Rodríguez, who performs as the drag queen Roma Riviera, returned to her hometown, Caguas, on the outskirts of San Juan. Rodríguez danced, sometimes stopping just to beam at her friends. As blue, green and purple lights flashed, Ms. Rodríguez, the transgender woman who used to perform at El Escondite. On the Fourth of July, a crowd gathered at El Local, in Santurce, for a drag show. In August, she hopes to open a new bar at the same location, near the main campus of the University of Puerto Rico in the Río Piedras neighborhood of San Juan. Jhoni Jackson, 33, used to organize drag shows at El Escondite.
“It was a space where you could be free - there was no discrimination, no fights,” said Mr. people but also laying some of them off, since he had made a point of hiring them. Luis Pares, the owner of El Escondite, lamented that closing his bar meant not only losing a gathering spot for L.G.B.T. People would come and then have to leave.” We reopened when there were still blackouts. I think they had to raise the price of many things, and there were infrastructure problems. “Many of the regulars stopped going, because they left the island,” she said. Since Polo Norte shut down, she has only been able to perform twice, Ms. She also performed there once a week as Nansicótica, a drag queen who raised awareness about mental health issues. Díaz used to work as a bar-back at Polo Norte, a gay bar in San Juan that closed after the storm. My religion teacher told me, in front of all my classmates, that I needed an exorcism.” “It hurts me, but it doesn’t surprise me,” Moire Díaz, a 24-year-old transgender woman, said of legislative attempts to cater to religious conservatives. community have tried to focus on rebuilding the bars, art and performance venues lost to Hurricane Maria while being forced to keep a wary eye on politics. “We can’t forget that.”Īgainst that backdrop, members of the island’s L.G.B.T. “This has served as a reminder that some of these advances are at risk, that there is still discrimination, that there is still homophobia,” said Pedro Julio Serrano, an activist in San Juan. people: Earlier this year, Kevin Fret, who billed himself as Puerto Rico’s first gay Latin trap artist, was fatally shot. And a wave of violence on the island has not spared L.G.B.T. Last weekend, San Juan hosted its first trans pride day.īut Roman Catholic and evangelical Christian churches wield a great deal of influence on the island, and religious conservatives have close relationships with some local politicians who have pushed the bills that L.G.B.T. Following a court ruling last year, people have been able to change the gender listed on their birth certificates. Employment discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation is banned.
Puerto Rico has tried to foster a gay-friendly reputation, marketing itself that way to tourists. “This is simply a response - a backlash - by these groups from the ultraright to stop those advances.” and women’s rights have come a long way in recent decades,” said Amarilis Pagán, an activist for women’s rights and L.G.B.T. Rosselló’s reversal, the fact that the bill had advanced at all - and that lawmakers could still reintroduce it - left many people worried about the future of gay rights on the island. Rosselló, who initially endorsed the legislation, withdrew his backing.Įven with Mr. After a public-relations campaign organized by advocacy organizations argued that it amounted to legalizing discrimination, the so-called religious liberty bill was shelved when Gov. In early June, the Puerto Rican House of Representatives passed legislation to grant “reasonable accommodations” for government workers who did not want to serve people whose views might be in conflict with their religious beliefs. Sometimes queer people didn’t have food, didn’t have almost anything, and they were still there.”īut the sense of relief and joy over the new spaces has been tempered by fears that other threats unrelated to hurricanes - from legislative battles to brazen violence - loom here. “It takes a lot, not to have electricity, not to have water. Rodríguez and a friend opened a venue of their own to stage the drag shows they reveled in before the storm. Now, almost two years after the hurricane, new spaces are slowly appearing.