York City, for collecting signatures from the public for a gay rights bill via the GAA Gay Activist Alliance, founded in 1969. “That’s how my whole activist career started. Besides, I did not consider that night at the Stonewall to be so important out of all the other movements going on. Getting that first arrest for something that I believed in was...wow, what a rush!” Rivera, Genderqueer, 81 Being a member of the GAA (Gay Activists Alliance), she went to demonstrations, rallies in support of the organization's agenda for equality for gay rights and the end of police brutality and harassment for being gay out in public. And wherever there was a social event with the gay and queer community, the police would raid the place, as Rivera explains a typical night at a bar or party; “Routine was ‘Faggots over here, dykes over here, and freaks over there’, referring to my side of the community. The night goes on, you know, they proof you for ID...We are are led out of the bar. The routine was that cops get their payoff, they confiscate the liquor, if you were a bartender you would snatch the money as soon as the lights went on because you would never see that money again... A padlock would go on the door. You come back and the Mafia was there cutting the padlock off, bringing in more liquor, and back to business as usual.” Rivera, Talk at LGMNY, 118 The night of the Stonewall Riots, Rivera was dressed as a woman as she claimed herself to be, and that night was like any other night that the NYPD did their raids, but the continuance of harassment came to a halt. During a talk at the Latino Gay Men Of New York in 2001, Rivera gave details as a witness and participant to the tensions leading to the riot, “Well, it just so happened that that night it was muggy; everybody was being, I guess, cranky; a lot of us were involved in different struggles; and instead of dispersing, we went across the street. Part of history forgets, that as cops are inside the bar, the confrontation started outside by throwing change at the police. We started throwing pennies, the nickels, the quarters and the dimes. Here’s your payoff, you pigs! You fucking pigs! Get out of our faces.” This was started by the street queens of the era, which I was part of, Marsha P. Johnson, and many others that are not here.” Ibid., 118-119. Rivera continues to give accounts for the raid, but mentions something eye opening about the feeling of overall tensions of the Greenwich community, “But we also have to remember one thing: that it was not just the gay community and the street queens that really escalated this riot; it was also the help of the many radical straight men and women that lived in the village at the time, they knew the struggle of the gay community and the trans community.” Rivera, LGMNY talk, 119 Various media reports had stated that the riots were started by the gays and queers of the bar and labeled a “gay riot,” but the participants that night were people of color, poor people and nonconforming gender persons. All were classified under the term “gay” by the New York Mattachine Newsletter in the Advocate magazine in September 1969. Giving this label to all the participants of the riot, was a quick identifier for those who did not fall under the white, middle-class category. The riots at the Stonewall continued for three nights, Rivera argued that the more the police came in to control the protesters and shut down the bar, the more the gay community fought back, the point was to have the world see the true indignation, suffering and injustices to the gay community and from this be liberated and freed from being an oppressed and forgotten community. According to Rivera’s account for the Stonewall being a drag queen or gay bar, she states that it was not a place for drag queens and gays, it was a local bar ran by the Mafia, and adhered to white, middle-class men to solicit young boys of different races. The only way for a drag queen to be allowed in, was if she had an inside connection. Rivera details on the inside ambiance of the Stonewall. Along with the casual business of sex, there was a casual business of drugs at the Stonewall, which would be the hub of pick up and then distribution and use at Washington Square Bar on 3rd Street and Broadway. Rivera explains her usual patron activity at the Stonewall. Rivera continued her career in activism after the Stonewall riots with the GAA and the newly founded Gay Liberation Front, it was established right after the Stonewall. These organizations gave Rivera the outlet she needed to get her message of inequality, police brutality, poverty, drug addiction and discrimination within the trans community just as in promoting the same for the gay. The difference between the two organizations was that the GLF was a radical organization, it believed that it represented all oppressed people and had alliances with the YPL and the Black Panther Party. Whereas the GAA was a homophile organization, as I discussed prior, it was about conforming to society norms and not labeling oneself with gayness identifiers, if a man was a man, he was to dress and act like one in public, and if a woman was a woman, she too had to dress and act the part in public sphere, it was ok to be gay in