On June 29 the mural titled Por Vida at La Galeria de la Raza was set on fire. After being defaced three times prior, an arsonist set the “man kissing a man” portion of the artwork on fire. The mural as a whole celebrates the LBGTQ community often hidden in Lowrider culture. Manuel Paul, an artist from Los Angeles who is also part of the Maricon Collective, proudly showcased his mural last week. The outside mural complements the work being displayed inside by local artists titled “Q-sides.”
What must be said first and foremost is that as local activists, San Francisco and Mission residents, teachers and workers whose office is located in the Mission District, the Party for Socialism and Liberation stands firm with the artists and the LGBTQ community in rejecting this act of vandalism and all forms of homophobia and bigotry. As Black churches are being burned throughout the U.S. after the white supremacist killer, Dylan Roof, murdered nine innocent people in Charleston and as burned buildings in the Mission have come to symbolize the violent gentrification of a predominantly Latino community, such acts can only be grouped with the reactionary terror that is used by white supremacy to oppress Black and Brown communities.
What comes next is an attempt to address some of the discussions being had in the Mission around the “controversy” of the mural. Honest and well-meaning people are uncomfortable with this depiction of Lowrider culture because they feel it is inaccurate or an attempt to force a “foreign” identity upon a key symbol of Chican@s and Raza. Some feel that Manuel Paul’s LA credentials make his work unrelatable to the lived experience of El Barrio de La Mission. Sadly, there are even some who think that such artwork is part of the gentrification that is kicking us Latinos out of the Mission. These very strong opinions lack a genuine understanding of the importance LGBTQ struggles can have for straight Latino men.
As a straight Latino male who teaches in the Mission and does his social activist work alongside many great fighters from a wide range of identities and perspectives, I share my own experience as to how trying to hold on to our taught understanding of “maleness,” or in other words “ser un hombre,” is devastating to the effort of uniting our fight against the real problems that face our community. Every year, in the classroom, I see how crudely this capitalist society teaches our children to replicate every form of oppression possible. From classism, racism, sexism, homophobia, chauvinism, and so on, most of the children have not developed the self-confidence needed to question their surroundings and stand tall on their own without needing to bring others down.
For our Latino boys, especially those that still live in the Mission, it is so difficult for them to find self-confidence when they know they don’t have the money, don’t have the opportunities, don’t look like those in power, don’t have the support at home and don’t have access to the education needed to empower themselves. The vast majority of our boys manage to find some confidence in their school abilities or their social relationships, at least enough to survive the system. Some even direct their justified anger to that which actually oppresses them and I see them protesting and shutting down City Hall!
But there are a handful of those niños and jovenes whose confidence is so shaken that they don’t recover or survive. There is a lot of pressure on this handful of boys to play the dominant role in their circles, to stand out and “ser un hombre.” They hold down the corner of the 24th St. McDonalds or they cruise through the Mission letting other boys know who “owns” the “street.”
And while our cultura highlights many of these images as resistance, most of the targets of this resistance and ALL the consequences of tough macho dominance in our boys are felt by our gente. When our Latino boys have been “dissed” by someone or feel they have to prove their power, they often resort to the most pronounced form of dominance which is outright violence directed towards someone else in the community.
Almost 10 months to the day of this publication, on Sept. 2, an innocent and beautiful boy lost his life to this violence. We all remember him. My school still maintains a memorial at the entrance and I see him every time I sign in for work. The horrible killing of this 9th grader began when another joven felt his “manliness” questioned. There has been a court ruling and the verdict is final, but I will always regret, as do many co-workers, not being able to heal that boy’s wounds, to build his self-confidence so that both of the lives lost, and all their loved ones, could be allowed to continue living.
If there is a need to build a sense of dignity and self-confidence by looking at our roots and history so that we can defend our gente and to resist, then by all means, ¡Viva la Raza! But to use our roots to exclude others, to oppress others, most importantly, to hurt ourselves, then let’s be real about the consequences such views have on our boys who will one day become men in this capitalist society. Let’s be real about how we hurt our own communities, how we hurt our sisters, how we degrade transLatinas and other LGBTQ compas, how we will soon have nothing to “own” as City Hall continues giving away the Mission, let’s be real about the unity needed to fight. Instead of focusing on who is in and who isn’t, let’s acknowledge that none of our comunidad is accepted nor welcomed.
