announcer: This program is made possible in part by L.A. Care Health Plan, elevating health care for all of Los Angeles County; the California Endowment, building healthy communities where everyone belongs; Ultimate Health Services Corporation, striving to eliminate health disparities and empower communities to grow healthy for generations to come; AIDS Healthcare Foundation, since 1987 AIDS Healthcare Foundation supports people living with HIV and AIDS worldwide, with over 1.7 million patients in care; Via Care Family Health Center, your health, your way; California Community Foundation; the California Wellness Foundation; Wesley Health Centers; JWCH Institute; Hispanic Federation; Rising Communities, formerly Community Health Councils; Liberty Hill Foundation; the TransLatina Coalition; and by these additional supporters.

[bleep] Louis Jacinto: Ready?

Veronica Flores: We didn't have spaces where we could come and speak our minds and organize.

Laura Esquivel: Gay organizations were mainly run by white gay men.

Roland Valencia: We wanted to have a space that did not exclude ethnicity, that did not exclude race, that did not exclude women, immigrants, people who spoke a different language, not because we wanted to isolate ourselves, but because our needs and concerns were not being addressed.

Louis Jacinto: It was this family of other queer Latinos, gay men, and lesbians.

Veronica Flores: I don't know what my life might have been coming out if I had not had GLLU.

Lydia Otero: I know that younger generations may not know about us, but we made life better for queers of color, and we made a difference, because we made the world better.

Veronica Flores: So, my name is Veronica Flores, and I was born and raised in Chile.

David Gonzales: My name is David Gonzales.

Rita Gonzales: My name is Rita Gonzales.

David Gonzales: Gonzales with an E-S. Roland Valencia: Roland Valencia, I was born and raised in Guatemala.

Laura Esquivel: My name is Laura Esquivel.

Lydia Otero: I'm Lydia Otero.

Rita Gonzales: One side is from Monterey, and my mother's side from Zacatecas.

Geneva Fernandez: My name is Geneva Adelina Fernandez.

Louis Jacinto: I'm Louis Jacinto.

Laura Esquivel: Both of my grandparents are from Mexico.

Louis Jacinto: Mexico.

David Gonzales: Like to call myself Chicano.

Geneva Fernandez: I'm third generation Chicano.

Laura Esquivel: I'm a Chicana lesbian from Los Angeles.

Veronica Flores: I came to the US in 1974 as a political refugee.

Mm, oh man, that's a good story.

That was during the military coup that took place in 1973 in Chile.

The exit was so abrupt then.

I remember, you know, all of us crying as we drove into California, and all of a sudden the signs were in Spanish, and my whole family was like, oh my god, oh my god, this, like, you know, we belong.

The ocean looked like our ocean.

You know, the rocks looked like our rocks, and so it just felt like we were home because at that point, we couldn't go back to Chile.

Laura Esquivel: Both of my parents were born here in the States, so I am third generation, second generation, but still feel like not that far removed from the immigrant experience, since I grew up with immigrants in my family.

Roland Valencia: I came to LA in late 1974.

I crossed the Nogales, Mexico; Nogales, Arizona, border with no papers.

We just went through a fence that a little kid basically opened up, and myself and my three younger siblings just went through the fence.

And we were undocumented for almost a couple of years.

Lydia Otero: I grew up with a lot of racism.

I witnessed the way that my mother was treated out in downtown by whites, so it's very sensitive to that and very cognizant if that was a reality.

I didn't want to come out queer in a dark bar and in the shadows.

I wanted to find people like me that wanted to be out and stand in the light and be out and be proud of being brown, be proud of being queer, and who wanted to make life better for queers of color.

Roland Valencia: When I started to come out, I met a couple of people at UCLA, and we will go to Studio One.

And Studio One really felt like it was not my environment, and it was primarily male, and it was primarily white male.

And let's just say there was an attitude.

Louis Jacinto: Punk arrived, so my friend Gerardo and I immediately started going to the punk clubs, and I had my camera, and I started taking these photographs of the bands and performance.

And so, that's when I knew that that's what I wanted to do.

In Los Angeles, the first punk scene in the late 1970s was extremely diverse.

There were boys and girls both in the bands and in the audience, queer and non-queer, ethnically and racially, everybody was in the bands and in the crowd.

So, I was just used to always being in a diverse world.

Laura Esquivel: I came out at a very young age.

I came out when I was 14.

At the time I was in a gang, so I met my first lesbians when I was in juvenile hall, and I was in heaven.

I mean, I thought lesbians were truckers, right?

That had, like, hair growing out of their moles on their faces.

Geneva Fernandez: I really didn't identify as lesbian, because lesbians were white women that drove trucks and checkered shirts, and I was a low rider.

I drive a '65 Chevy, I wasn't-- In ninth grade I was a brown beret.

In tenth grade started the first bilingual education program in our high school.

I had also started La Raza Club.

I was also working in Teatro Carlito, which was the Chicano theater group.

And I wanted to move the skills that I learned there into my community of gay and lesbian Latinos.

