Hispanic Fanatic

Eventually, every kid wants to know the answer to the big question. I don’t remember when I first asked about it, but I’m sure my father supplied me with some vulgar hypothesis.

For Cousin #5 (one of the youngest of us) the question bolted out fully formed almost thirty years ago. She was a little girl, and we were riding in my mom’s car (probably on the way to church) when she blurted, “Where do babies come from?”

I was surprised at her inquiry, and as a teenager I had no idea how to tell a pixyish girl the traumatizing answer. I looked at my mother, who was driving. I expected her to say something like, “Your mother and father love each other very much, and one night…”

But instead she smiled as if she had been waiting all day for just the opportunity to talk about sex with a kindergartner. Without hesitation, she gave my cousin an honest answer steeped in rigorous scientific principles.

“Babies are made from flour, mixed in a bowl, and baked in the oven like cookies,” my mother said.

My cousin nodded at this. It made sense, of course. But a moment later, she upped the ante.

“But why are we different colors?” Cousin #5 asked.

Now we were on to racial issues.

Even Hispanics fall into the trap of thinking there are no other skin tones besides black and white. The history and clear dichotomy between those two colors supersedes everything else. So how was my mother going to explain our burnt-sienna existence now that she had committed to the cookie theory of creation?

Again, she smiled and spoke without pause.

“Babies are cooked at different temperatures for different amounts of time,” she said. “White babies aren’t in the oven too long, so they come out light. Black babies are in the oven longer, so they are darker. It depends what the mother and father want.”

Cousin #5 brightened at this perfectly logical explanation, and her enthusiasm increased when my mother added, “You are brown, so you were cooked just right.”

In one effortless movement, my mother had tackled existential quandaries, explained basic biology, bridged the racial divide, boosted a little girl’s self-esteem, and came up with one hell of a concept for a cooking show.

To this day, I’m still impressed.

One of my original goals for this blog was to serve as a conduit to Hispanic artists, writers, and general mover-shaker types who might otherwise be overlooked. So far, alas, I have been largely remiss in addressing this goal.

That’s why I’m pleased to have discovered the art of Gabriela Gonzalez Delloso. Her paintings were prominently displayed in a gallery that I wandered into, and they immediately caught my attention. Although her work is not explicitly about being Hispanic, her images (to my untrained eye, at least) carry the weight of the Latino experience.

A bride gazes longingly at a pair of red shoes, and I think of my cousins’ quinceneras. An abuela-type figure presides over a table of food, and I remember random feasts that brought my family together.

Of course, none of this would work if the images were wrapped in sentimentality or cliché. But the artist avoids such traps. In addition, she sets her pieces in the smoky realm of the old masters, as if Rembrandt were Latino. Her work is unlike anything I’ve seen, and I encourage you to check it out.

One of my recent pieces (“Muy Fabuloso”) also appeared on the Huffington Post last week. The post was about homophobia in Latino culture. On the Huffington site, I received numerous comments.

Many were supportive. Several were insightful and thought-provoking. Others were diatribes. But as usual, what I focused on were the bitchy ones.

I heard that I was fanning the flames to turn this into a racial issue. I was accused of saying all Hispanics were Catholic and all Catholics were homophobes (could someone Venn diagram this for me?). I found out that I was “scapegoating Latinos” and “pitting minority groups against one another.” I discovered that I was spreading “anti-religious heterophobia,” which I’m pretty sure is a brand-new term (and concept). Finally, I learned that I simply “don’t understand the dynamics” of California, which is hilarious considering that I lived in the heart of Los Angeles for half a decade.

But my point wasn’t about California. It wasn’t about Catholic dogma. It wasn’t about Hispanics and blacks and gays all fighting it out, like we’re fireflies shook up in a jar. It wasn’t even about Proposition 8.

It was about homophobia in Hispanic culture.

As I said in my response on the Huffington Post, Hispanic culture has a powerful one-two punch in traditional machismo and religious upbringing that makes homophobia tough to eradicate.

I stand by that.

Again, using Proposition 8 as a rough gauge, we see that more Latinos supported rescinding gay rights than did the general population (53% versus 52%) The fact that it was close diminishes in comfort when one sees that an actual minority of white and Asian voters (49% of each) supported the proposition, meaning that only blacks were more likely to vote yes on this.

Add to this the fact that Hispanics voted overwhelmingly for Obama (Asian voters were less enthusiastic, and whites were more likely to pick McCain), and we see that it is not a powerful strain of social conservatism that drove the vote. Hispanics are more likely to agree with Democratic or even liberal ideas. So clearly, there is something in the culture specifically about gays that many Latinos don’t like.

The glimmer of hope, as some commentators pointed out, is that younger Hispanics are rejecting the gay-bashing of their elders. As such, they mirror the general population, providing further proof that assimilation is taking place, despite what so many conservatives insist (but that’s another topic).

