“Maricón,” “Pájaro,” and “Loca”: Cuban and Puerto Rican Linguistic Practices, and Sexual Minority Participation, in U.S. Santería

Abstract

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the United States are, to varying degrees, practitioners of the Afro-Cuban religion popularly known as Santería. Cuban and Puerto Rican forms of referencing LGBT populations are illustrated in this article, which is drawing from interviews and participant observation conducted in the United States, with close to 30 practitioners, many of whom were Cuban, Cuban American, and Puerto Rican. I discuss the ways in which Santería gatherings produce an alternative use of otherwise stigmatized language for “gay” practitioners. Through the use of distinctive language to reference all of these populations, we may rethink the relationship between identities and practices, and within that, gender presentations vis a vis identities.

Keywords:

• sexual minorities
• Santería
• Puerto Rican
• Cuban
• Cuban-American

Acknowledgments

Funding for this research was conducted under a dissertation fellowship from the Sexuality Research Fellowship Program of the Social Science Research Council with funds provided by the Ford Foundation, by the Society for the Study of Social Problems Minority Scholarship, by the American Sociological Association's Sexualities Section dissertation award, and by a small grant from the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.

Notes

1. When I discuss the term “sexual minorities” I do so influenced by Rubin's (1984/1993) seminal article, “Thinking Sex,” but also draw from arguments presented by queer theorists such as Butler (1994) in her “Against Proper Objects.” My book, tentatively titled “An Instrument of the Orishas: Racialized Sexual Minorities in Santería,” more fully addresses my uses and criticisms of the term “sexual minority.”

2. McIntoch (1968) argued, at a critical point in the history of sociology and sexualities, that homosexuality need not be seen as a condition, but as a relational expression—the “homosexual role” was for her a social role that moves beyond sexual behavior. Alluding to labeling theory, expectations that follow from the formation of this social role help solidify it, McIntoch argued. Among the expectations noticed in the literature she reviews were the affectation and presence of feminine gestures among men who are same-sex interested. Indeed, part of what makes her argument important at the time is that she notes the utility of these gendered markers as a form of connecting—with men to have sex with, to socialize, or to be amicable.

3. Just because they are not global gay speech does not mean they are “from” the localities where they are used—for the etiology of some of these terms, see LaFountain-Stokes (2007).

4. Elsewhere, I have discussed the implication of her perception and fusion between Cuban migrants and sexual minorities (Vidal-Ortiz, 2006).

5. This term loosely translates as faggot, and it is discussed in the next entry.