LATINA/O QUEER PERFORMANCE

A Critical Travelogue

WE ARE RAIN OR SHINE ... COME ON BY ... WE'RE HERE!

— Orgullo en Acción

Queer Latinidad in Public

It is an overcast summer morning on June 13, 2009, as I prepare to attend Orgullo en Acción's Fourth Annual Latina/o LGBTQQ Pride Picnic at Chicago's Humboldt Park. The clouds look menacing and last night's heavy downpour makes me hesitant about attending the outdoor event. I am about to give up and stay in for the day. A message pops up on my Facebook screen: "We are rain or shine ... come on by ... we're here!" I am hailed by this statement of resilience by a group eager to celebrate their queer latinidad despite the possibility of inclement weather or broader societal obstacles that render the simple act of gathering in a public place a heroic feat. The very phrasing of the pronouncement "we are rain or shine," as opposed to "we are here rain or shine," showcases the social and cultural dynamics central to this book. Queer Latinas/ os at the picnic "are" or "become" a collective by "being here" in public and participating in acts of performance that range from the social to the theatrical. The simple, and I would speculate purposeful, slippage of the Internet communiqué advances a theory of performance's world-making powers by collapsing the idea of "being" Latina/o and queer with the practice of "being there" at the site of Latina/o queer public enactments. And it is precisely my interest and investment in performances of queer latinidad that beckons me to this event in a city I am still getting to know and with a group of strangers who find pleasure in performing their Latina/o queer selves as public interventions. I quickly ready for an afternoon of fellowship in Latina/o queer pride.

I arrive at Humboldt Park and walk west on Division Street to encounter a section of the picnic area demarcated by two giant rainbow flags. The flags echo the space-making practices performed by Puerto Ricans throughout the neighborhood. A historically working-class enclave in Chicago's near west side, Humboldt Park has been the symbolic, cultural, economic, and political center of Puerto Rican Chicago for over five decades. Since the early 1990s the community has organized against the westward push of gentrification as formerly low-income neighborhoods transform into hipster heavens for young up-and-coming mostly white middle-class families. The Puerto Rican flag is prominently displayed everywhere: on windows, murals, business awnings, T-shirts, baseball caps, and the monumental steel arches that cross the street as gateways into the Division Street business district, popularly referred to as Paseo Boricua or La División. This showcase of the Puerto Rican national icon marks territory for a community that struggles to maintain its sense of place in a fast-changing Chicago human landscape.

The Latina/o Pride Picnic extends th