Guest Post: For this, and so much more, thank you Ricky Martin

PHOTO: Ricky Martin fan and queer poet and author extraordinaire Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano!

Last year, when Ricky Martin came out, I found myself searching for words to express just how monumental a step it had been for the Latino LGBT movement. I wasn't necessarily able to find my own words to describe my feelings but I did find an amazing blog post by my friend Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano on the subject, which I ran as a guest post ("Why Ricky Martin Matters", March 30, 2010 ).

A little more than a year after I featured that post, Lorenzo is back to explain how he felt when he had the chance to catch Ricky Martin's current 'M+A+S' music tour.  Cross-posted from his blog Hairspray & Fideo, here is Lorenzo's 2nd guest post on Blabbeando. Enjoy!

Ricky Martin's MAS Tour: Por esto, y tanto más, gracias. 

by Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano

I’ve made it pretty clear that I’m a huge Ricky Martin fan. I’ve been a lover of his music since the longhair days of “Fuego Contra Fuego.” In the early 90’s, I’d rush home to catch him as “Pablo” in Alcanzar una Estrella II, and Sundays I would be glued to the tv waiting for Ricky to make an appearance on Siempre en Domingo.

Years later, the very thought of Ricky’s music takes me back to my pre-teen years of crushes on boys in Secundaria, and the silence that stood between us. Having collected all of his albums and holding “Las Almas del Silencio” as his most artistic effort yet, I couldn’t help but (literally) jump out of bed when a cousin sent a text offering me tickets to Ricky’s MAS concert in San José.

After inviting and coordinating with a few friends, we were on the road from San Francisco to my hometown of San José. On the way, I played a number of Ricky’s songs ranging from “Dime Que Me Quieres,” stopping at the infamous “Livin’ la Vida Loca” crossover days, cruising through his tattooed reggaetón days of LIFE, and landing with the music video for “Lo Mejor de Mi Vida Eres Tú.” I was ready.

Although much of my time thinking and writing about Ricky this past year has been less about his music and more about his coming out and what it means for our communities, I wasn’t expecting anything overtly queer at the concert. Well, except for the sea of brown gay & bi men, of course.

As we arrived at the venue, I was happy to see my fellow jotos and patos representing with fierce rhinestone shirts and enough sharp eyebrows to cut a Luis Miguel fan. What I didn’t expect were the Christian protestors holding up the “Gay Sex is Sin” signs I’m used to seeing at Gay Pride.

I felt terrible thinking I had underestimated Ricky and that the Christians knew him better than I did. Never had I imagined a Ricky Martin concert would be worthy of warnings of a burning Sodom and Gomorra. The Christians did. And they were right.

Ricky’s MAS tour delivered on each letter of its acronym. He brought the música, he gave the alma, and baby, he delivered on the sexo.

I realize this is sacrilegious, but Ricky’s concert was gayer than any of the seven Juan Gabriel concerts I’ve been to. Yes, Juanga prances about, says things like “Si me caigo me cogen,” and has grown mustache-sporting men crying like Sanjaya’s preteen fan on American Idol. However, for all of Juan Gabriel’s beautiful femme fierceness and the lovemaking that goes on between him and his audience, it all remains masked under the clout of the unspeakable.

Ricky, on the other hand, left me speechless when he held one of his male dancer’s head as the dancer slid his hands down Ricky’s thighs. I’ve been gay long enough to know, that there is a gay move. And he didn’t stop there. The electrifying erotically sensual bi-gendered orgy-like performance that took place on a long sofa while he sang “I Am,” was enough to have the gays fanning ourselves and clutching our pearls (pay attention at 0:24 and on):

Still, for those who thought they had room to dismiss the (not-so)subtle sensual man-on-man moments in the concert, Ricky made the queerness explicit. In what reminded me of Madonna’s “Confessions” moment in the Confessions Tour, one of Ricky’s dancers performed solo as his coming out experience was narrated overhead. Beginning with the struggles of growing up with a father who insisted he learn to box and arriving with his libratory moment of discovering his love for dance and his revelation as a gay man. The screaming of the crowd erased all remaining ambiguity: This was a queer Latino concert.