Veronica Flores: I'm a feminist, plus I'm a Latina, plus I'm South American.

And so, all of those things were sometimes problematic in the spaces where I was with other feminist women, because you were expected to live within a single identity.

You are a feminist.

All these other things pull at you when you are a feminist who is of color, who's organizing.

Lydia Otero: I considered myself a feminist, and I was looking for organizations that had a feminist agenda, certainly.

But I knew that when I moved to LA, I was gonna move there on my own terms.

And joining a group of white feminists was not an option for me.

I wanted browns, queers, I was looking for that.

David Gonzales: When I got to El Salvador and Peace Corps in 1977, it was the wealthy land owners, Los Trece, right?

The 13 families that supposedly owned everything in El Salvador, and the people were not-- were poor, they didn't have any land, it was really pretty difficult conditions to-- for them to live.

And so, there were a number of rebel groups in El Salvador that were fighting against them, and the US government was supporting the Salvadorian government at the time.

And I lived in a very rural town.

They had shot up a McDonald's, the only one in El Salvador at the time.

And I was gonna be going back to that McDonald.

When I got there, it was in flames, and then they shot up the Peace Corp office as well.

And I thought, God, I'm gonna die, and I don't deserve to die in this revolution.

And so, then I left and came back to the United States, but I did not want to abandon those people completely.

I felt like I was abandoning them.

And so, then I wanted to come back and organize protests against US intervention.

I met a few other people, also really leftist thinking, you know, anti-interventionist, and so then we started talking about forming a group.

Laura Esquivel: Organizations were mainly founded and run and controlled by white gay men.

Roland Valencia: As a matter of fact, not much has changed.

Our, you know, queer rainbow favors a color when it comes to leadership and people in the upper echelons making decisions for the rest of the community.

Laura Esquivel: And this wasn't just a challenge for us as Latinos and Latinas.

It was also a challenge for lesbians who did not feel like they had access to these organizations and to leadership positions.

So, as Latinos and Latinas, it was very clear that the issues that were important to our communities, particularly when the AIDS epidemic came along, were not going to be addressed within the white gay power and political structure.

Roland Valencia: People really felt that we needed to go beyond just having a support group.

Veronica Flores: In order for me to be effective and really changing things for our communities, I needed to focus on my people.

David Gonzales: I wanted to have a group that would have all those components in it, the political, the social, the cultural.

One thing I really want to make clear is that I don't feel for me, personally, I was never felt excluded from any kind of group, I'd never been excluded from any kind of bar, and so GLLU for me was to be a positive reason to be formed, to form our own space.

I didn't want to become part of somebody else's space.

Roland Valencia: We wanted to have a space that did not exclude ethnicity, that did not exclude race, that did not exclude women, immigrants, people who spoke a different language, not because we wanted to isolate ourselves, but because our needs and concerns were not being addressed.

David Gonzales: We wanted to speak Spanish when we felt like speaking Spanish, English when we felt like speaking English.

Louis Jacinto: We're coming together as queer Latinos, not to exclude anyone, but just to have our own space, just the way the women's movement is teaching us that it's good to have your own space with your own tribe.

And there was a guy there who I thought was really cute, and I thought, well, you know, I'm gonna go check this out.

Roland Valencia: So, in 1981 we founded Gay Latinos Unidos, but we wanted to include women in the organization, and the first woman who joined us was Geneva Fernandez.

Geneva Fernandez: I went to the gay and lesbian community service center, and I seen a flyer for GLU, which was Gay Latinos Unidos.

And so, I went to one of their meetings.

The meeting's at 7 o'clock on Thursday evening, and walked into the room, and I was also expecting women to be there.

I mean, I was a little set back, and I started to turn around and walk out, and I believe it was Jose Ramirez and Rolando said, "No, no, no, stay.

We want your input."

Roland Valencia: She basically taught us, if you wanna include women, you need to say lesbiana somewhere in there.

David Gonzales: Then we changed it within, I think, about six months.

We changed it to GLLU, Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos.

Geneva Fernandez: And so, they welcomed me with open arms.

But they also had to deal with their internal sexism, because the men would call each other Mary when they were talking negative, or it would be a pun or joke.

They didn't use the term Mary when it was something positive or strong.

It was always, like, "Oh, Mary, girl."

Roland Valencia: Sometimes we as gay males tend to probably focus on sexual liberation.

And the women really brought this, you know, much more expansive agenda about classism and sexism and the patriarchy.

And all these, you know, this context and this interpretation about systems.

Geneva Fernandez: So, they had to monitor themselves on those issues and change their attitudes and their vocabularies towards women, because I told them that they needed to deal with those issues before I could even go out and tell women to come here into the organization.

And which they did, and they did that on their own.

And so, I stood and continued to work with them and found a new family.

I was raised in Pittsburgh and went to LA for a two-week vacation and stood there for ten years.

When my two weeks were up, I became homeless.

After being homeless for, like, five months or so, I went to the office, and I told Jose that I went in, and tears just were rolling down my face.