the privacy of one's home. And adhered to political agenda with politicians rather than to embrace focus on social issues of poor, gay communities. Rivera and her drag queen friend, Marsha P. Johnson took part of a sit in protest at Weinstein Hall at New York University in 1970. The sit in was due to administrators of the university cancelled planned dances that were sponsored by a gay organization. Protesters included many activists, including Radicalesbians and the GLF (Gay Liberation Front). Being inspired by the radicalism of the GLF, Rivera along with Johnson formed their organization, STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries). It was created out to bring attention and awareness of the attitudes and beliefs towards the Transvestite and Transgender communities under the GLF were not of uniform standards. The Trans community, whether poor, drug addicted or minority, now had a new radical leader and a new foundation to call home. One Queer Boricua Radical Meets a Boricua Radical Group: Inclusion or Ignorance “We the Young Lords Party are revolutionary and oppose racism. We realize that capitalism has used racism to keep oppressed people fighting each other while the faggot pigs makes the money.” - Iris Morales-Luciano, Palante. 1970 Iris Morales Luciano, “Puerto Rican Racism,” Palante, vol. 2, num. 7, July 17, 1970. Rivera ended up meeting the Young Lords Party at a demonstration in East Harlem in the fall of 1970. The demonstration was in protest of police brutality and Rivera joined in with their STAR banner, this was STAR’s first public appearance and represented as a group. Rivera states that when she meet some of the YLP, she became one of them. “Anytime, they needed any help, I was always there for the Young Lords. It was just the respect that they gave us as human beings. They gave us a lot of respect.” Leslie Feinberg, “Leslie Feinberg interviews Sylvia Rivera,” http://www.workers.org/ww/1998/sylvia0702.php, 1998. YPL Central Committee member and Ministry of Education, Iris Morales Luciano wrote the quote above. What is striking in her quote is her use for the word faggot, which during this era, was a derogatory name to identify a homosexual. She wrote this piece in the YLP’s, Palante in the summer 1970, Rivera becomes a member in the fall of the same year. This quote is two fold, it shows that the YLP quickly changed and embraced all gender inclusion or how ignorantly this was used while the YPL was already having internal gay and lesbian caucuses. In acknowledging Rivera’s connection with the YLP, historians and former member of the YLP discuss on a talk show the revolutionary actions during the Puerto Rican movement. In a transcript of political television program, Democracy Now, hosted by former Minister of Information of YPL, Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman. Their guest Johanna Fernandez, professor of history at Baruch College- CUNY, mention and acknowledge Rivera’s membership to the YLP, but fail to elaborate on details on what works both groups partnered up on. As mentioned prior, after the men of the YPL recanted their “machismo must be revolutionary and not oppressive” and changed to “ Down with machismo and male chauvinism”, this opened up the door for an internal women’s caucus and introduced an internal gay and lesbian caucus to the YPL. Another radical group that Rivera was affiliated with was the Black Panther Party. Huey Newton, co-founder and the Minister of Defense for the BPP, had written a manifesto in the BBP newspaper stating an alliance within the Gay Liberation Movement and the Women’s Liberation. The BPP were the first to acknowledge in public in mainstream an alliance between a “straight” organization and a gay organization. Newton “went so far as to embrace a fluid conception of sexuality, implying that homophobia stemmed from a Freudian fear of one’s own homosexuality.” Samuel Galen Ng, “Trans Power! Sylvia Lee Rivera’s STAR and the Black Panther Party,” Left History, 17, no. 1 (2013) New York University Newton’s manifesto, he called the homosexual community the most oppressed minority group in the United States. Rivera met Newton at the Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention (RPCC) in September 1970 in Washington D.C. Historians debate where they exactly met, Rivera is quoted by Leslie Feinberg meeting Newton In Philadelphia. Newton recognized Rivera at the convention and acknowledged her as “that queen from New York.” They spoke briefly and from this Rivera is quoted that in meeting Newton, “greatest experiences.” There is no direct or specific work as evidence to prove that Rivera did any work with the YPL or the BPP or vice versa. Still, the quotes from both the YLP and BPP acknowledging her a member and she declaring the same can let us speculate that Rivera was an active member in the organization even when she did not occupy prominent positions of power. . Sylvia Rivera and the GAA “The more meetings I went to, I noticed, that I was not part of them; and I would never part of them.” - Sylvia Rivera, Out Rage ’69, 1995 documentary by Arthur Dong It was after Rivera took the stage on June 28,1973, at the Christopher Street Liberation Day rally (a Gay Pride rally), that labeled