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The Latin Canadian LGBTQ+ Community: Between Activism and Resilience
Today, as Montreal celebrates the Pride Parade, we decided to tell the story of three people from the LGBTQ+ community who are Latino Canadians, a subject that the Canadian media doesn't talk about much about.
They are Viviana Santibáñez, a transsexual woman from Mexico, who has been campaigning for her community for over twelve years, first in the United States and then in Canada; about Daniel Martinez, a homosexual man also born in Mexico, who is also born in Mexico, who begins his activism process after making his coming out in Canada; and Liliana Madriz, a gay woman from Venezuela who, at the age of 55, began to build a new life by accepting herself as a lesbian.
These three people with different visions and origins celebrate living in a country that allowed them to recognize, accept and love each other, but where rejection still exists, even within Latin Canadian groups.
Viviana Santibáñez: emigrate, accept yourself and emigrate again
Viviana Santibáñez was born in Tierra Caliente, a region of Mexico that is considered to be one of the most dangerous in the country, due to the presence of organized crime.
This activist has many hats in her daily life. She works for the inclusion and protection of LGBTQ+ Latinas, and she is an immigration counsellor.
She emigrated to Houston, Texas, in 2008 at the age of 14. “My parents decided to send me to the United States. I like to think it was because they realized that my behavior and expressions were different and that I was not able or safe in that environment,” she explains.
This slender woman with long jet black hair and porcelain skin weighs every word she says. You can tell she wants to find the right words.
She lived in Houston for ten years. This is where she began her transition, at the age of 15. She then changes the way she dresses, adds feminine clothes to her wardrobe. At 16, she started taking hormones, without medical supervision.
At 21, she met a specialist and continued her transition process until she lived her life as a woman, “fully expressing my identity,” she said.
The anti-immigration speech of the then president, Donald Trump, and the anti-LGBTQ+ positions of the American far right, pushed her into exile in Canada.
“I thought it was dangerous for me to stay in the United States because I am a trans woman and a woman of color, but also because when you are an activist, you become a target. I said to myself: this place is no longer safe for me. It is time to secure my future.”
Activist for trans Latinos
So Viviana moved to Toronto in 2018. She quickly realized that the city offered few services for the Latino LGBTQ+ community, compared to Houston.
We interviewed her because her work is crucial at a time when members of the LGBTQ+ Latina community in Canada feel that intolerance has increased among Latinos themselves. Debates and controversies about the LGBTQ+ cause are multiplying within the Latin American community in Canada, and social media is a platform that echoes these controversies.
She therefore created the organization Vivi'r LGBTQ+, when she began her asylum application procedure. “Unlike other asylum seekers, I did not have a language barrier. I could do a lot of things, research,” explains this honest and humorous woman. Her ambition and altruism within the LGBTQ+ community are such that she dreams of Vivi'r becoming a pan-Canadian organization.
Five years have passed since the creation of Vivi'r, thanks to which Viviana has provided support to members of the community and in particular to transgender Latinos. This support ranges from the first steps when they arrive in Canada, fleeing the homophobia and transphobia they experience in their country of origin, to how to get medical treatment, including retrovirals for HIV.
However, it was only in July of this year that Vivi'r was registered as a non-profit organization, “with the help of a non-Latin American law firm,” she says, as if to emphasize the fact that no Latin American firm wanted to support her in this process.
Last June, when Ontario announced that the rainbow flag would be flying in institutions such as schools and even the Canadian Parliament, an avalanche of Facebook messages were posted defending “the traditional family created by God.” “I am not surprised,” explains Viviana. “I am not surprised,” explains Viviana. Moreover, she prefers not to devote her time to these debates in order to remain focused on her work.
First stone on her path as an activist in Canada
Viviana believes that to serve the causes she cares about, you must first get the support of the Latina community, then network and lobby, before reaching places of political power, to introduce change through legislation. That is his current strategy.
This is how she met Oscar Vigil, director of the Hispano-Canadian Heritage Council, an Ontario non-profit organization known to Latin Canadians, which aims to promote the contribution of Hispanic and Latin American culture to Canadian heritage. Getting accepted into this organization, through your presence at its events, during a celebration of Latino heritage or a networking evening, was not easy, recognizes the activist.
