Listening Room: Oral Histories

with Louis Jacinto

[Music] 

Louis Jacinto
So when my friend Arturo told me about GLLU, I had already been in the punk scene, which started in like '77 here in Los Angeles. And the punk scene in Los Angeles was so diverse. Everybody was in the scene. Boys and girls, gay and straight and all races and ethnicities. And then I got involved with the Sunset Junction Neighborhood Alliance, and that was a group that started after people went to the very first march on Washington for gay and lesbian rights. And so they came back energized and they said, we feel great and we want to do something now, but that can quickly dissipate and we just go back to our nine to five jobs. They said, let's not let that happen. Let's do something here where we live.

We had different committees so that... There was…I remember the communications committee, which was Radio GLLU and UNIDAD the newsletter. There was the social committee, which was for all of the fundraising at the disco techs and at the clubs that we would have, and also planning for our annual anniversary banquet, things like that. And then the educational committee, which consisted of people going out and speaking to other groups like at schools about our experiences as brown queer people. And those I remember were the main three. And that way, whatever anybody wanted to do, there was a venue to fit in. And some people were involved in all three. Some people just wanted to do the social stuff, which was just as important. Some people wanted to be in the educational committee.

And it was just not going out to speak, but also preparing our information pamphlets and any other things, especially during the AIDS crisis coming up with information to give out to the community about prevention and where you could get help if you needed to be tested and what to do once you found out you were positive. All of that kind of stuff. The approach we took I think was kind of like the punk ethic, just do-it-yourself.

My initial reaction to GLLU was, oh, they're monolithic in terms of ethnicity. It's just all Latinos, which I'm not against that, and I've been with Latino groups. But then I did get involved and what I realized that it was important to take on what the women's movement had taught us, that it's good to gather in your own tribe and return back and help improve not just yourself, but everybody in your community, in your city. And that's how I saw GLLU.

And then Geneva Fernandez was the first woman to come to a GLLU meeting and she didn't see any women there. And she goes, "Oh." And they said, "No, wait, wait, wait. Come." So they immediately changed the name to Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos without hesitation. When they did that, they realized–I wasn't involved yet–but they realized, that's what our intention was, to be inclusive of everybody. And at that time in the '80s, there really was just gay and lesbian were the main identifiers at that time. But for the men in the group to immediately say, oh no, we need to change this to Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos. It was always about inclusiveness of everyone in the queer community. Everyone.

The great thing about GLLU is that we all got together, but all of us were different... We're all Latino, but we're different ethnicities. So I would say the majority of us were Chicanos, but Tony White was from Panama. One of our past presidents, Toma Soto was Peruvian. There was Veronica Flores who was from Chile. Rolando Palencia, he's one of the GLLU co-founders and he was from Guatemala. The main GLLU co-founder was Jose Ramirez who was Puerto Rican.

So we were all in GLLU and we got to learn about each other's histories and experiences all living here in the United States. I think the underlying foundation was our cultural experience as family, and so that's what I think kept GLLU working so cohesively together, the gay men and the lesbian women, because it was really rare at that time for queer men and women to work together organization wise. We were all open to learning what those differences were and open our minds. And we did a lot of community organizing and we made ourselves visible, because for the most part, we were invisible, even though there were thousands and thousands of us.

[Music]

Louis Jacinto
One of the ways to become visible was through Radio GLLU. One of the radio free–I mean commercial free stations–KPFK had a program called IMRU and that was a queer themed show and they invited GLLU, Gay and Lesbians Latinos Unidos, to have a monthly show. So that's how Radio GLLU started. And we would all just pitch in. We would get together at the studio. We would get there early and write what we were going to be presenting. We would have updates about GLLU and our upcoming activities naturally, and then we would also talk about any other activities that were happening specifically with our sister organizations like Gay and Lesbian Asian-Pacific Islanders, Black and White Men Together, Black Lesbian Women's Group. And I think it really showed how important it was for us to work side by side with other organizations to better improve the community.