And I said, "I can't do it no more, I--" and I, you know, confessed that I was homeless all this time, and he would-- he couldn't believe it.

I didn't have to say more than that, and he handed me the keys to his apartment and told me, "Just stay there.

You don't have to pay, just go relax.

You're at home."

And later on, he handed me the keys and handed me the lease and gave me the apartment.

So, but that-- that was-- that was the guys in GLLU.

And I loved the men in GLLU, they were good to me.

The gay men in GLLU were so supportive of getting women in there that they started the Lesbian Task Force.

Lydia Otero: They spent money to pay for us to go to a conference, Lesbians of Color, to do outreach to other women, to let them know about GLLU.

We met Geneva Fernandez and Laura Esquivel, and they told us about this group, GLLU.

Rita Gonzales: I went to my first GLLU meeting, and Laura Esquivel was there, and Oscar de la O was there, Louis Jacinto was there, and Lydia Otero was there, and everyone was just so welcoming.

Lydia Otero: It felt like a homecoming.

Veronica Flores: I walked out of that first meeting saying, okay, where do I sign up?

Laura Esquivel: The women in GLLU, in the leadership, were not just feminists, were radical feminists.

And the men were too.

Roland Valencia: We so wanted Latina lesbians to be part of the organization and to be part of the movement.

Laura Esquivel: If we wanted to take money and go and do a retreat or have an event that was just women, the men were supportive.

Do what you need to do.

Roland Valencia: We were 100% supportive of that.

David Gonzales: We were family.

I think that our cultural experience came to the forefront, and that's what was a really strong unifying factor.

Rita Gonzales: And they were talking about all these committees they have, and all these things that they're doing in the community, and how they're helping the community.

Here people had meaning to their lives, and I wanted to be part of that.

Laura Esquivel: The gay organizations were focused on what they considered gay issues, right?

And so, if you walked in the door to those organizations, nobody wanted to talk about the issues that we were facing as Latinos, right?

So, nobody wanted to talk about racism, nobody wanted to talk about, you know, farm workers, or it's like those are not the gay issues.

And in the Latino organizations, gay issues were not considered Latino issues.

So, for me, I felt like when I walked in the door of these different organizations, I was asked to leave a piece of who I was at the door.

So, what was different in GLLU was that it was the first place that I could bring my whole self, and that wasn't the case any place else.

Lydia Otero: I knew growing up that I was Chicanx, Chicana, but it really impacted me in a deep, deep way to be able to have that identity, because it gave me a platform, a platform to speak out against injustice and speak out for justice, so when I did join GLLU in 1983, the fact that the guys there were so connected to the United Farm Workers impressed me.

I wanted to be with them, part of them, because as brown queers, there were few spaces of acceptance.

Geneva Fernandez: That's what bonded us.

Lydia Otero: And one thing about the Latino community, we don't all have the same culture.

If you're from Colombia or if you're from Chile, everything is different.

We learn from each other.

Veronica Flores: I am a political refugee.

I live with that, right?

My history, the impact of all of the political strategies that the US has designed against Latin America.

It's a different worldview, and I was working with Chicanas whose world view was about being in this country, being born in this country, living with the oppression of growing up in this country as a Latinx.

I had to learn a lot of stuff.

I actually didn't know much.

I was pretty ignorant to the struggles of Latinos in this country.

Lydia Otero: GLLU used to have retreats once a year.

Laura Esquivel: Louis Jacinto and I were the co-chairs for our first retreat in Big Bear.

We planned and shopped and cooked for everybody that weekend ourselves.

Everybody had to sign up to do a shift.

It was a lot of fun, but it was also a lot of work, and a lot of learning.

How do you put on an event like this?

We had never done anything like that before.

But I learned how to do all of that stuff in GLLU.

Lydia Otero: During the retreat, the women would go off and have their own meetings, and the men would go off and do theirs, so they had their separate meetings, and then we'd do things together.

Laura Esquivel: Lesbianas Unidas came out of the Lesbian Task Force that we had in GLLU.

To be in an environment where we were dancing to the music that spoke to us was just liberating.

Geneva Fernandez: And I was able to put on a corrido and dance with my girlfriend.

Veronica Flores: My first engagement was I attended GLLU meeting, but my actual participation really was in Lesbianas Unidas, right from the very beginning.

Laura Esquivel: Lesbianas Unidas, GLLU started organizing retreats for women only.

Veronica Flores: I attended the first retreat, and it was a very small retreat, right?

It was maybe, like, 20 or 30 of us, and it was incredible.

But you know, not all of it is peaches and cream.

We are different, and we had never come into a space together like that.

And so, the issues at the time were present.

Like, are you a feminist?

Are you not a feminist?

Are you a Chicana?

Are you not a Chicana?

Do you speak Spanish?

Do you not speak Spanish?

Are you white skinned?

Are you not white skinned?

Laura Esquivel: Over time more and more women, and powerful women, strong women, became part of Lesbianas Unidas.

Over time, Lesbianas Unidas became the most active part of GLLU.

