Latina & Latino LGBTs Educate & Celebrate In Miami.

Hundreds of Latina/o sexual-minority and transgender advocates, service providers, educators, community members, and supporters from throughout the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Latin America attended the conference of the National Latina/o Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Organization (LLEGÓ) in Miami to share information and to celebrate the organization’s 15th anniversary (quinceañera).

“LLEGÓ has had a painful history,” Executive Director Martín Ornelas-Quintero said during the Encuentro (“Gathering”). It’s been painful, he explained, due to AIDS and the invisibility of Latinas and Latinos in the mainstream LGBT movement, both of which helped spawn the organization. Ornelas-Quintero also said LLEGÓ has endured painful financial and organizational crises during its 15-year history, but that the group has developed and grown tremendously in recent years.

Since Ornelas-Quintero became the executive director in 1996, LLEGÓ’s budget has grown from $500,000 to $2.5 million, and the number of staff members has multiplied more than threefold. Ornelas-Quintero said LLEGÓ has experienced a “professionalizing of its infrastructure” and can now afford luxuries many advocacy organizations cannot, such as a
human-resources director.

“Many opportunities for continued growth have developed at the Encuentro,” Ornelas-Quintero said during the conference’s closing plenary session, which included a three-tier quinceañera cake. “This is what LLEGÓ is about–continuous growth.”

The ninth biennial Encuentro included keynote speeches by openly gay Massachusetts state legislator Jarrett T. Barrios; transgender activist Julia Garcia; Alejandra Sarda, cofounder of the Network of LGBT Psychotherapists of Argentina; Puerto Rican LGBT advocate Pedro Julio Serrano; and National Organization for Women Vice President Olga Vives.

Workshops and other sessions focused heavily on health–topics included HIV prevention among migrant populations, bisexual health and identity, transgender wellness, and global AIDS legislation. Other areas included LGBT parenting and youth, human rights in Latin America, domestic violence among women, building a national bisexual movement, and Latina/o LGBTs in the media.

The next Encuentro will be in Seattle, Oct. 7-10, 2004.