Testimony by NELSON, ALEXANDRA, MARLEN, ADELA, San Francisco, CA Titled: “Cuentamelo!: An

Testimony by NELSON, ALEXANDRA, MARLEN, ADELA, San Francisco, CA

Titled:“Cuentamelo!: An Oral History of Queer Latina Immigrants in San Francisco”

For years I’ve sat next to my adoptive mama eating fried bacalao, listening as she tells and retells stories of the glamorous, fierce, sad, immigrant queens, faggots, and weirdos that roamed San Francisco in the ‘80s and '90s. Most of these people are now dead, gone at the peak of the AIDS epidemic. Their stories survive solely in the memories of those they left behind — stories of leaving hostile homelands for unknown new ones, of falling down, of building new selves, of living in two worlds.

Here, four gay and transgender Latin American immigrants tell of coming to San Francisco in the 1980s and the ways in which they survived, built, changed (and were changed by) the city. (“Cuéntamelo” means “Tell me.”) This small compilation of oral histories maps Latin queerness as seen and lived in Spanish: It highlights the changes that over time have impacted the community: immigration laws, access to health care, the hormone black market, AIDS funding, and, with it, the rise and fall of Latino organizations, bars, and community centers. The stories travel down 16th Street (which Adela Vazquez says at the time was the “mecca of faggotry”), over to the Tenderloin, to bars such as La India Bonita, Los Portales, Esta Noche, and Finnochio’s. Most of these places are now closed, but in their heyday, in the late '80s, Latin female impersonators, transformistas, travestis, and, later, drag queens flourished. Also during this time, and through the work of some of these performers, transgender and gay Latino communities in San Francisco became visible through programs such as Proyecto ContraSIDA por Vida, Instituto Familiar de la Raza, and Aguilas.

Read Nelson, Alexandra, Marlen and Adela’s stories here

Published by SFweekly.com, 6/26/13