Still, the feedback has prompted me to emphasize once more what I’m trying to say with this blog. My goal has been to praise and celebrate a culture that is largely ignored (except during election season) by mainstream America. However, my additional goal is to point out the flaws in this culture in the hopes that they will be rectified.

I may not always be successful, but I will continue to strive for that balance between lifting up and tearing down.

The emerald hue of his eyes is freakishly rare, especially for a Latino. Our grandmother teased him when he was a child, saying that he had stolen the eyes of the cat.

He is no good at hiding his emotions, so surprise or happiness or annoyance all dance on his brow whenever they want attention. Or maybe it is the curse of the cat’s eyes that makes him so expressive.

His other distinguishing physical characteristic is a scar on his chin from a mishap that occurred during one of our childhood baseball games. Other scars aren’t as conspicuous, and they flair much less than they used to.

Cousin #2 is entitled to his scars. He came to America when he was a spindly little kid, shortly after his father died. He is the oldest child of Uncle #1, the brave man whom I profiled a few months ago.

On the plane to the United States and his new life, Cousin #2 asked a question of my mother, his aunt, whom he had just met. He was a child of El Salvador, on the first flight of his life, who knew of just one reason for planes to exist. He knew of only one function that they served and one consequence that the whirr of their engines signified.

So he asked my mother why we were going to drop bombs on people.

His antipathy for such childhood memories is so virulent that he refuses to ever set foot back in El Salvador, even for a visit.

“I’m never going back there,” Cousin #2 has said often, as if the statement is explanation, rationalization, and vow all rolled into one.

The last time he told me this, he punctuated the remark by pulling off a hat that he was wearing (which I had praised) and slamming it on my head in a fit of generosity so intense that he nearly decapitated me. Then he repeated his words in his distinctive somber voice.

When he had arrived in America as a child, he became the man of the house for his immediate family. As one can imagine, this is an ungodly amount of pressure for a kid, especially one who has not been given any time to mourn his father. He was expected to help raise his younger siblings (Cousins #4 and #6), learn English quickly so he could translate for his mother, and figure out this culture’s strange new priorities.

As expected, Cousin #2 struggled. His troubled teen years led to poor choices as a young adult. He was no thug, but his friends were often the riff-raff of the barrio. He became a father young, drank too much, and owed too many family members money.

As his problems mounted, he withdrew from the family, and many of us had only sporadic contact with him for a few years. Then, in a scene right out of some hooky Christmas special, he ran into Cousin #3 at a crowded mall, and she hugged him as shoppers swirled around them. She extracted a promise that he would stop by the traditional holiday feast.

He did, and the rapturous welcome that he and his toddler daughter received convinced him to return. Most important for him, he found an amazing woman to love him and guide him back to the land of the living. They married, and they had their first child last year.

His children – two sons and a daughter – were among the first members of our family’s next generation. In many ways, they are the first in our line to be wholly planted in this county.

Cousin #2 works hard and stays out of trouble. The man who several of us were once concerned would get into a fatal bar brawl has been known to go for Sunday bike rides with his wife. This stability, and the life that the two of them have built together, mocks his troubled early days.

He is proof, more than anyone I’ve ever met, that a person can always turn it around. He is evidence that we are not slaves to the past and are more than the sum of our scars.

He has my undying respect.

First, let me thank Raul Ramos y Sanchez for his thought-provoking comment on my previous post.

Second, let me give you a warning. If you should ever walk down the street of a major American city with my wife, you should not (by her own admission) listen to her she asks the innocuous question, “What’s over there?” I speak from experience. Her curiosity about hidden doors and blinking marquees has mistakenly led us into shady dives from coast to coast (imagine my surprise at walking into an S&M bar in Hollywood).

One evening, “what’s over there” prompted us to enter a covert LA nightclub, where the doorman smiled and waived the cover charge. I had assumed he did so because it was Ladies Night. But when we walked in, I saw that he had not let us in for free because of my wife. It was because of me. It was a Latino gay bar, and the doorman assumed that I was a non-straight who had brought along my hipster female friend. To make things more interesting, a talent show for drag queens was just starting. What could I do but order a beer and watch the performances? My wife and I agreed that the Christina Aguilera was pretty close to the real thing.

I was not surprised that Hispanic gay men might establish a safe house off the beaten path. Loathing of gays shows hydra-headed persistence within Latino culture. We are the society, after all, that defined the word “macho.” The old-school standards for strong Hispanic males include getting into brawls, avoiding the kitchen, and womanizing at will. They do not include an affinity for techno music and an interest in Jennifer Lopez’s wardrobe.

