LGBTQ supporters rally around Jewel Hurtado in Kingsburg

The incremental victories the LGBTQ+ community celebrated during Pride Month in one of California’s last conservative bastions has been powered largely by Latino millennials who vowed to keep the pressure for wider acceptance.

And, first-term Kingsburg City Councilmember Jewel Hurtado – whose failed effort to get her colleagues to support a Pride Month proclamation has sparked a recall effort against her – is right in the middle of that battle.

On June 26, the 22-year-old recent graduate of Fresno City College organized a Pride celebration that drew about 250 supporters to a downtown park.

The rally, which included drag performers and informational booths, marked an emotional milestone for Hurtado.

“It means a lot. I’m just so thankful,” said Hurtado, who identifies as bisexual. “And I hope that the queer community here throughout the Central Valley sees this event as something that could be made possible in their small town.

“They can just call me and ask me if they need help.”

Her efforts in a conservative San Joaquín Valley and among a hugely Catholic Latino population that tends to hew to conservative family values have been recognized by lawmakers like state Sen. Anna Caballero and Assemblymember Evan Low.

Caballero was represented at the rally by Elisa Rivera, who is known as “Jewel’s mom.” Rivera read a note of thanks from Low, a Democrat and chair of the LGBTQ Caucus.

A day later, Low and other state lawmakers were sporting Hurtado pins at the Capitol.

Hurtado appeared overwhelmed by the turnout in Kingsburg.

“I’m feeling a lot of emotions, and I think I’m going to cry when I speak,” she said.

In fact, Hurtado wiped tears from her eyes throughout the brief ceremony where Assemblymember Joaquín Arámbula and Delano Mayor Bryan Osorio spoke.

The Latino support was evident. Hurtado pointed out that her support comes not only from Latinos, but Black, Asian, “and, everything else in between.”

“My abuela, my nana, she is obviously Hispanic. She’s Mexican like me, and she is one of my No. 1 supporters,” said Hurtado, who named the five awards she gave to five Kingsburg residents after Sylvia Rivera, a longtime transgender/gay activist who died in 2002.

Rivera, whose parents were Puerto Rican and Venezuelan, is known as a veteran of the June 1969 Stonewall Inn riots where patrons of the gay bar in Greenwich Village in lower Manhatten reacted to a police raid.

Rivera, then 17, stayed at the site for six nights. “I’m not missing a minute of this. It’s the revolution,” she is quoted as saying about the uprising that marked a turning point in the gay rights/transgender movement.

Gay or transgender identity can be difficult in the Latino community, Dr. Yanira Cruz said in a 2009 interview for an AARP story.

“Anything that is different or has a social stigma, we want to hide under the carpet,” said Cruz, who is still president/CEO of the National Hispanic Council on Aging.

Cruz cited the macho culture and religion as other reasons Latinos are hesitant to identify themselves ast LGBTQ.

Dolores Huerta, the 91-year-old community activist who rallied farmworkers to unionize in the 1960s, said her foundation has stood up for LGBTQ rights since its establishment in 2003.

“It doesn’t make any sense to discriminate against anybody,” said Huerta, who has been a member of Equality California, the state’s largest pro-LGBTQ organization, for 10 years.

Huerta told the Kingsburg celebrants that it is important that the Pride flag fly in Fresno, Selma, Delano and other communities in the Valley because “it stands for humanity.”

“We’ve got to do more than just make (the Valley) a special place to grow food. We’ve got to make it a special place to grow love and to grow social justice,” said Huerta, who noted that Hurtado’s grandparents were staunch supporters of the United Farm Workers.

“I would like to use the words of Benito Juárez, the Mexican president. He said respecting other people’s rights is peace,” said Huerta. “Who you love, who you want to marry, who you want to live with – if it’s a member of your own sex that is your business and nobody else’s business.”

Huerta said discrimination and hatred “leads to violence, and people are killed because they are gay, lesbian, transgender. We’ve got to stop that.”

Arámbula, a Democrat from Fresno, asked support for his bill, AB 1040, which would launch a pilot project that trains coroners and medical examiners in six counties to collect data pm a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity in violent death cases.

There have been Pride victories elsewhere in the Valley outside Fresno.

Osorio, the Delano mayor who is also a 2022 Congressional candidate, convinced the council to fly the Pride flag at city hall. “We did something historic, and that’s only the accumulation of years of organizing across the Central Valley and across the country for LGBT people.”

The Pride flag flew at Selma City Hall, but the council balked at issuing a proclamation in support of Pride Month until it crafts a policy on proclamations.

Wasco Mayor Alex García, 31, failed to get the council to support flying the Pride flag at city hall.

“As the first openly LGBT Mayor in the County of Kern, I know first-hand the significance that flying the Pride Flag over city hall would have not just for the LGBTQ community but for all residents of Wasco,” García said in a statement.

Hurtado handed Sylvia García Bravery Award plaques to Zach Howell, Tamara Norris, Michael Brewer, Jean Guerra, and, Tatiana Mendoza.

“I came out in 2015, my sophomore year of high school,” said Mendoza, who played basketball at Kingsburg High. “Back then I was scared before I even publicly came out in real life. I came out online.

“I thought that if I wanted to be my authentic self, it would come at a cost, that I would have purposefully put my relationships at risk and made myself vulnerable to judgment and scrutiny.”

Hurtado remembers hearing about Mendoza’s coming out.

“Tatiana is gay? I realized that because of you, I realized who I am,” Hurtado told her.

Esta historia fue publicada originalmente el 2 de julio de 2021, 9:03 p. m..