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You could see the Orgullo Fest stage from her home. Ceci lives on the corner of East 1 st Street and Soto.
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She migrated from Mexico 40 years ago and has been living in Boyle Heights for 14 years. Ceci works as a street vendor and sells a range of Mexican food outside her home. I met Ceci at the Los Angeles Center for Community Law and Action (LACCLA), an anti-gentrification organization dedicated to defending marginally housed tenants facing unjust evictions.
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Despite its short temporary stay in Boyle Heights, El Place offered us Orgullo Fest, which brought together a range of talent: mariachi, banda, baile folklorico, drag queens, drag impersonators, and other queer performers.ĭuring my time at Orgullo Fest, I also came across a familiar face: Ceci. Los Angeles has one less queer Latinx space,” commented Steve Saldivar, a Los Angeles Times journalist. The bar remained open for one year, officially closing its doors on November 22, 2021. In collaboration with Los Angeles’ 14 th District Councilmember Kevin de Leon, Orgullo Fest was organized by El Place (formally known as Noa Noa Place), the new queer Latinx bar which opened its doors on Novemamidst the Covid-19 pandemic. The block party took place on Jon the corner of East 1 st and Soto. Orgullo Fest was Boyle Heights inaugural pride festival. In the end, the only question came from my youngest cousin, Vanessa: “Wait, so is she really singing?” She was referring to Jessy Cruz, a drag queen who performed an incredible lip synch to Thalia’s live concert audio of “A Quien Le Importa” while holding a microphone. Indeed, as queer Latina scholar Juana Maria Rodriguez warned us before, the “normative” queer and “perverse” queer stand at odds within the terrains of the family friendly pride festival. On the other hand, a raunchier sex-positive scene could have probably generated a fruitful conversation on healthy sex practices. On the one hand I did not mind the sanitized experience as I avoided having to explain what a gay bear was to young teens. Was my younger sister going to see dildos or other “inappropriate” things? To my surprise Orgullo Fest was very family friendly – as advertised. I admittedly stepped into Orgullo Fest feeling a bit nervous. The Covid-19 pandemic remained a lingering threat but the vaccines, which had begun to roll out months prior, offered some comfort to congregate once again. I arrived at Orgullo Fest with my younger sister, 15, and my three younger cousins, ages 14, 17, and 19.
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Street vendors, food trucks, drag queens, and residents of all ages came together that sunny Sunday afternoon in celebration of Pride Month. Rainbow flags filled the barrio landscape of Boyle Heights, a historically low-income working class Latinx immigrant neighborhood just east of downtown Los Angeles. Manalansan, “Race, Violence, and Neoliberal Spatial Politics in the Global City” How do queer communities of color stake out a territory beyond ghettos and enclaves and beyond demarcated moments such as Pride Days and ethnic celebrations? These questions haunt the struggles, rituals, and practices of African American, Latino, and Asian American queers as they engage with the travails of urban life today.