If you’re a person of colour, you know that having friends of colour is a really special thing. Regardless of the disparate geographies of our parents, there is a lot that we share in the diaspora; a lot of feelings of loneliness and alienation, if you really must know. The specificity of a country and its customs is something else. Despite what we may make of borders or any sense of nationalism, I love it when another Salvadorean recognizes my accent, my face or whatever little or not little thing that will flag me as a link to home.
I thought I saw it when Gerardo popped up in my Tumblr feed. I thought he was the cutest goddamnX3 boy I’d ever seen. He also seemed incapable of taking a bad picture. I learned that he, indeed, did have those mighty Salvadorean genes, and was living and going to school in New York City.
I spent some time in NYC back in May and Gerardo was sweet enough to meet up, show me around his neighbourhood and point me in the direction of pupusas. I wanted to meet Gerardo for selfish reasons also. Latinos were rare where I grew up and even in Toronto, I’ve yet to connect with others, let alone queer ones. I mean, sometimes I just want to talk about the power of Selena with someone who will get it. So thank you, Gerardo, for being my first.
Let’s get to know @eljotitodeperris a little better below:
You grew up in a small-ish town in California. What was that like as a queer latin@?
I grew up in a predominately Latino city in Southern California called Perris (hence my tumblr name, el jotito de perris). I never really thought about being Latino so much as being gay. I came out when I was in 9th grade, even though I had been teased about it throughout middle school. It was really isolating, being one of the like 5 out gay kids in a school of over 3,000. I was really sad and had a lot crushes on straight boys. It’s also when I learned that homophobia escalates by like 300% when you have a boyfriend. My first boyfriend and I—he was 14; I was 16—were called jotos, faggots and maricones (they all mean fag –KC) every day at school when we dated. Some girls would tell us we were cute, other girls would say we were disgusting, and most guys screamed at us. I learned a lot, I guess. It was a really scary and lonely time.
Have you ever come out to your family? what is your relationship like with them?
I was outed by one my cousins. I hadn’t seen him in like 3 years but he found my Myspace (#tbt). I was in 10th grade (15 y/o I think). He told his mom who told my dad’s cousin in Mexicali…who told my dad…who then told my mom. I never talked to my dad about it until a couple years ago (My parents have been divorced since I was 5).
My mom has been extremely supportive since day 1 and she’s one of my best friends.
It took a while for my grandma to find out, even though I was living with her from age 14-18. It was confirmed to her a couple years ago when I went to study abroad in Perú and came back only two weeks later, after a couple homophobic incidents that spiralled into a familiar deep sadness and isolation. My mom explained to her why I left Perú 4 months early. She knows now, even though we never talked about it per se, but she met my boyfriend a couple months ago and now she asks about him every time she calls. It’s been a really long process. I’ve been out for almost 8 years now and I’ve just started really talking about it with my dad and grandma. My other family members don’t really know. My aunt knows and she’s really supportive; she’s always been there for me. And my uncle knows ‘cause he met my (then) boyfriend when I was 16 and we held hands in front of him but we never talked about it. It’s all a process. I’ve just started feeling comfortable to be fully myself but some of my grandma’s siblings still don’t know and neither does my grandpa. Every once in a while one of them will ask about a girlfriend and I get really upset about it, but I don’t feel ready yet to start that conversation.
What made you want to come to New York? And is it what you thought it would be?
The years of isolation from high school really got to me. I got really depressed in high school.
It felt like there was a giant hole inside my chest that wouldn’t close.
I was convinced that there was no one in the world like me ‘cause I didn’t really know any other gay people besides my ex-boyfriends and some adult gay people I met at the PFLAG (Parents Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) that was like 30 minutes away from Perris in a predominately white city. I was all into gay activism ‘cause I started the Gay Straight Alliance in my high school and learned about New York as like this gay haven that started the gay right’s movement. Columbia University sent me a brochure to their school my sophomore year and that’s when I decided I would do all I could to get in and move to New York. I read this book about history of gay rights and I learned about this gay white man named Morty Manford who went to Columbia in the 60’s and co-founded the first gay group in the country. His mom started PFLAG. I thought if I moved to New York I would find a community and feel complete.