As such, possibly the worst insult that one can lob at a Latino male is the dreaded M-word. To call someone a “maricon” is to take the nearest English equivalent (“faggot”), triple its intensity, add several layers of hatred and disgust, and square the result. In my generation at least, nobody jokes about this word or uses it lightly.

In contrast, American gay activists have adopted the words “queer” and “dyke” in an attempt to rob them of their degrading power, similar to the way in which many African Americans throw around the fabled N-word. It’s a subject of fierce debate whether these tactics work or are self-sabotaging, but in either case, I’m pretty sure nobody in Latin America is even trying that with “maricon.” In fact, being gay in Latin America ranges from affront to God (we’re talking about heavily Catholic countries) to active death warrant in the small villages of Central and South America.

I was talking with the Bitca about the level of homophobia in Hispanic culture. She said, “But you’re not homophobic” and added that this is one of my very few redeeming qualities. Then she said, “So I guess sometimes you’re an individual and not just a stereotype after all.” I thanked her for her high praise.

But she got me thinking.

The passage of Proposition 8 in California, which bans gay marriage, received ample support from Obama backers. Much of the coverage of this oxymoronic outcome has focused on the high percentage of black people who shouted, “free at last” when they voted for president and then muttered, “damn the homosexuals” as they revoked a basic civil right.

But California has a high number of Latinos (ask any right-wing demagogue for verification of this fact), and Obama was hugely popular with them (see my previous two posts on this). It is indeed a sad fact that a great many Latinos mimicked their African American brethren on Election Day.

To be specific, 53 percent of California Hispanics voted for the proposition. While this is not an overwhelming majority, it still tops the percentage of overall voters who approved of the ban (52 percent). It is also contradictory to their supposed enthusiasm for a liberal president.

Is it possible that my old boogeyman, the Catholic Church, is somewhat responsible for the invincible strain of homophobia in Latino culture? To the surprise of absolutely no one, the answer is yes. Hey, is the Pope homophobic… I mean, Catholic? Yes, that’s what I meant.

Statistics from Hispanic Business show that 64 percent of Latino Catholics voted for the proposition. Just 10 percent of non-religious Hispanics voted the same way.

So it’s not just burly macho hombres who hate gays that are tipping the vote. It’s quiet, polite Latina grandmothers who are willing to overlook Obama’s pro-choice tendencies, but can’t bring themselves to acknowledge that gay people have rights. Let’s be clear: When pundits talk about social conservatism among the otherwise Democratic-friendly Latino population, this is what they’re talking about.

However, despite the fact that homophobia is strong in Hispanic culture, Latino gays still find ways to burst out from underground. These manifestations range from the intellectualism of the great Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas to the pop-culture pabulum of Hank Azaria dancing around in “The Birdcage.” And what would a gay-pride parade be without at least one Carmen Miranda impersonator?

It’s a broad range of expression. Perhaps it’s hopeful, or maybe it’s pathetic. I can’t tell you, because I’m just a guy who walks obliviously into gay bars. 

Here at Fanatic worldwide headquarters, we all want to know what the Obama administration will mean to Latinos. My guess is that it will mean roughly the same thing that it means to everyone else (eg, change, hope, cries of “socialism!” etc), with an extra tint of pride beyond what most white people feel – but which still falls short of the absolute joy that African Americans feel.

The first detail to address is the makeup of his administration. We’re talking about a biracial liberal whose candidacy attracted voters of every conceivable race, creed, and demographic. He’s more or less promised to rehabilitate the term “diversity” and transform it, Cinderella style, into a beautiful princess, instead of leaving it to toil in the social conservatives’ kitchen.

Specifically, there is some talk (possibly scurrilous, because there’s nothing better than “scurrilous talk”) of Bill Richardson getting to call his Cabinet post. Besides being well-qualified for just about any administration gig, this high-profile Latino did help Obama score New Mexico. So a Richardson appointment would be both political payback and good for the country, and we know how rare that combination is after the abject cronyism of the Bush administration, where competence was a humorous afterthought compared to loyalty and ideology.

Next, we have to ponder those issues that resonate most with Hispanics. Conveniently, most of these issues are also big guns with the general population. After all, Latinos are not any more or less obsessed with jobs, health care, and education than white people are – it’s just that Hispanics have grown weary of receiving the poorest quality in all of these areas. Any Obama policies that move Latinos closer to the standards enjoyed by the general population will receive a resounding “Si, se puede!”

Already, Obama’s transition team has identified hundreds of executive orders that the new president will overturn, amend, or just bury in the White House backyard. In addition, Obama’s ideas on taxation – and his drive to reform the previously mentioned problem areas of education and health care – may have a direct impact on the Latino standard of living. Much depends on whether the minority party (an ironic moniker under the circumstances) decides to pick a fight over what constitutes “socialism.”