and marginalized Rivera as a queer, radical Puerto Rican. There were tensions between members of the GAA in which Rivera was a member of. She states “Jean O’Leary (a radical Lesbian member of the GAA) started a big commotion at this rally. It was the year that Bette Midler performed for us. I was supposed to be a featured speaker that day. But being that the women felt we were offensive, the drag queens Tiffany and Billy were not allowed to perform. I had to fight my way up on that stage and literally, people that I called my comrade in the movement, literally beat me, I kicked their asses. I did get to speak. I got my points across.” Rivera, LGMNY talk, 121. Rivera’s speech only last four minutes, but during her time on stage, there was anger, tiredness yet courage to convey the realities of the abuse and discrimination that the Trans community was being subjected to. During her time on stage, she was booed, cursed at, told off, but she kept her composure, and explained how their gay brothers and sisters were suffering while being incarcerated just because they were transgender or gay. Sylvia Rivera, “Y’all Better Quiet Down!” (raw video of Christopher Street Liberation Day, 1973), posted October 22, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QiigzZCEtQ Many of these jailed people were poor, minorities that could not afford their own legal counsel and forgotten by the same organizations that they stood up for. Rivera states that these brothers and sisters do not write to the Women’s Liberation Movement, they contact her own organization, STAR, and ask for help. Rivera was outraged on how she had lost everything in the name of Gay Liberation and how they had turned their backs on the Trans community. The attending crowd disowned Rivera, ridiculed her the entire time during her speech, made it to the end, in a semi-emotional state claiming for a revolution now and Gay Power. Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 1 - Sylvia Rivera delivering her speech at the Christopher Street Liberation Day, June 28, 1970 Being a Puerto Rican transvestite (Queer) during this time of change in in the US, the trans community had to fight not only for rights to be Trans in the public sphere, but also had to struggle with injunctions such as bigotry, social/economic limitations, ethnic and racial issues as well as culture and class racism. “For more and more Queer and Trans people, regardless of marital status, there is no inheritance, no health benefits from employers, no legal immigration status, and no state protection of our relationship to our children.” Bassichis, Lee, and Spade, 16-17 After Rivera was highly publicized and used as the poster child for gay rights because of her involvement at Stonewall, the GAA rejected Latino/a transvestites in order to push their political agenda and get white middle class elected officials to push for their cause, just for Gay rights. Rivera identified as a Queer (transvestite), not only as gay, which lead her being ostracized and outcast from her own gay brothers and sisters, all whom she had given her life of activism to and for. Conclusion The conclusions my research has discovered are multiple. First, while the YLP was having a revolution within the revolution they were fiercely fighting, the women of the YLP made it possible to look at sexuality and gender identification from a different perspective, it became an empowering and self-determination movement within the organization that not only challenged the views of its internal caucus, but change the views of society about Puerto Ricans and their identification. It was not an easy change for the men of the YLP due to the complexities of machismo and male chauvinism that came with being Puerto Rican. The ideology of decolonization plays an important role in this aspect, because the YLP were not only pulling away from the stigma of colonization, but also in the context of decolonization, embracing a new equality not only between men and women, but people of different gender identities. Second, the Civil Rights gave Latinos a huge platform to associate from. This movement gave birth so to speak to the black movement, in which many Puerto Ricans could identify with, being that the majority of Puerto Ricans identified themselves as such. But Puerto Ricans saw the drastic changes occurring within black communities and began to want that equality for themselves and proclaimed a Puerto Rican identity. Likewise, the relationship between the Black Power movement and the Puerto Rican Movement (as it was also the case among Chicanos in Los Angeles) came from the awareness about their colonial status and the way they understood the right for self-determination as part of the struggles of decolonization in the so-called Third World. Guzman had stated himself that the YLP learned that people became more “acceptable” to having announced the sisters can equally be in the forefront of the struggle than to have gay people within the organization. This comment was said after the introduction of the gay and lesbian caucus, but it made me think with that connection that the relationship between the gays and lesbians and queers was not a priority nor a push for their agenda, thus having that