I am Juan Contreras. I’m from Dallas, Texas. 

So the first person I came out to was my cousin. You know, he was more… he was out. He asked me if I wanted to go to this gay youth resource group. You know, I did go to some of them and I did try to get adjusted. It just was not me. I wanted more of a safe space of people that looked like me, but in those spaces, I wasn’t finding it because they were mostly, you know, white. 

It’s not until until I grew older and started getting more engaged with the community, especially in the Latino community, participating with groups like the League of United Latin American Citizens. We created a little group of civically engaged Latino or Latina individuals who aspired to do good in the community. We were excited because we were going to the Creating Change Conference for the first time. At that conference, they were also launching the Latino Institute. 

So I was super excited because not only am I going to, I guess, technically, really was my first all-LGBT conference. It was also going to be a conference where I was going to engage with a lot of Latinos within one space. 

The first thing you see is just the name plastered on a lot of the places in some hotel. They move city to city and then you see a lot of people, like rainbows and a lot of friendly people but again as you’re arriving, you see a lot of… well, I saw a lot of white.

 

“You see a lot of… well, I saw a lot of white.”

I went over to the side where they were having the Latino Institute, and that’s where I saw lots of shades of Brown. And a lot of people would share stuff of what they were doing in the cities of where they were involved in. I was thinking if they can do what they did with little to no resources, I can definitely do it in Dallas, and it gave me the inspiration that if they did it I can do as well. 

We came back home, we hosted our regular LULAC community meetings that we’ll have each month. One of our guests was coming from AIDS Healthcare Foundation. And in this particular case, you know, Raul pulled me aside and he’s like, “Hey, you know, is there anything else I can help with?”

What I pitched to him was, I want to have a Texas Latino gay festival. I want to have local, like, local vendors, local artists. I just saw the excitement in his eyes. 

“Yeah, like yes, this is actually what we’re… something we will love to help you with.” So AIDS Healthcare Foundation was my first sponsor. However, the first sponsorship wasn’t enough to cover the whole cost of this, so I also dipped into my savings for it. But you know, I wanted to get started. 

So having multiple meetings and visiting the park area where we’re hosting this event, picking out the vendors, I was like, “How cool would it be if I blessed this festival?” The pastor of Cathedral of Hope who led the Spanish congregation there, he signed up to do the blessing for us. And then we opened it up with like a ceremonial dance. The dancers came in in like full Aztec outfits, and that was like an open ceremony. And once all that happened, we opened, cut the ribbon, and we had about a couple of hundred people show up to the first, what we call it now, Texas Latino Pride Festival.

After the opening ceremony, we kind of had a mobile stage and very local artists, like a drag queen. And also a band, like a local band.

You know, there was a moment where I literally took a break and looked outward and seeing all these people show for our first ever Latino gay pride was very heartwarming. So walking by and just listening in and or dropping in as people’s different conversations, listening to them talk Spanish, a mix of English or Spanish or just English, but watching all shades of Brown, and me thinking,”I wish I had this or similar space growing up.”

So at the first Texas Latino gay pride festival, we had about 200 people show up. Fast forward 11 years later this year, we had over 5,000 people in attendance.

I had a teenager come up to me and thank me for creating Texas Latino Pride Festival. He expressed how he was able to bring his parents and his parents are able to understand him more. I don’t know… it inspires me to know that these spaces are needed and a lot of people feel that they belong.