The most pressing topic that appeals specifically to Hispanics, of course, is immigration. This tends to be true regardless of whether one is illegal or a third-generation citizen. For Obama, this issue gets dicey, because Bush and McCain were actually at odds with their own party’s hard-line stance, meaning that the president-elect would have to be even more open about immigration to differentiate himself from his opponents.

So one has to ponder if guest-worker programs will move forward. Also, will there be a nationwide American Dream Act, or is this piece of equitable legislation fated to be battled over in state after state? And what will happen to those so-called amnesty provisions?

In all likelihood, the answer is that not much will come of the new president’s apparently sincere desire to make this country a better place for immigrants. There simply isn’t the bandwidth. Obama will be so swamped trying to dig the economy out of the toilet and dealing with two floundering wars that I doubt any serious movement on immigration will happen before, say, 2012.

And just think, at that point, all this fun starts again.

The dancing in the streets has subsided since Tuesday. Of course, I remain stunned that we had dancing in the streets at all. Seriously, does anyone remember this kind of orgiastic response over election results? Before this, the standard imagery was supporters in ballrooms laughing and waving signs, but now we see impromptu parades and ecstatic outbursts on street corners and strangers hugging each other in every city in the world. But maybe it just overwhelms in comparison with recent history, because the last two elections provoked either muffled wailing or smug insinuations that God had spoken.

Among last week’s celebrants were Hispanics. Anyone tuning in to more than twelve minutes of television coverage heard how the Latino vote was key to Obama’s win. We even got more air time and credit than the fabled youth vote.

The facts are that Hispanics favored Obama by more than two to one over McCain (67 percent to 31 percent, according to MSNBC). Looking at it another way, Latino voters accounted for 11 percent of Obama’s vote and 6 percent of McCain’s total.

In addition to crunching the raw numbers, MSNBC ran an analysis under the particularly ominous headline “What if there were no Latino voters?” (Indeed, many Republicans are probably muttering that exact phrase).

The analysis found that the Hispanic vote was the difference in New Mexico and Indiana, which means that in a Latino-free world, Obama would have still won the electoral vote but in less decisive fashion. However, being the swing group in two states is pretty cool, and Hispanics continue to exert their prominence in places such as California and Texas.

More interesting still is the fact that the biggest percentage increases in Latino voters happened in Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada – all battleground states and all now freshly blue. As the GOP well knows, those states are getting more Hispanic, and those Hispanics are getting more Democratic, especially the younger generation.

Speaking of younger Latinos, they helped Florida become Obama country this year. Our new president won 57 percent of the Hispanic vote in that state, which is astonishing when one considers that the large Cuban American population there has been, in the past, so hardcore Republican that they make Rupert Murdoch look like a gay vegan folksinger in comparison.

Perhaps second- and third-generation Cuban Americans are tired of hearing how voting for the GOP is the only way to stick it to Fidel. They either don’t believe it (Castro is hanging on to power with his last, frenzied breaths and will only be removed through a natural death) or they simply have more pressing concerns, like job losses and collapsing education systems and shoddy health care and a thousand other American issues that have nothing to do with the unresolved, dusty battles of their grandparents.

One final bit of intriguing news comes courtesy of the Pew Hispanic Center. They found that 8 percent of this year’s voters were of the brown-skinned variety. Truthfully, this could have been better, considering that we make up about 14 percent of the population.

Regardless, it’s clear that Latinos, like just about every other demographic except for white evangelicals, were caught up in Obama frenzy this year. The long-term implications for Republicans look grim, as we get younger, more numerous, and more liberal.

And now that we have our first minority president, isn’t it just a matter of time before someone whose last name ends in Z takes the oath of office? It may be years away, but it’s coming.

I’m back from NYC, where I had my usual great time hanging out with the freaks, weirdoes, and social deviants who make up that fine city. I hung out with some old friends, went to my greatest-hits bars and restaurants, caught a bad cold from one of the aforementioned freaks or weirdoes, soaked up the high energy of the city, and got groped on the subway (a first for me). By the way, the groper was some drunk girl who was trying to piss off her boyfriend, and the groping missed my key components, so to speak, which means that it could have turned out a lot worse for me – or better for me, depending on one’s desire to be groped.

It’s always a little weird returning to my home in the Midwest, however, because of the realization that I see more Hispanics walking down a given Manhattan block or in one subway car than I do in a month here.

It’s also an intense time because my wife and I got back just in time to vote. We endured a two-hour wait in line to cast our ballots for that one guy… you know, the president-elect.

In any case, I will have fresh posts soon, some of which will no doubt address the ramifications of the forthcoming Obama administration, especially in regards to the Latino population. Until then, I will try to recover from my cold and wonder what to do with all the time I had been spent obsessing about this election. I’m sure I’ll come up with something.