6 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE JUNE 10, 1994
Stonewall veteran says we should do it again
Continued from page 1
not know anything about that. I think as gay people we have let it slip by, we're only making a big deal now, 25 years later.
Do you really think we've gotten anywhere in 25 years?
(pause) No.
We did for awhile. We were becoming a
Marcos Rivero
big political group. We were becoming people proud of ourselves, people willing to fight. But when AIDS came around it just devastated the community. Most of the people that died of AIDS were the activists, the people that were running around fighting and screaming and hollering.
The people that we have now in "positions of doing something," they all want to work within the system, and you can't do that because you're still a fag or you're still a dyke... [The government doesn't] think of us as people, they think of us as things. The quicker that we get that through our heads maybe we will get something done. I think that we do need another Stonewall riot. It has to be done.
Not with just 100 people...
No. And that's the problem. Homosexuals have become very accommodated into the system... I remember Gay Pride. Gay Pride. That June we were proud of being homosexuals, fighting for our rights. Homosexuals now are not proud, 90 percent of them are just not proud. They want to hide. And it's not only in this town, it's all across the nation.
But there was only a small percentage in New York who were willing to stand up and fight-maybe it's still that same small percentage.
What happened to that small percentage is that most of them are dead. So it's kind of sad that the young gays and lesbians have not taken up the cause. Stonewall has become a party. It was not a party. We were fighting to be able to hug each other.
You know you couldn't dance together at the Stonewall? A lot of people don't understand that. The windows were covered because we had to hide. You had to dance separately because you never knew when the vice squad was gonna be there and arrest you for loitering and all kinds of weird things.
Well, gay bars in New York couldn't even get liquor licenses [then].
Uh huh. And most of the gay bars in New York, including Stonewall, were Mafia owned . . . I remember the first Gay Pride, the year after that [1970] when we went up the street to Washington Square and we stood there, only about 120 of us! Very gay and proud, who the year before had been at this riot to gain some sort of reputation as a community.
What was it about? It's easy to come up with these slogans and say it was about gay pride and for us to have our freedom and so on. But to some people that meant sexual freedom and other
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people have focused more on politics.
I think that the sexual thing came in the early '70s. That was going on throughout the nation, everybody and their sexual revolution, freedom and let's screw everybody.
Stonewall for me was to show my pride, to be able to say “Yes, I am queer and I am a human being and you have to respect me because I am not gonna lay down and sit here and wait for you to beat me up." The right to dance with each other and have a drink and be able to socialize [was secondary] . . . I think [abuse is] happening a lot now. I mean people are [still] getting abused because they're gay.
Give me a little background about yourself. When did you realize you were gay?
I knew that I liked boys but I didn't think that was what it was all about. So for the longest time, up until I was 16, I refused to acknowledge that I was gay. I mean, that was dirty.
And so I had a girlfriend in school who got pregnant. Only once, we did it only once, on prom night, and the girl got pregnant! So we got married I wasn't finished with high school. I decided that I would move to New York and look for a better life and then eventually I would send for her.
Where was this?
In Miami. What happened was, on the plane to New York City, I met a man! (laughs) Who was married himself. I told him that I didn't know anybody in New York. He let me stay in his house because his wife was in Colombia visiting her family.
On a Saturday night he took me to the Village. At that Christopher Street newsstand, that has been there for God only knows how many years, I saw these magazines with men on them. And I was like, ooh my God. I didn't consider myself gay, even though I was sleeping with this man.
There was a magazine that had all the gayfriendly places, because they were not called gay bars. I saw the list and [picked] Stonewall. I went and Sascha was the doorman. And he taunted me and made fun of me 'cause I was 120 pounds, maybe. And he was like, "Skinny spic, what do you want?" And he asked me for ID, of course I didn't have any ID. But again people went into the Stonewall who were minors and whatnot. It's just that when the police came somebody hid you. (laughs) There was always one good soul that hid you somewhere underneath a table or something.
Had you gotten out of high school yet?
