Latina lesbians are those lesbians whose ancestors come from Latin America. In their efforts to identify themselves, Latina lesbians utilize a diversity of terms regarding both their ethnicity and their sexuality. Latina is a general term that includes women from the Caribbean, Central America, South America, as well as Mexican/Chicana women from both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border. Women from Puerto Rico often identify not as Latinas but as Puertorriqueñas (Puerto Ricans). Yolanda Leyva asserts in her research that Latina lesbians refer to their sexuality in various ways depending on such variables as geography, age, economic status, and immigration status. Because of the negative stigma attached to the word "lesbian" many Latinas will use alternate terms such as amigas (friends), compañeras (companions), or tortilleras (a derogative Spanish slang term for lesbian, which is sometimes reclaimed as a positive self-identification).
Historically, many races and ethnicities mixed in Latin America, and Latina lesbians reflect this diversity. A Latina lesbian might be light-skinned, blonde with blue eyes, as dark as her African ancestors, or a mixture of these, along with indigenous features. Latina lesbians in the United States might be fourth-generation Mexican Americans or recent refugees from Central America or Cuba, or they might be undocumented. Class differences vary from poor to working-class to well-educated entrepreneurs. Consequently, their politics vary as do their religious backgrounds. Since degrees of patriarchy vary from country to country as well as regions, historians must be cautious about categorizing Latinas as being "traditionally" family-oriented or Catholic. They share the experience of being transcultural in the United States and they encounter the sexism, racism, and homophobia of not one but two cultures.
History has largely neglected the subject of Latina lesbians. One might find it challenging to isolate historical texts referring specifically to Latina lesbians. Scholars such as Yolanda Retter and Yolanda Leyva are presently working on studies on the subject.
With the advent of the civil rights movement, the growth of feminist research, and the increasing participation of women of color in academia, issues related to lesbians of color began to emerge in the mid- to late 1970s. As a result of the growing visibility of this population, by the mid-1980s, interest and research on the subject appeared in various fields such as social work and psychology. In this period of activism, Latina lesbians created networks and organizations such as Lesbianas Latinas Americanas (LLA) in Los Angeles, in 1978; lesbians joined Gay Latinos Unidos (GLU) in Los Angeles, in 1984, forming the lesbian task force that became Lesbianas Unidas; Las Buenas Amigas in New York, in 1986; and Ellas of Texas; Latina Lesbianas de Tucson, in Arizona; and Ellas en Accion in San Francisco.
Members of these groups and other U.S. Latina lesbians participated in organizing on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border. It is important to note that the feminism that influences these groups is from Latin America as well as the United States. In the mid-1980s lesbians from the United States and Latin America met in a series of conferences. According to Mariana Romo-Carmona, the First Encuentro de Lesbianas de Latino America y El Caribe was held in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in 1987. In 1990, the second Encuentro occurred in Costa Rica, and the third in Puerto Rico, in 1992. At these conferences, lesbians from throughout Latin America and the United States celebrated one another, hotly debated issues of class and diversity within their international community, and held workshops on issues such as leadership and culture.
In 1987, during the weekend of the second Gay and Lesbian March on Washington, activists formed the first gay, lesbian, bi, and transgender Latino/a organization, National LLEGO, headquartered in Washington, D.C. In 1994, LLEGO funded Latina Lesbianas de Tucson to hold the first national leadership conference, where writer Cherríe Moraga gave the keynote address. Participants attended workshops on community organizing, spirituality, sexuality, lesbian health, creative writing, and continued establishing national networks.
These organizations exist to promote positive images of Latina lesbians and to provide culturally affirming environments. They have funded projects and events toward this objective. The groups have participated in local and national marches, organized workshops, conferences, rap or support sessions, held retreats, and published newsletters. As a result, Latina lesbian organizations have created vehicles for their members to be politically active in their communities. They have developed relationships with many politicians and educated them to recognize issues of homophobia, sexism, and racism in society. As a result, some politicians now advocate on their behalf at the local, state, and federal levels. Individuals and groups have participated in policy-making and service delivery on AIDS issues and Latina lesbians have been involved in the area of immigration policy for persons with AIDS. They have also worked in coalition with non-gay-specific Latino organizations and issues, such as immigrant rights, labor, human rights, education, and housing.
Researchers in this subject area need to look in a variety of sources including and beyond the field of history. Resources for primary documents can be found in the lesbian archives in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tucson, and New York. Located at the Latina Lesbian Archive in Tucson, historian Yolanda Leyva has compiled numerous interviews with Latina lesbians from throughout the United States. Leyva's interviews include women's life stories and issues of race and gender in the late twentieth century. The archives are a crucial resource for historians as well as for background information for magazine articles, art, poetry, and newsletters produced by regionally based Latina lesbian organizations, and for photographs, personal, and professional papers.
Another crucial resource is the substantial body of literature and theory produced by Latina lesbians, beginning with the 1981 publication of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa. The first-person narratives in this anthology and in later anthologies such as Juanita Ramos's Compañeras and Carla Trujillo's Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About provide an important context for historical research and offer personal descriptions that challenge traditional historical analysis. Through their work, Moraga and Anzaldúa relate experiences of family, politics, sexuality, and gender roles in a manner that illustrates not only the complexities of being a woman of color but also of being a lesbian in the late twentieth century.
Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga, eds., This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Watertown, Mass.: Persephone Press, 1981; Rpt. New York: Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press, 1983); Juanita Ramos, ed., Compañeras: Latina Lesbians, An Anthology (New York: Latina Lesbian History Project, 1987. Rpt. New York: Routledge, 1994); Carla Trujillo, ed., Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About (Berkeley: Third Woman Press, 1991).
Antonia Villaseñor
See also
Latinas.