Geneva Fernandez: Some of them chose to also join GLLU, and some chose just to stay in the women's organization of Lesbianas Unidas.

I would say at least half of them also were in GLLU.

That was something that was real special that you didn't get in the white organization.

We're always too busy defending ourselves in the white organizations.

Roland Valencia: We really became a magnet, you know, for our Latina lesbian sisters.

And it was an incredible collaboration that, by the way, was not happening in our queer community.

Laura Esquivel: When GLLU started becoming less active, and LU was going very strongly, it at a certain point just made sense for LU to become its own organization, to not be governed by a GLLU board of directors.

And so, there was never any issue or challenge or conflict or anything with the men in GLLU.

I mean, they were happy to see Lesbianas Unidas thriving, and happy to see women taking such leadership roles in GLLU.

Lydia Otero: When Lesbianas Unidas started in 1984, we were mostly Chicanas.

We're really into oldies.

I was into disco, and one of the songs we played over and over is "Tighten Up" by Archie Bell and The Drells.

I remember that song, like, if I think of that song, it's always reminds me of a LU retreat.

And about 1986, Latinas started joining LU from Chile and from other places.

And I remember Veronica saying to me, "Hey, you better, like, loosen up and start playing salsa, because it's a way to welcome more women."

I think we all had to become aware of this collective Chicana centric-ness that we had and just be different and be more open and be more accommodating and bring in different music.

And once the other Latinas from other countries came, then they brought their own music, and then the retreats started to reflect that.

♪♪♪ Laura Esquivel: It's hard to describe when you're walking in this world that you're supposed to belong in, right?

The gay and lesbian world, and still feel like an outsider.

That all changed when we had GLLU.

That all changed when we had Lesbianas Unidas.

We were no longer outsiders.

David Gonzales: Some of our first actions were to march with CISPES against the intervention in Central America.

Rita Gonzales: Everything we did was for the community.

We would be there on parades for laborers, the farm workers.

Louis Jacinto: We would go as members of Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos in support of the United Farm Workers.

Rita Gonzales: Even if they didn't want us, we were there marching as gay Latinos.

Roland Valencia: I think we were seen radical by many people in our community and outside of our community, because it was a radical in the sense that it was a departure from business as usual.

Geneva Fernandez: We sparked fear, and that was okay, because we wanted them to fear us.

Laura Esquivel: We decided that our board and our leadership would be all Latino, which was radical, right?

Basically saying white people were not allowed to become board members of GLLU, and some people got very offended by it.

Other people of color were always welcome.

David Gonzales: Some people thought we were a separatist organization.

If you were a white person and willing to come into our group and play by our rules, okay, good.

You're gonna have to listen when we speak Spanish.

If you don't get it, then go out and learn Spanish.

Laura Esquivel: You have opportunities that we don't have.

And so, we are creating opportunities for ourselves.

Rita Gonzales: All these people of color were now starting to emerge.

We were now a force that they had to recognize.

Geneva Fernandez: And we weren't going to let them get away with this, what they were getting away with for.

Louis Jacinto: I remember Christopher Street West, the time that we were marching, and members of the United Farm Workers just walked into our contingent and joined us.

And Christopher Street West, they were very upset, because we had allowed the United Farm Workers to join, and it wasn't in our application, and blah, blah, blah.

We didn't care.

We did not care.

Roland Valencia: One of the favorite things that we loved to do was to be in the pride parade.

Laura Esquivel: And it was a lot of fun, but there was a reason behind it, and it was for visibility.

narrator: Unidad, volume one, number five.

August-September, 1982.

The Tenth Annual Christopher Street West Gay and Lesbian Celebration was held the weekend of June 26 to the 28th.

GLLU participated actively in many facets of the gay and lesbian celebration, from having representation on the CSW board to putting together a culture booth selling Mexican arts and crafts, to making a political statement at the parade.

We were visible.

GLLU was joined in our march down Santa Monica Boulevard by CISPES and other organizations carrying diverse messages such as, US out of El Salvador, stop racism and sexism in the bars and the Gay and Lesbian Center, free Puerto Rico, Latino gay and lesbian pride.

Roland Valencia: You could see a lot of Latinidad on the sidelines.

Louis Jacinto: And we just wanted to let them know that we were there, and they would just scream when they saw us.

narrator: All told, the festival was a major victory for GLLU because we were able to make a visible and positive political statement.

We look forward to more active participation in CSW in the future, especially as GLLU becomes a more vocal and visible part of the Los Angeles gay and lesbian community.

Laura Esquivel: We had the best music, and it was just-- it was a lot of fun.

Louis Jacinto: When I learned about GLLU, I was deeply involved with the Sunset Junction Neighborhood Alliance, and that organization began when several people from Echo Park and Silver Lake, Los Feliz, went to the very first March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights.

They came back energized.

Echo Park, Silver Lake, Los Feliz have always been the most diverse communities in Los Angeles, and then a large, visible queer community always.

Roland Valencia: Geographically, a lot of the activity that was going on with GLLU at that time was in Silver Lake.