“As always, there was a backlash because a lot of people didn't agree that the LGBTQ+ community should be visible. I don't understand why, if they know that Canada has laws that protect the community from discrimination and that perpetrators of discrimination face very serious criminal sanctions,” she said.
This is despite a growing community in a country where freedoms are guaranteed and protected. According to Statistics Canada, the country has approximately 1 million LGBTQ2+ people, or 4% of the Canadian population aged 15 and over. Among this population, approximately 52% are women, 44% are men, and 3% are non-binary.
There are no statistics on the number of Latin (*) members of the LGBTQ+ community in Canada, a census that Viviana is doing right now.
Transgender people, the most vulnerable
Currently, the activist is promoting the program Transchecándome, which empowers and educates transgender women. “One thing that is not widely known and not talked about is that the transgender community is the most vulnerable, even within the rainbow community. It is very important to note that transgender people are always victims. There is still this machismo among men and gays themselves. Because they are men, they can afford it, which is called patriarchy,” she laments.
All this work has brought him a lot of satisfaction, but the fear does not go away completely. She says she goes to bed every night with peace of mind, with the satisfaction of having done good. But a question accompanies him almost every day. “What will happen tomorrow? It's something we have to live with all our lives because people have decided to attack us and hate us for who we are. What did we do to them? It seems that our only mistake was being born.”
Engineer and activist
Daniel Martinez, also Mexican, is an ally of Viviana in the development of Vivi'r in Montreal. He devotes part of his time to activism, not only for the LGBTQ+ community, but also for the Latina community in Quebec, thanks to his own organization, Casta Latina.
At 33, this aerospace engineer has lived in Canada for seven years. He comes from a modest family in Delicias, a city in the state of Chihuahua. Since childhood, he has been a kind of role model for all residents of the city. He was in fact the first member of his family to obtain a university degree, at the age of 20. At 26, he was recruited by Bombardier.
The engineer, cordial, sensitive and eloquent in his manners, came to Toronto to take up a management position. His colleagues were white men in their forties or fifties. “It was a pretty complicated adjustment. All my colleagues could have been my parents. I came to Canada alone and with a very strong emotional load, because I never had the courage to face what I was,” he explains.
So he devoted himself to studies and work. A strategy that he has applied since childhood.
“There is this idea that in the vast majority of Latin American countries, there are a lot of problems of racism, sexual segregation and homophobia. My family is no exception. I come from an environment where religion has a strong influence,” explains the young man in a low voice, while we are talking in a corner of the Ville de Saint-Laurent library.
Emotional load, physical load, and depression
For three years, Daniel therefore tried to silence his anxieties through work, combining days of 15 to 16 hours. Some weeks he worked up to 100 hours, he said. Her body and mind started to suffer.
“I fell into a deep depression. My life was nothing but monotony. I realized that I was carrying a very heavy burden because I was the star of my family. My mom didn't go to school and my dad only went to high school. I have a younger brother who I have always been afraid to let go because I am his role model and I love him with all my heart,” he admits with tears in his eyes.
On the advice of a friend, Daniel then started therapy in 2019. This process allows him to finally accept his sexuality. As with Viviana, acceptance was not immediate. Guided by his psychologist, he one day recognized and accepted that he liked men. It was a revelation for him.
Daniel then meets his partner Paco with whom he moves to Montreal. With him, he says with a smile, “I spent the best three years of my life. Now I see life in color,” he repeats with his hand on his heart.
Awareness and activism
When asked if he is noticing an increase in the intolerance of Latin Canadians towards members of the LGBTQ+ community, Daniel chooses to answer with an example: “In June, Pride Month in Ontario, my boyfriend posted a photo on a group created by Latinos from Canada on Facebook a group created by Latinos from Canada on Facebook, of a couple of gay friends who adopted a baby. The post generated thousands of comments and the vast majority of them were hateful. So much so that the group administrator asked Paco to delete the photo because he himself had received numerous private messages asking him to do so. This is very sad because it is not only a segregation of the LGBTQ+ community, but also a limitation of freedom of expression,” he adds, visibly upset.