Topping off what was a surprisingly gay and expectedly delicious concert, was Ricky’s encore performance of “Lo Mejor de Mi Vida Eres Tú.” The feel-good song that brought us the queer and different-affirming video, was brought to a close by Ricky offering the following words:

“Lo único que necesitamos en este momento son los mismos derechos para todo el mundo. Lo único que queremos es igualdad, ni más ni menos… I’m talking about equality, ladies and gentlemen, not more, not less, just equality.”

Now all you bitter gays who dismissed Ricky Martin’s coming out as inconsequential and cowardly too late, imagine an arena of Latinas and Latinos, many of whom speak Spanish as their primary (perhaps only) language, applauding an openly gay, culturally rooted and historically present artist delivering words that many queer Latino men like myself could never say to our own families.

Early on, I saw Ricky Martin’s coming out as an important opportunity for queer boys in the U.S. and Latino América who, in their isolation, would now have the opportunity to bear witness to a Latin superstar move openly in his public’s eyes as gay. Months after his coming out, I hailed Ricky’s appearance on the front cover of People en Español’s Father’s Day issue as an important historical moment for our communities. With a readership of 6.4 million people, Ricky, with his two children (Valentino and Matteo) in arms, would be on Supermercado stands and coffee tables across the country.

And yet, it took Christian protestors to make me realize that even I, in all my pro-Ricky arguments, had underestimated just how important he has become. I only hope that in the future I am not blindsided by my own limited capacity to imagine what Ricky Martin has in store for the future.

As the poet, Marvin K. White, recently said, “As with Don Lemmon, Ricky Martin is one of the few who came out with his ethnicity intact.”

Por esto, y tanto más, Ricky, gracias.

Related:

• P.D.: Soy Fan de Ricky Martin  (Enrique Torremolina)

Previously:

• Guest Post: "Why Ricky Martin Matters" by Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano (March 30, 2010)

Guest post: "La Mission" and Latino Masculinities

In late March, I asked my friend Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano if I could post an essay he wrote about Ricky Martin's coming out as a guest post on this blog ("Why Ricky Martin matters", March 30, 2010). It was the first ever blog post on Blabbeando.

Today, I am posting his thoughts about the recently released movie, "La Mission".  I posted a preview of the film based on it's appearance at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival but I have yet to see the actual movie now that it's out in the theatres.

Lorenzo's essay, though, not only raises a number of interesting issues about the film, but also about representation of Latino queerness and masculinity in media.  Enjoy.

Thoughts on La Mission and the Ongoing Struggle to Broaden Notions of Latino Masculinities

by Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to see a screening of Peter Bratt’s La Mission. The screening, which was part of a limited release, was at San Francisco’s Metreon Theaters. My compañero and I, joined by two of our queer sisters of color, were lucky enough to find seats in relative proximity to each other in the sold-out space.

It was a late night screening and the vast majority of folks in the theater were people of color. In fact, I’d say most of the people there were Latina/o, with a nice mix of generations representing. The experience was unforgettable as all four of us, none of which were born and raised in San Francisco, were sitting in what seemed to be an intimate living room screening of La Mission.

We all smiled and were occasionally misty-eyed as people in the crowd, youth and adults, loudly expressed their pride in the various shots of San Francisco portrayed in the film. During the movie, I realized that this was the first time I had ever witnessed the screening of a film that embodied the geographic and cultural identities of the audience. People not only saw themselves on the big screen, they also saw the places that have shaped and witnessed them.

All in all, I found La Mission to be a beautiful film. I’m not a film critic and will leave that to those who know better. Instead, I’ll limit my thoughts on what moved me most about the movie, and those areas I wish it had gone deeper.

The relationship of Benjamin Bratt’s character, Che Rivera, and his son Jesse, played by Jeremy Ray Valdez, was sweet, raw and in many ways reflective of my own experience with my father. I was further moved by the depiction of comunidad and the ways in which we, as a village, honor our shared responsibility and opportunity to support each other and our children. Even as the father struggled with the realization of his son’s sexuality, their community intervened, loved and supported both of them in a way that rings true to my experiences of community engagement in times of family crisis. This particularly resonated with memories of how my family responded to the teenage pregnancies of cousins and to my own coming out. This isn’t to say my family, or our communities are romantic portraits reminiscent of Norman Rockwell. Rather, it is necessary to honor the fact that even in our messiness and pain, we managed to love each other in the only ways we knew how.