Again, sure, we were, like I had mentioned earlier, maybe broadly monolithic, but we were not exclusive. We weren't isolationists from the rest of the community. We worked side by side with the rest of the community and they wanted to work with us. They saw, hey, these kids have it together. Not everybody was interested in the radio show in terms of putting it together, and that was fine. It was part of the communication committee. The people who wanted to be involved in the radio show. They would meet in advance days before the show because it was only on once a month. So that gave us enough time to come up with ideas of what we would be presenting. If there were people from other committees in GLLU, we would ask them to come and say, if your committee has an event coming up, come and announce it on the radio show. We'd be writing down, here are the dates and the times, just read this. But it gave people in the organization a chance to participate that way and be heard.

We would play some music, we'd take music that we wanted to play. So everybody came up with ideas, and then it was whittled down to what could fit in. I believe it was just a half hour show. So we really had to make sure that we had enough material with information about upcoming events, interviews, readings from books or poetry. And then once you were on the air, that was it. I mean, the show was taped and then played back later, but really we only had so much air time and we had to get it right. That was the one thing, we were always prepared. We just didn't walk in and say, oh... No, we knew it was an important opportunity and a great opportunity for us to reach people and so we didn't take it lightly.

We saw how important it was to have airtime and since we were going to be visible in that way, we wanted to show our best. We were always prepared. It was no fooling around. We had fun and it would be an entire afternoon of hanging out with each other, getting the show ready, and then doing the show and then hanging out, going out to dinner afterwards, whatever it might be. We were really involved with each other all the time. The entire group, we just always were.

When I was a kid, I used to dance Mexican folkórico. So there was one album that I knew as a kid and I still had it as an adult where it was an indigenous song. It's just a flute playing just a little melody. I played it to the group and I said, "I like the way this sounds and I came up with these words to it." And all it was is that in Spanish we spelled out G-L-L-U Radio GLLU. So it was the music, then we would come in and sing the little jingle, and then the music would end it. So it was very short. And they said, oh yeah, that's a good idea, we'll do it. We rehearsed. I didn't sing because I sing flat.

And so we were rehearsing and going, and then I could hear other people singing flat and I asked them. I don't think I have much changed, but I forget that if you say things nicer, it's nicer. [LAUGHS] But I would just say, "Oh, you, out." Not in a mean way, but because we wanted it to sound good and we didn't want someone singing flat. So that's how that little jingle came about.

None of us came with necessarily any experience of, for example, running a radio show. But we said, okay, but if we could, what would we want it to be like? And so we said, okay, well we have the opportunity. Now we can make it be the way we think it should be. And we would just do it fearlessly. All of us are fearless. All of us were fearless.

Several people have come up to me through the years and said, I used to listen to the Radio GLLU when I was a kid because it was my only connection to other queer people. I just didn't know anybody and you folks were a lifeline and made me feel like it was going to be okay. So that was one way of being visible and helping others who felt like they were the only ones realizing, no, you are visible. We're visible, and we are here and not going anywhere.

[Music]

Louis Jacinto
We were all taking pictures but I think I was the one who was just continuously being a photographer. I just took pictures of everything and so luckily now we have this visual history of the organization because of it. So I'm glad that I did that because it recorded what we were doing. So I was involved throughout every aspect of GLLU. People would always tell me to run for president of GLLU. I was never interested in that so I never did. I was on their board in other positions, but I never aspired to be president of GLLU. I just didn't want that responsibility. I thought the work was important but I didn't want the fame of being a GLLU president. And I think in these photographs it shows. I mean, there’s men and women and everybody working together.

Who is here? I want to say... Well, okay, standing is Lydia and then sitting, and you just barely see his face, is Eduardo. And I'm not sure, but I want to say that's Rita. Okay, who I'm seeing here, that's Lydia. That is Eduardo. And again, that's Rita. Everybody just showed up. Everybody was always there. And then this last one, that's Eduardo sitting down there, his little head, and that's Lydia and that's the engineer. That's one of the engineers. See, he's behind the control booth. But that's Lydia and Eduardo.

As time passed and people started kind of slowing down or moving on, whatever it might have been, Rita kept Radio GLLU going for years and years and years. I'm forever grateful that she continued the work of it and kept the community connected. She was the one. She was the one.

[Music]

Credits:
“Jacinto, Louis” Interview by Ángel Labarthe del Solar. 2 November 2022. Together On the Air, ONE Archives Foundation. Digital audio file.