Now, Silver Lake happens to be geographically midway between East LA and West Hollywood, and this is kind of like where east and west kind of met.

Louis Jacinto: And so, they looked around their neighborhoods, and they said, you know, what's happening right now here in our neighborhood is that we're getting bashed by the gang kids when we leave the bars.

They're beating us up.

So, we need to do something to address that.

So, what they came up with was to shut down the street and have a celebration of the neighborhood, but it had to include everybody in the neighborhood, including the gang kids.

Laura Esquivel: And so, it was gang members working with gay people to put on this big community fair, and it was a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Louis Jacinto: There was a lot of resistance from the police.

They said, "It'll never work.

You'll have blood flowing down the streets."

But the organization was able to have the gangs call a truce, and the gang kids were security for the fair.

Laura Esquivel: We were very active in Sunset Junction Street Fair.

Louis Jacinto: In 1981 the street fair hired me to be their official photographer, and so that's when I became aware of GLLU.

narrator: Unidad Volume Two, November 6.

October-November, 1983.

The fair is truly an event made possible by the individuals who live and work in the community's encompassing the fair site, Los Angeles's most diverse.

Nowhere else in the country has the lesbian and gay community successfully learned to live and share in a neighborhood without turning it into a ghetto.

Congratulations to the fair coordinators for giving us all the opportunity in celebrating the dream.

Laura Esquivel: And so, that visibility was really important.

Lydia Otero: Our main expenditure was Unidad.

Veronica Flores: Oh my God, how many nights working on those Unidad newsletters?

Lydia Otero: People subscribed to mail it to them, and then we put free copies all over the place in LA.

David Gonzales: I can see here our Unidad staff with me, and Louis, and Richard Martinez, and I was sleeping with both of them at the time, and I was still with my other husband.

Veronica Flores: It was good writing.

There was a lot of talent that went into these.

David Gonzales: I had no idea what I was doing.

It was really tocho morocho, we would put this stuff together and print it out.

But what beautiful memories.

Lydia Otero: David and Louis were putting together Unidad when they invited me to write some columns, so I wrote some articles for Unidad, and then pretty soon I'm in charge of Unidad, so that was pretty cool.

A lot of the skills I learned in GLLU actually have helped me.

I'm a writer now.

Louis Jacinto: It was an important vehicle for getting the word out about what we were doing, who we are, and providing resources to the community.

Veronica Flores: Visibility was important.

Laura Esquivel: This Frontiers article, you know, the fact that we got on the cover, Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos, that Rolando and I were on the cover, was part of our strategy to break into, you know, the consciousness of the white gay community, but also the broader mainstream consciousness, that gays and lesbians look like us too.

Don't ask me about the hair.

Geneva Fernandez: Politicians and community people would come to our anniversaries.

We made sure of that.

And it was GLLU's anniversary, and we were having it at the Friendship Auditorium in LA, and Roberto Vargas, he was in charge of making the chicken mole, and Roberto must have left the mole out, and we didn't know what to do.

We were expecting over 400 people.

And so, he went and got pineapples and cut them in half and put them in the chicken mole to absorb the acids.

And we still served it, and all these people, they just thought the mole was so good.

They were all eating it very, very well.

[laughing] Veronica Flores: I attended a meeting with GLLU, and they were talking about the International People of Color Conference, and that that was being organized.

And this other man, Steve Lu, who is also an organizer, was sitting in the front of the room, and we kept asking questions about how the conference was being organized, how-- what we could do to support it, how would we be fundraising, and so after the meeting the two of us were asked if we would take over as co-chairs.

I said, "Of course."

The Gay and Lesbian People of Color conference was hosted by GLLU.

It brought a diversity of people to the table.

It was international, so there were people from all over the world, people of color, queer, but also it was an important moment for GLLU.

It allowed us to really engage with different perspectives, to engage with folks that talked about their struggles, that talked about racism in different parts of the world and how they organized.

And I think it was an opening for GLLU to really expand its perspective.

Roland Valencia: The conference was organized by us, for us, and because of us.

We did not have mainstream supervision, so to speak.

And I think that that really gave us a very powerful and empowering voice that lifted our communities and that connected our struggles.

Veronica Flores: We wanted representation, that was another thing that I think was really important for GLLU, is that, as it always was, that the representation always included men and women and trans people.

And so, it was a good mix, and we had about 400 people attend the conference.

And from that conference, that's when the Lesbian Gay International movement really started.

The launch was at the conference, and it became something much bigger than what we even thought.

From that we also then realized, you know, women need to be working international perspective.

And so, there was the International Feminist Conference which happens every couple of years, and the next one was happening in Mexico.

So, we had our first conference in Cuernavaca, and that was amazing, but it was also really scary.

The newspapers in Mexico began to talk about the lesbians are coming to Mexico, and we had the military outside many times, we had men crawling up on the walls of the compound, trying to look in, so we had to have women walking the perimeters, making sure that we were safe.

When we walked out of the compound, we had to make sure that there were other women tracking us.