Despite the hate expressed in these types of publications, Daniel thinks he is privileged. According to him, rejection is expressed much more often, within the Latina community, towards trans people than towards homosexuals. “I feel loved and respected by everyone. It weighs on me, because even though I have accepted myself, yes, I look around, I see everything that is happening and I say to myself: why can't people just accept and respect each other? ”
Starting a new life in your fifties
Liliana Madriz has lived in Canada for twenty-five years. She is well known to the Latin American community in Montreal, in particular to the Venezuelan community. She is the co-owner of one of the most popular Latino restaurants in town. Her manners are friendly and she usually accompanies her greetings with a big smile.
She came to Canada at the age of 35 and settled in Montreal with her husband and two daughters. Coming from a traditional Venezuelan Catholic family, she lived in this model for twenty years, “dissatisfied,” she said, touching her hands as if she were looking for reassurance.
Even though the idea of loving women crossed her mind, she dismissed it as quickly as it appeared. “Because of social pressure, I never gave myself the freedom to think that I could be gay. In retrospect, yes, the idea crossed my mind more than once, but I chased it away.”
On the surface, her life was almost perfect. Professional and entrepreneurial, she was successful in all areas. “But I did not feel happy. And that was one of the first things I talked to my psychologist about,” she explains.
Like Daniel, it was therapy that allowed her to understand some of this dissatisfaction, “it took me three years to accept reality: it was there, but I didn't accept it,” she recalls.
Changing her life was like “throwing yourself into the void” an idea that paralyzed her. The therapy helped her understand that she could let go of her fears, and then she took the plunge.
“I accepted myself, which meant becoming independent and starting a divorce. It was very hard, especially because I was saying to myself: who, in my fifties, will be interested in me? ”. She mechanically touches a medallion of the Virgin Mary. Is she a believer? She answers bluntly: “Not at all.” Marie has become a symbol of protection, a precious object donated by her mother, who lives in Venezuela.
A solitary process
Liliana's leap into the void was a very lonely process. In the eyes of all her friends, she explains, she had always been a married woman in a heterosexual couple. “When there was the separation, a lot of these friends did not know how to position themselves,” she says.
Even though most of her friends support her decision, she then feels the need to start other types of relationships. “It's not the same thing. You need to talk to someone who is in your situation. It is a very solitary and painful process. There is mourning to be done,” she repeats.
So she's relying on apps and Facebook groups to start making a new circle of friends within the LGBTQ+ community, especially the lesbian community. “It wasn't necessarily to find a partner, but just to socialize and start making new friends,” she explains.
In her business, Liliana noticed a slight distance from some customers, but she said that there were very few of them.
A busy life
Liliana now lives in a relationship with a Quebec woman and it is with a big smile that she says she is happy with her new life.
“Before, I had a lot of anxiety and dissatisfaction. I didn't know why. I thought that I should work more, that I should change careers, that I should do something. I was always looking for what I needed to feel satisfied. When I accepted myself, all that anxiety went away,” she says.
Although her life and her environment have changed, she assures that she is still the same person. “I am still María Liliana Madrid, why should I be looked down upon or judged differently if there is a woman next to me instead of a man? ”
To those who are still stirring up controversy because of some people's sexual preferences or gender identity, Liliana sends a message: “I think you should open your eyes. Do not get carried away by what someone has told you or by what a religion has told you or by what a conformism dictates to you. You need to evolve.”
Different experiences, one thing in common
Viviana, Daniel and Liliana are three people with very different visions and experiences but they have one thing in common: although the acceptance of their gender identity or sexual preference has resulted in migration, a change in environment and social circle, they ensure that they are the same people in their essence.
The path of accepting their personal choices seems to be broadening in Canadian society, thanks to the laws that protect them. But, according to their own expressions, this does not mean that they do not encounter obstacles from time to time.
(*) Latinx or Latin: gender neutral neologism used in place of Latino or Latina.