To put it shortly, New York was not what I thought it was when I first got here. I never thought about racial or income disparities in Perris ‘cause we were more or less homogenous. Of course a lot of my friends had nicer houses than me and there was a history of racial tension between Black and Latino students at my high school but it wasn’t as obvious to me until I came to New York and saw a real city. My classmates came from all over the country and many of them from private schools or elite public schools and had friends at Columbia and all the other Ivies. The amount of people I met who were white and came from families who made over 100K quadrupled in my first hour at Columbia (I actually had never met someone that rich).
The gay community on campus was as rich and white centered as they come.
My first year there I felt even more isolated and depressed than I was at high school. I was 3,000 miles away from all my friends and family and everyone felt like a stranger.
I think a lot of people on tumblr saw the picture of you wearing a shirt with a patch that read “fuck you white boy”. You also have a joto hat—what’s the motivation behind making some very public statements with your clothes?
Well, the “Fuck You White Boy” shirt was half me being silly and half me being tired of the racial tension at Morningside Heights (Columbia’s neighborhood) and in NYC in general. Columbia and NYC are so stratified. All of Columbia’s kitchen staff and security guards are Black/Latin@, but their managers? White. The streets that border Columbia and Harlem are rife with racial tension, as Columbia University expands into Harlem, gentrifying more and more of the historically Black neighbourhood.
But Columbia (and NYC too) is seen as this progressive, liberal place that helps the poor brown people in the city. All this does is make it taboo to talk about how the University reproduces and reinforces structures of power.
And the president is like the god of affirmative action ‘cause he defended it in the first supreme court case in Michigan law so there’s this racial tension around affirmative action and poor brown students (though many of the people of color come from well-off families so poor students of color weren’t even that common). Basically white supremacy is one of the guiding force that builds Columbia University (and NYC) but no one can talk about it. I made that shirt to kind of rupture the silence around talking about race. I guess the motivation was wanting to express the anger I felt at big giant racial tension elephant in the neighbourhood.
I have a joto shirt (from NYC’s Azucar parties) I can wear something like that in my hometown and even in Toronto and go relatively unnoticed, but in New York, with a very large Latin@ population, I definitely felt exposed. I think it takes a lot of courage to put yourself forth like that. Do you ever worry about your safety?
I stopped wearing the shirt because it was too much to wear in public. I mean a lot of people liked it, but it made me feel like a target. As for the joto hat, most Latinos here are from the Caribbean like Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico. They don’t really use the word joto. It’s more for myself and when people ask I tell them what it means. When I’m around Mexicans, like in Jackson Heights where I used to intern, I don’t really wear it ‘cause, again, it makes me feel like a target. It’s a balance of expressing myself and keeping myself safe, but yeah, it’s scary. But when I’m going out to a QPOC (queer people of colour) event with a lot of jotos, I’m sure to wear it. But outside of that, no one really knows what it means when I wear the hat. I come out in like school pictures with JOTO in big letters and people didn’t even know what they were publishing.
You’re in love with another man of colour. Can you talk about this love?
It’s scary to be vulnerable all the time. We just moved in together for the summer ‘cause I didn’t have the funds to find my own apartment. It’s been really challenging ‘cause we’re both so young and even though I’ve had a lot of boyfriends, I’ve never been at a place where I was comfortable enough to say that I loved them. The words I was so scared were never gonna be reciprocated, I hear every day now. I don’t know. Love is hard, but he’s my best friend and I feel wanted and cared for with him.
I think that’s the most radical part of queer brown love: supporting each other when so many others don’t or can’t.
Sometimes it feels like we’re all we have, but I’m working hard to find a nice balance between building myself and being supported.
Love takes mad work and I don’t think being gay and brown makes it any easier.
Congratulations on graduating. I know you’re thinking of moving on to law. What kind of work do you want to do?
I’m still not sure. I’m going to take my LSAT in September and I’m planning on going to law school, but that’s as far as my plans go. I feel like I still need to learn a lot more about myself and the world before I know exactly what my role is. But as for now, it feels really nice having a plan. It makes me feel stable and comfortable knowing I’m working towards something. I just started a job and I really like it, so who know’s where I’ll be.
What inspires you these days?
I’m trying really hard these days to draw my inspiration from myself.
It’s been 4 years since I left Perris and I’m still trying to find some sense of security and stability. Graduating college is the weirdest experience because for four years I was mad busy with my internship, classes, homework, and student groups and then all of a sudden I had nothing to do and no more financial aid. But now that I’m working and creating some plans for myself, I’m inspired by new possibilities and my future and the challenges that lie ahead.
Photos and questions by Karen Campos Castillo, except this last one by Vivek Shraya