When we went back to Mexico City, I was almost arrested for being outside talking and hugging another woman.

The police came, picked me up, and they were gonna take me.

There were some attorneys, they ran out, they wrap themselves around me and began to talk to the police as they were ready to carry me onto the car, and we had already heard that another woman had been violated two days before by the cops, and so it was a scary moment.

And those women came out, and they stood in front of the cops, and they would not let them take me.

So, it was an incredible experience.

But you know, I think it built this connection between all these women, and that we could take care of ourselves, and that, you know, we just need to call out, and we would be there.

Rita Gonzales: Bienvenidos, and welcome to the October edition of Radio GLLU.

I'm Rita Gonzales.

Mario Lopez: And I'm Mario Lopez.

Radio GLLU is a production of the Communications Committee of Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos.

Rita Gonzales: We did this radio program.

It was a half hour, once a month.

Louis Jacinto: We would do interviews, readings, poetry, and it became known as Radio GLLU.

Rita Gonzales: Tonight on our show we have several guests.

Mario Lopez: We have Ernie Martinez speaking about Proposition 174.

Rita Gonzales: Cecilia Estolano.

Mario Lopez: Frank Rios with his commentary.

Rita Gonzales: La red, who will be talking about pro-immigration.

Louis Jacinto: And it went on for many, many years.

I came up with the theme song.

Rita Gonzales: I don't know where he got the jingle from, but he had this little jingle, and we taped it.

So, we're all sitting there, and he's conducting us like we're this big symphony orchestra, and we had to do it several times.

Louis Jacinto: I was in the vocal track, but then somebody said somebody's off key, and it was me.

Rita Gonzales: So, the jingle was really cute, it was... ♪ G-L-L-U Radio GLLU ♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ G-L-L-U Radio GLLU ♪ Rita Gonzales: We always made sure that we had Latino voices on.

A lot of them were teachers that could not come out because they could lose their job for being a lesbian or gay.

We talked to gay priests.

Mario Lopez: Tonight's guest is Reverend Doctor Jorge Delgado.

Jorge Delgado: Metropolitan Community Church is a church that has spent 30 years reaching out to the gay, lesbian, transsexual transvestite community.

Rita Gonzales: I'm Rita Gonzales, and our guests this evening are two board members of Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos, Michael Cardoza and Marco Pacheco.

speaker: One of the things that has made GLLU very unique is that we have a commitment for it to continue being co-gender.

Our main purpose is to work to overcome the discrimination that we experience, not only as gays and lesbians, but as Latinos as well.

speaker: GLLU continues to be an outlet for social activism and expression of who we are, both as a gay and lesbian and as Latinos in the gay and lesbian community.

We provide support for gay and lesbian Latinos to help them accept their sexuality, which is very important in our Latino community.

speaker: For those people that aren't really interested in becoming gay activists, we have a lot of different activities.

We go to movies, we go to museums, we go to art exhibits, even weekend trips.

So, if you're interested in just making friends and doing fun things, GLLU is also the place for you.

As far as what GLLU has planned for 1997, we're gonna start working on another People of Color Conference.

Also, GLLU has plans to have a retreat for all of our members.

Louis Jacinto: Through the years I've heard people say, you know, when I was really young, still living at home, I would turn on the radio really low underneath my blankets to hear Radio GLLU, because it was the only connection I had to being queer and being Latino, and you guys were like a lifeline.

Rita Gonzales: I would talk to parents that their child was gay, and they didn't know who to speak to.

And I would give them resources.

Meeting all these people in our community that were Latinos and that were gay and lesbian was so enriching.

Laura Esquivel: One of the things that I'm very proud of is that the first national civil rights figure in this country to come out in support of LGBT rights was Cesar Chavez.

At the 1987 March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights, Cesar was a speaker.

And this was before it became popular.

And I spoke to him behind the stage, because that was the weekend we were meeting-- we were having our first meeting to organize the first national Latino LGBT organization, LLEGO.

And so, I talked to Cesar about it, and he was very sweet and very encouraging and said, "You have a right to be seen as gay people and as Latinos, and you have a right to that space, and you should move forward."

And he kind of gave us our blessing.

And I cried, I cried, and I'll never forget it.

It was the only time I ever spoke with him.

Lydia Otero: In 1983 Unidad ran a letter from Cesar Chavez to GLLU saying, "We accept you here at the UFW, and you belong."

That's a huge, huge statement.

And then later that year when GLLU marches in Christopher Street West, Dolores Huerta shows up with her banner and marches with GLLU, making sure that people along the route see us together.

That's a big moment in terms of being part of the UFW, to know that there was at least one place that supported us, and that we belonged there.

Veronica Flores: Dolores and I are good friends, and Dolores has been a tremendous champion of Latino leaders and Latino organizations becoming advocates and allies for LGBT people.

Cesar was one of the first, and Dolores has been a constant.

So, when we weren't having our formal meetings, we were having fun.

Roland Valencia: GLLU loved to party, by the way.

We loved to party.

Rita Gonzales: GLLU had the best parties around.