A question I had throughout the film was the extent to which audience members knew what the film was actually about. This was somewhat answered by the collective surprise when Jesse first kissed his boyfriend, Jordan. However, after the initial shock, people seemed to settle with the idea, though I wouldn’t suggest this was a celebration or affirmation of queerness; yet another reflection on my coming out experience.

In addition to the possibility that some in the audience were unaware of the gay theme in the story, people were very surprised when Benjamin and Peter Bratt entered the theater. The Q&A with the actor and the director was a bit all over the place. Nonetheless, I was excited to hear Peter Bratt, who was both the writer and director, talk about his process.

Something that resonated with me was Bratt’s reasoning for the gay theme in the film. To paraphrase, the writer wanted to portray Latino masculinity in its most vulnerable state. According to Bratt, the best way to expose ultimate vulnerability in a Latino who is deeply rooted in what some would argue is a stereotypical depiction of Latino maleness (dare I say machismo), would be in the realization of his son being gay. Hearing this evoked the memory of hearing my father crying inconsolably on the phone while he asked if his suspicions of my sexuality were true. The call, which ended with my father saying I was a dried-up branch of his family, exposed the darkest and scariest of both his and my vulnerability as Latino men.

I appreciate Bratt’s analysis and his courage to quite literally breakdown Latino masculinity on the big screen. However, I am saddened by the fact that he only focused on exposing the vulnerability of the father’s masculinity, and in doing so, left a gaping whole in exploring the vulnerability and possibility of the gay Latino son. Instead, the story seemed to use the son and his sexuality as a conduit, rather than truly honoring the experience of gay Latino men and our relationship with our fathers.

I was also concerned with Bratt’s reinforcement of the notion that gayness is white construct and something that only exists openly in white-defined spaces such as San Francisco’s Castro District. This is not to say that the Castro is not an important space in queer culture and one that many queer men of color, myself included, have traveled through in the formation of our identities and experience. Yet, to continue leaving gayness within the realm of whiteness speaks to our ongoing inability to claim the many facets of Latina/o sexualities and the many ways we express and manifest gender.

Furthermore, leaving gayness to be embodied by the Castro and a white boyfriend also overlooked the rich history of queer Latinidad that has long been an integral part to San Francisco’s Mission District. As a queer brown man, the LGBT Latina/o community of the Mission, including such spaces as Esta Noche, heavily shaped my identity. Horacio Roque Ramírez, a professor at UC Santa Barbara, has done extensive work on the LGBT Latina/o community of La Misión and has done an excellent job in honoring the legacies of organizing and community building that has taken place over several decades.

To be clear, I am not arguing against depictions of the Castro or against mixed-race relationships. Rather, I ask that we think about what continues to stand in our way of fully acknowledging that LGBT Latinidad can and has long existed outside of the confines and direct influence of white LGBTness. Perhaps acknowledging that queerness can be just as inherently Latina/o as it is to white communities is a vulnerability we are not prepared to experience.

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Related: For local showings of "La Mission" try an online movie ticket sale site such as Fandango.

About Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano: A Queer Xicano writer, Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-nominated  Santo de la Pata Alzada: Poems from the Queer/Xicano/Positive Pen (Evelyn Street Press, 2005).  He is also the editor of Queer Codex: Chile Love (allgo/Evelyn Street Press, 2004), an anthology of visual and literary works by queer men of color from across the U.S.; and, Queer Codex: Rooted (allgo/Evelyn Street Press, 2008), a mix-genre anthology by queer women and trans-identified writers and visual artists. His work also appears in  Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry (Floricanto Press, 2008), edited by Emanuel Xavier. A native born, raised and perpetually residing in Aztlán, Lorenzo was born in San José, CA, raised in Estación Adela, Chihuahua, and schooled in Austin, Tejas. Along with his compañero of nine years, Lorenzo now makes home in San Francisco, CA. 

Oh, and he also blogs, sometimes, at Hairspray & Fideo. Oh, and he has a personal website.