QUEER ACTIVISM
THE PBS DOCUMENTARY: UNIDAD
I am featured in Unidad, a documentary about Gay & Lesbian Latinos Unidos (GLLU), one of the earliest organizations created by gay and lesbian Latinos in Los Angeles. I joined GLLU in 1983 and later served as its president from 1988 through 1990. The documentary brings together people who helped build the organization and preserves a history that was rarely documented at the time.
Here's a short video post from the Unidad: Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos screening in Los Angeles that took place on June 13, 2023, where I reflect on organizing and the transformative power of change. In this short segment, I emphasize the distinctions between the strategies employed in the 1980s and 1990s and the approaches that shape contemporary activism.
GAY AND LESBIAN LATINOS UNIDOS: GLLU
My GLLU Story
GLLU group photo at the 1989 Long Beach Pride celebration.
I joined Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos (GLLU) in late 1983. I met Geneva and Laura (also featured in the documentary) at the First National Lesbians of Color Conference that September. They were active in GLLU, spoke highly of the group, and I ended up joining. Together with Laura, Geneva, Irene, and Vicky, we also energized GLLU's Lesbian Task Force, which became Lesbianas Unidas. I write more about my years in GLLU in L.A. Interchanges: A Brown & Queer Archival Memoir, my memoir about my twenty years in Los Angeles.
An excerpt from L.A. Interchanges:
"The mid-1980s, for me and other Brown queer activists in Los Angeles, was a time of great growth. In GLLU and LU, I found camaraderie and joy, and we found multiple ways to lay claim to our space in the world. Our work brought us to ball games, dances, retreats, parades, concerts, and anniversary dinners. We made ourselves known over a
diamond-vision screen, in newsletters, on the radio, and in photographs. And we found joy in celebrating ourselves and each other.
From p. 111 of L.A. Interchanges
.jpg)
Here's a PDF copy of a 1989 Unidad,
the GLLU newsletter
Business cards from 1989
2017
In this 2017 photo, I stood next to the photograph Laura Aguilar took of me in 1986 for her Latina Lesbians series. I am holding a guitar that I have since given away. More than thirty years later, my portrait was exhibited in Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell at the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College. The exhibition was the first comprehensive retrospective of Laura's work.
She has since come to be recognized as one of the most influential Chicana photographers of her generation. In Latina Lesbians, Laura allowed her subjects to present themselves as they wanted to be seen, pairing portraits with their own words. The complete series is now held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. You can view more photographs from the Latina Lesbians series, including mine, on the Laura Aguilar website.
Dolores Huerta, a strong supporter of queer rights, also attended a screening of Unidad in 2024. Here we are together at the screening. Her support and spending time with her made receiving the following award, named in her honor, a few months later especially meaningful to me.
MY EVOLVING IDENTITIES
When I was active in GLLU, “lesbian” and “gay” were the dominant identities around which people in my queer world organized. I was co-chair of Lesbianas Unidas, and both it and GLLU gave me an organizational home. But “lesbian” was always an imperfect fit for me. At the time, I didn't have another identity in mind, and the language for thinking about gender that is commonplace today was rarely part of the conversations I was having back then.
Archives, including mine, excel at preserving lesbian and gay categories. Someone looking through my archive might not pick up on or know about my discomfort with the category lesbian. When I present this history, I need to make that clear. I mention this in my memoir, and when I present this history, but since this is my website and you are on my Queer Activism page, I should make it clear here too: today I identify as trans nonbinary and use they/them pronouns.
I don't want to impose my identity today backward and pretend I understood myself that way in the 1980s and 1990s, because I didn't. But I also don't want the historical category “lesbian” to make my experience seem more settled than it actually was.
FROM RADIO GLLU TO RADIO QGLLU
In the spirit of Radio GLLU, which has been on the air since 1986, Radio QGLLU launched as an audio podcast in 2023. I served as a cohost from 2023 to 2025. During those two years, we covered fascinating topics and hosted some interesting guests. Although I am no longer part of the program, new episodes continue to air on KPFK in Los Angeles, and past shows remain available on the new listening platform.
MEDIA