Roland Valencia: I love dancing.

I would dance for five, six hours.

Louis Jacinto: Well, they're into disco, and I'm not.

Roland Valencia: No, I was totally disco.

Veronica Flores: And every party that we had, we would make it a fundraiser.

Roland Valencia: We had fundraisers at Circus.

Veronica Flores: Every Sunday, they would have this Sunday brunch.

David Gonzales: I loved those, because I could just go around and flirt with everybody.

They called me La Coqueta.

Roland Valencia: David, he was in the orientation committee.

David Gonzales: I was accused sometimes of being the welcome wagon.

Anybody knew who came into the group, right?

I had got to check him out, and then, you know, okay, I come over here, let's talk.

And then what's the problem?

Geneva Fernandez: I remember Roland came to the meeting, and he had a bunch of leaves in his hair.

He was rolling in the grass with one of his men friends.

They were all handsome guys.

Roland Valencia: We were, like, 22, we were fit, we had a lot of energy.

Why not?

Laura Esquivel: You know, Lesbianas Unidas and GLLU was never about just wanting to get together and have parties.

We were all constantly in a state of consciousness raising about all of the things that we were facing.

Louis Jacinto: GLLU started in 1981, and so did AIDS.

And it devastated us.

Everybody was dying.

There was no cure.

A lot of people from GLLU got sick and died.

Young people, young, young, young people.

Veronica Flores: Everything shifted at that point, right?

We were losing our brothers.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Laura Esquivel: This was happening to people that we cared about, and it was scary.

It was, it was a-- it was a really scary time.

David Gonzales: So many of my close friends, but that's where AIDS hit the most.

And not many of them are left, so.

Geneva Fernandez: Jose Ramirez, he was my brother.

He was the one that gave me his apartment.

He was the one that showed me how to dance merengue and shared his culture, his food, his ideology, and he was a good friend.

He had a heart of gold.

Louis Jacinto: And the ones who stepped up to help were the lesbians.

Geneva Fernandez: They were my brothers.

Just as you take care of a family member that's ill, you take care of your brothers that are ill, whether that be to run to the store, whether that be to bring them a plate of food.

How could I let them die alone?

Veronica Flores: So we just jumped into action.

Lydia Otero: Latinos were disproportionately contracting AIDS.

Laura Esquivel: Kind of like COVID has done more recently, it uncovered a lot of disparities that existed in our communities.

The treatment that Latinos and that immigrant communities had access to was very different from the treatment and the experience of white gay men, and that wasn't so great itself.

Louis Jacinto: AIDS organizations that were popping up were not going to address it.

Laura Esquivel: Gay groups started getting significant federal funding during the AIDS crisis, and that money was going to white gay organizations that were not allocating the resources to reach our communities.

Lydia Otero: It was rare to find information in Spanish.

Laura Esquivel: They had hotlines, they weren't bilingual.

They had staff, they didn't look like us.

Louis Jacinto: I remember GLLU said, you know, it's great that you're doing this, but, you know, there's this whole segment of the population that does not speak English.

AIDS is still affecting them, and you're getting government money to help everybody, so let's see some literature in Spanish.

So, their solution to that was, well, here's the literature, you translate it for us.

And I remember we said, no.

You have the funding, you get it translated.

You do it.

Roland Valencia: You know, to what extent do we want to just be reactive and aggravated by this exclusion?

And at what point do we create our own institutions?

Laura Esquivel: Like with most things, we looked around and said what does our community need, and how can we help?

What's the role that we can play in that?

Rita Gonzales: So, we started this AIDS committee to get the information out.

Lydia Otero: We decided to make our own brochure in Spanish.

Louis Jacinto was the photographer, and we made zillions of copies, and we put them out all over the place, and we did that without funding.

But at that point, we thought, hey, we're doing this, and we're not getting funded to do this, and the people that are getting funded to do this aren't doing such a great job.

Maybe we should start seriously thinking not just about working as an affiliate with the larger AIDS organizations, but starting our own organization.

And I'm very proud that when I was president in 1989 that we launched Bienestar, a Gay Latino AIDS project.

Veronica Flores: They got enough money to get a little office at Sunset Junction.

And thank goodness Lydia is a good carpenter, because she did all the building of everything.

Lydia Otero: I remember thinking, wow, we worked so hard.

It's such a big deal.

We have our own office.

I'm so excited.

And then this white guy from APLA came and asked me, he said, "Is this your office?"

I said, "Yeah, it's our office."

And he said, "It's so small."

I wanted to punch the guy out.

We had to scratch and fight for every little crumb we got, which is why I wanna commend Oscar so much for moving in that direction and for making Bienestar what it is today.

David Gonzales: I'm still active in Bienestar.

I go to board meetings.

Never missed a board meeting.

Our board meetings are once a month.

I lead the board meetings, because I am uh the chair of the board of directors of Bienestar.

Laura Esquivel: I made a conscious decision to step back from GLLU and from LU.

We all had full time jobs.

I was a mother.

I don't have rose colored glasses.