alliance dwindle off and proving of little and lacking evidence to link direct correlation and works together as well as the notion of not being as accepting after Rivera became a member. Manolo Guzman states in his book that “Sylvia Rivera’s image was and continues to be exploited for the purpose of imagining the gay community, one shaped by exclusions of all sorts, as as inclusive community.” Manolo Guzman, Gay Hegemony/Latino Homosexualities, 42 Puerto Ricans during this time and today continue in that same path of exploitation that Guzman explains. During the late 60’s to early 70’s, the YPL was the forefront leaders of the Puerto Rican people of New York City. This group, although radical in their tactics, supplied and provided what the city government and officials refused and or ignored to give, which were basic equality of health care, shelter, food, education, and employment. Puerto Ricans were coming to the U.S. with promises of industrial work and provisions of accomplishing the “American Dream.” But the reality was that the Puerto Rican people went from an inclusion group of migrant workers in industrial sectors to being displaced amongst the poorest of slums in New York City. The very same place where living the in the imagery of the American dream, soon became a nightmare for its own citizens. A country that states “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc. The connections that the YLP and Rivera have are not only being Puerto Rican, but being an outcast Puerto Rican and representing a community in which did not see a future to strive in and to promote agendas in which would have their own prosper. They both were considered the misfits of society, but isolated on purpose by their ethnicity, their sexual identity and their class. Both groups created spaces in which they demanded change, they demanded equality, they demanded self-determination. They both wanted to “overthrow of patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism…” Luis Aponte-Pares and Jorge B. Merced, “Paginas Omitidas: The Gay and Lesbian Presence,” in The Puerto Rican Movement: Voices from the Diaspora, ed. Andres Torres and Jose E. Velazquez (Temple University Press), 300 The idea of colonization has been embedded in the mind of Puerto Rican men, making them identifiable as machistas and acting out in machismo ways and by doing so, having an inferiority complex of being in charge in control of people, and having to have that control. And that same control Puerto Ricans and Queers alike felt that they had over them by a capitalist society in which did not see Puerto Ricans or Queers as American citizens, but rather a culture of black counterparts in which could be intimidated and controlled. Which is the same relationship that the United States has with Puerto Rico, a colonized territory in which the US can freely control and dominate and change citizenship status of the people both on and off the island. It was that control that made Puerto Ricans wake up and realize that they were being colonized subjects in the US as well as in Puerto Rico. The Queer/Transvestite community felt this control and pressure for not fitting into society for not wanting to assimilate to the American way. These revolutions were all at one time or another born from another revolution, a trickle down effect. But within my research, I have concluded that the Queer movement and the Puerto Rican movement, that these are self identifiers (Queer, Puerto Rican) and markers that we are given by society or to ourselves to identify with, but the reality is that the struggles were the continuation of a change and an evolvement of the human consciousness. And that human consciousness, continues to be questioned, challenged and confronted with the social and political issues that in books written by those who will not expand in the true histories of people such as Puerto Ricans of the El Barrio or Queer Puerto Ricans. But in reality, it broadens, it expands, it does not level within its capacity forced by capitalist ideology that want to limit rights to people of minority groups, people of color, the LGTBQ community, etc. The struggle against racism and for social justice did not end when the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. It became awareness; a language and an experience that woke up the consciousness of those that were in denial or those that were the oppressors. The struggle continues today to those in the ghettos of New York, closeted gays, lesbians and queers, for drug addicts, for the poor and underprivileged of this country. Archives Chicago Tribune Archives, “Rioting Breaks Out Anew in New York,” July 25, 1967, Tribune Wire Services: 3. http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1967/07/25/page/3/article/rioting-breaks-out-anew-in-new-york Guzmán, Pablo “Yoruba”. “A La Izquierda/ The Puerto Rican Movement.” Young Lords Palante Newspaper. El Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, 1970-1972. Microfilm. Johanna Fernández, interview by Amy Goodman and Juan González, Democracy Now! . “From Garbage Offensives to Occupying Churches, Actions of the Young Lords Continue to Inspire.” Directed by Rebecca Staley. 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