By Stefanía García
I lived in Oregon for six years. During my time there, I became involved with activist organizations and began reading more research about undocumented immigrants’ organizing. It became obvious that researchers do not regard Oregon as an important site for immigrant or “undocuqueer” research. Although the state of Oregon was born from the idea of a white supremacist utopia, Oregon has a long history of Latinx migration and settlement. Today, 13.4% of Oregon’s population identify as Hispanic or Latino. Though it is hard to estimate what percentage of the population identifies as queer and undocumented, Oregon is an important site for queer migration studies.
Through my experiences, I became aware of a lack of solidarity with queer folks among those advancing immigrant rights, which led activists to overlook the experience of queer individuals. I am currently at work on a master’s thesis that questions the lack of representation of queer issues within activist groups in the state of Oregon, and simultaneously works against the perception that being undocumented requires residing near the southwest border. Instead, I position the Pacific Northwest region, queer, and undocumented folks within the ongoing national dialogue on immigration. My research asks three questions: How do queer undocumented folks negotiate visibility and belonging in activist spaces? How does geography affect our understanding of political activism? And finally, how are gender and sexuality overlooked in immigrant rights groups? Throughout the summer of 2020, I conducted nine interviews with folks who identified as queer and undocumented to answer my questions.
In this short essay, I would like to share some of my findings in response to the first research question: How do queer undocumented folks negotiate visibility and belonging in activist spaces? I will share excerpts from interviews with three of my participants: Angel, Arturo, and Alex. In our interviews, I asked participants to think about a specific experience when their gender and/ or sexuality made them feel included or excluded. Further, I asked whether they felt that the organizations they worked with did enough to advocate for the queer community. The following excerpts indicate the ways that activist organizations invisibilized the queerness of Angel, Arturo, and Alex.
For Angel, their gender and sexuality were completely overlooked in the organizing spaces they participated in, due to cissexist notions of how Angel should behave. Despite Angel’s efforts to let folks they organize with know that they identified as nonbinary, Angel’s gender was dismissed and overlooked, putting them in highly uncomfortable situations where they were inappropriately sexualized. In our interview, Angel talked about their repeated attempts to vocalize their pronouns and their gender identity. Angel is aware that many times these spaces cater to non-English speakers, which may present an issue of understanding inclusive language. However, Angel also advocated for hosting workshops to teach the group not only about inclusive language but queer issues at large.
When I asked Angel if they felt that their gender and sexuality played a role in their organizing efforts, Angel immediately shared that because they have long hair, folks tended to rely on them for emotional support. Angel shared that even cleaning or “just doing that extra work that other people aren’t willing to do…I definitely feel like that’s an added piece like that caring nature of, like, oh, she’s going to do, no matter what, you know, like, and I think that is like something that’s very much shared within like people who are perceived the way that I am.” Angel identified that in white male-dominated spaces, it sometimes served them to play the Latina stereotype to build solidarity and advance the interest of the organizations they were working with. Through Angel’s experience, we can observe a multilayered frustration: they suffer from lack of recognition for their gender identity and at the same time, Angel is put in a position that forces them to perform and, in some instances, rely on the hyper-sexualization and perceived domesticity of the Latina figure.
When I asked Alex about how his gender and sexuality have affected the work that he has been involved with, his immediate response was “your family doesn’t always know that you are queer, and your friends know that you are gay, but they don’t always know that you are undocumented.” Alex was part of a group of young Latinx folks who facilitated the arrival of the only “Hispanic” serving fraternity to the University of Oregon’s campus. Alex said that “in the fraternity… We were advocating for a safe space for Latinos and communities of color but, in Oregon, when we eventually became a fraternity, bros just made gay jokes, and I was like… Uhm… okay… oh well… this is not going to go well…” Alex had not come out to his frat brothers yet, but eventually did so. At the time, Alex did not believe that his fraternity brothers were homophobic, but their comments prior to Alex’s coming out, put the burden of educating his brothers on Alex. I see Alex’s presence and individual effort to educate his frat brothers as acts of disruption and forced activism.
For Arturo, the social justice groups he was part of did overlook gender and sexuality, but he feels that part of that erasure was his own need to hide things: “when you’re undocumented there are so many secrets you need to keep as far as your status, that adding your sexuality or your queerness, hiding how you might embrace femininity when you’re supposed to be masculine, is just another part of how you need to survive…” In high school, Arturo had been outed as undocumented by his twin brother in a school assembly, where his brother shared with everyone present how they crossed the border. Arturo was not ready to tell anyone, but after his brother was done talking, people came up to Arturo to voice their support and express how shocked they were by the twins’ story.
After graduating from the University of Oregon and moving up to Portland, Arturo felt that he was finally able to embrace his sexuality the way he wanted: no more secrets. For Arturo, moving out of his parents’ house was key to embracing his “true self.” Although it took him almost eight years to come out and introduce his parents to his partner, he mentions that after moving, he could take his own approach. Arturo’s coming out of the shadows as undocumented stands in stark contrast to his coming out of the closet as queer. His brother’s outing of Arturo without his consent created a break between the solidarity of the brothers. Coming out as queer, years later, granted him a second chance to share his story, this time on his own terms. Queer undocumented folks, as these excerpts show, negotiate visibility and belonging in activist spaces, home-life, and interpersonal connections in different ways, depending on forces outside their control but also on their own brave choices.
Stefania is a graduate student in the Mexican American and Latina/o Studies department at UT Austin. She received her MA in Latin American Studies from UT Austin, and earned her BA in Latin American Studies, Spanish Lit, and art history at The University of Oregon. Her current research is on undocuqueer activism in Oregon.