Everything wasn't wonderful.

It was really hard work.

Lydia Otero: With the deaths that were taking place, the grieving, I don't know that I could have kept up in that environment.

It was very stressful.

Roland Valencia: I was feeling burned out, because it was all volunteer, and it's all consuming.

Veronica Flores: I was recruited for a job in New York, so I left.

Geneva Fernandez: My father passed away, so I had to leave Los Angeles.

Roland Valencia: All of us left GLLU at some point, but GLLU never left us.

Laura Esquivel: GLLU is where I really was supported and encouraged, and we all were, to be leaders.

Rita Gonzales: When I did not think I was a political woman, Lydia Otero says, "Yes, you are.

Just being born a woman, being a Latina and a lesbian, you are political."

Louis Jacinto: My involvement of GLLU led me to learn a lot of leadership skills that I didn't know that I had.

David Gonzales: One of my personal goals for the group was to provide a fertile soil so that we could make our own leaders.

Laura Esquivel: We learned the skills that didn't allow people to dismiss us.

We could go to board meetings and demand things because we knew how that worked.

Geneva Fernandez: I worked for Latino Age Project, the women's refuge out of Oakland, California Prostitution Education Project.

Those were all stepping stones from GLLU.

Veronica Flores: I think all of us, we learned so much, got a lot of good foundation, and then we've been spreading these little sparks in different places.

David Gonzales: The minute I stepped into the classroom, I go, damn.

This is where I'm supposed to be.

Roland Valencia: One thing that we always do that we could draw a direct line to GLLU is that we never again compromise our entire being.

Laura Esquivel: We were there.

We were there, and we contributed, and we made a difference.

And that story needs to be told.

♪♪♪ Rita Gonzales: Oh my goodness!

Veronica Flores: Hello.

Hi, como estas?

David Gonzales: Hey!

Laura Esquivel: Hello, hello.

Surprise!

[laughing] Roland Valencia: You look so beautiful, just gorgeous.

David Gonzales: What did I have in my mind that I wanted to help organize GLLU?

And most of us who showed up had never been in a leadership position.

I can say I was never in a leadership position.

And so I said, "Well, if we make our own, we could become president or whatever we want to be."

And so, I felt this was a training ground for all of us.

Rita Gonzales: The people in GLLU were so loving, and we grew together.

We learned, and I think we were a foundation for a lot of kids today, for what we did.

Laura Esquivel: You guys were so important, so important at a very formative time of my life.

Roland Valencia: We didn't have the language of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

And you know, blah, blah, blah, and gender parity.

We had the experience.

Laura Esquivel: It was the first place and the rare place where the people there said, you are a leader, we want you to be a leader, we see your power, we honor that, and it's a beautiful thing.

Veronica Flores: This is so absolutely needed, just to understand what we went through, what we did, how we collaborated, you know, the impact that it had on us.

Louis Jacinto: I think everything that we did was for the entire community.

And I think Los Angeles is a better place because of it today, 40 years later.

Veronica Flores: We made gay and lesbian Latinos and Latinas visible to the world through Unidad, through the Radio GLLU, through our outreach to the mainstream-- well, first to the gay media for whom we were-- we didn't exist, but we made gay and lesbian Latinos visible and insisted on them not ignoring us and that gay people weren't all white, you know, because that was all people saw.

Louis Jacinto: I would like all of us to give a toast to our friends in GLLU who aren't with us anymore.

Arturo Olivas.

Arturo.

Roland Valencia: Presente.

Louis Jacinto: Mike Garcia.

Roland Valencia: Presente.

Louis Jacinto: GLLU co-founder, Jose Ramirez.

David Gonzales: Jose Ramirez.

Louis Jacinto: And then all of our other friends who aren't with us, but always stay with us.

Veronica Flores: Thank you for bringing us together, really.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Archie Bell: Hi everybody.

I'm Archie Bell of the Drells of Houston, Texas.

We don't only sing.

But we dance just as good as we walk.

In Houston, we just started a new dance.

Called the Tighten Up.

This is the music we tighten up with.

First tighten up on the drums.

Come on now, drummer.

I want you to tighten it up for me now, oh, yeah.

Tighten up on that bass now.

Tighten it up, ha, ha, yeah.

Now let that guitar fall in.

Oh, yeah.

Tighten up on that organ now.

Yeah.

announcer: This program is made possible in part by L.A. Care Health Plan, elevating health care for all of Los Angeles County; the California Endowment, building healthy communities where everyone belongs; Ultimate Health Services Corporation, striving to eliminate health disparities and empower communities to grow healthy for generations to come; AIDS Healthcare Foundation, since 1987 AIDS Healthcare Foundation supports people living with HIV and AIDS worldwide, with over 1.7 million patients in care; Via Care Family Health Center, your health, your way; California Community Foundation; the California Wellness Foundation; Wesley Health Centers; JWCH Institute; Hispanic Federation; Rising Communities, formerly Community Health Councils; Liberty Hill Foundation; the TransLatina Coalition; and by these additional supporters.