Yeah. I had graduated from high school. This was in '66. And in '67 I was already a full-fledged fag in New York. And I was hanging out with people that belonged to the Mattachine Society, and they used to have a place that was called the Firehouse. They used to have dances there and that sort of thing. But I pretty much was going to Stonewall at the time because I had become friends with Sascha. I could get in for free. I could get a drink on the sneak from the bartender. The drag queens were all my friends, 'cause they thought I was amusing because I was like rough...
I was about to ask, what was your persona?
Oh, I was a rough kid. I had moved from Miami, from a Cuban neighborhood where you had to be Mister Macho Man and that's the attitude I still had. So they used to call me the "butch little spic." I used to walk in there and I was like, (deep voice) "Hey, man."
But then, hanging out with older gay men and gay women-there was this woman named Mama Jean, she was one of the early Stonewallers they were in their 30s, and here I wasn't even 20. So I hung out with these people and they showed me pride and being gay.
What did you do with them? Was it sitting with coffee and talking?
I used to go to dances with them, private parties—you know you had to have private parties because you couldn't be too out, and if your neighbors weren't queer they could call the police. They took me in as their child, so I used to call them things like Mama Jean,
because they were like my parents, all these people.
When Stonewall happened I was just out there with them because they were my friends. And I was fighting with them.
They had the several nights of rioting. Were you there the first night or did you come around later?
Oh no, I was there first night.
Were you in the bar when [the police] came?
I was outside. I was just getting there and [Craig Rodwell, who owned the Oscar Wilde Bookstore] said to me "You don't want to go down that way [Gay St.], it's ugly down there, the police are beating up people, and I think they arrested Jean (Mama Jean)." And I said, "Well I have to find out what's going on." So I got down there. Here are all these policemen and horses with their clubs out and the police cars blocking Christopher St. and 7th Ave., and you see busted heads everywhere, blood everywhere on people. Drag queens in whatever little was left of their drag outfits throwing things at the police, breaking car windows, setting garbage cans on fire. And I just couldn't stay out of it. It was like, these are my friends and they're getting abused by these pigs.
So was it like a call to arms?
Yeah, that's what really happened, I wasn't there for the very beginning, but the way it was explained to me by Sascha was that they came in and started harassing people and the drag queens said, "Enough. You've been bothering us too much now." That's when the big thing started. And word just got around. Real quick. I really don't know how. Next thing there were hundreds of people fighting the police and burning their cars and turning things over.
You know that little Sheridan Square Park? Those poor queens were breaking branches off those trees and hitting cops with them and throwing things at them.
I remember hearing people chanting "Stonewall, Stonewall, Stonewall,” which I didn't understand what it was all about... and then for the next couple of days all that rioting. I'd say it was one of the biggest riots New York City has ever seen. All these policemen from all these districts came to fight a bunch of effeminate gay men, big old lesbians and a bunch of drag queens.
The thing is a lot of people don't understand that most of the people doing the fighting were minorities. It wasn't like all the white boys and girls [were] there. It was all the black and Hispanic drag queens, the home boys, [those who] like to fuck boys but don't get fucked, there were a lot of those. They were from the Bronx and Brooklyn and those areas. They helped too.
Then the older gay men and women, who were sort of pillars of the community, members of the Mattachine Society, Daughters of Bilitis, all those groups, they were all there, fighting and screaming and hollering. To see all those people from different groups fighting for one common thing, it was incredible. I don't think that you could not participate if you were there. You had to.
First of all it was your big opportunity to get even with the police who harassed you so much. 'Cause even when you walk up and down Christopher Street, the police would come and harass you and tell you, "You fucking filthy fag, get off the sidewalk, why don't you go back home."
So enough was enough, and I think it taught the police a lesson, "We may be queer, but we can still fight."
I didn't live in the Village during Stonewall, I lived in Brooklyn. But after that I moved to the Village and never left. And I saw the big change from when the police would harass you to after when the police would not harass you. There was still harassment but not as common. Right after the riots, the third day, is when I saw two men holding hands at Sheridan Square Park. And I thought that was the neatest thing. I was so overjoyed and overwhelmed and it was like, "God, we're going somewhere."
This interview will continue next issue.