Generations of Laredoans clash when it comes to LGBT issues

Julie Bazan, among other art enthusiasts, admiring the work by local and foreign artists during the HIV and STD awareness art contest held April 10 at the City of Laredo Health Department Auditorium. Click through this gallery to see the most and least friendly Texas cities for LGBT people. less Julie Bazan, among other art enthusiasts, admiring the work by local and foreign artists during the HIV and STD awareness art contest held April 10 at the City of Laredo Health Department Auditorium. Click ... more Photo: Francisco Vera/Laredo Morning Times Photo: Francisco Vera/Laredo Morning Times Image 1 of / 35 Caption Close Generations of Laredoans clash when it comes to LGBT issues 1 / 35 Back to Gallery

On a Monday afternoon stroll through Mall del Norte, during a late lunch, a small number of people meander from store to store. There’s several older couples holding hands, mothers and daughters walking and talking, young couples pushing strollers.

Over the course of 30 minutes, Laredo Morning Times counted 15 couples showing some sort of a public display of affection. Although varying widely in ages, all 15 were heterosexual couples.

The reason for this, though, might be that school hadn’t gotten out yet.

In speaking with members of Laredo’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and counselors at PILLAR, a local behavioral health center, it seems that the LGBT population here is supported more at school than anywhere else in the city.

Chema Villarreal, the president of the Campus Ally Network at TAMIU, said Laredo’s younger generation is more open than their parents’.

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“We want to be out. We want to be free,” he said.

Laredo has evolved as this generation gets older. Manny Sanchez, co-founder of PILLAR, said he remembers 20 years ago when even discussions about homosexuality were taboo here.

“Those discussions are more open now. We’ve seen them at the national level, and it’s gradually spilled over into the local level,” he said.

Sanchez said he visits local high school campuses with some regularity for work. He has noticed an increase in the number of same-sex couples showing affection than he would have seen if he walked onto that same campus 10 years ago.

Natalie Scott, a junior at Alexander High School, runs the Facebook page LGBT Pride Laredo, Tx. She is out to her friends and classmates as bisexual, but is hesitant to tell her mother about her non-heterosexuality.

“My sister is lesbian. She’s older, she’s 25. So when my sister came out, my mom kind of threw a big tantrum, and this one time I tried to hint it at her, and she kind of got mad. She was like ‘you better not end up like your sister,’” Scott said.

Scott came out to her friends in the 7th grade, she said, and felt comfortable doing so. She knows about five other LGBT students at Alexander.

“I’ve moved schools multiple times and I think Alexander has been the most accepting school there is,” Scott said.

She transferred to Alexander from Nixon because she was being bullied there.

“They didn’t even know I was bisexual over there. I was bullied because I was a girl and I was a skater. (Now) I’m doing so much better. I’m not scared to be myself at Alexander,” Scott said.

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Generally, Scott feels Laredo is a semi-safe place to be out as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. She said her generation is more accepting, but people her parents’ age are more religious and traditional.

One way to ameliorate this situation would be to start a support group, Scott said, if anything just to show a strength in numbers.

“There’s a support group for everything but LGBT here in Laredo,” she said.

“I think a lot of people don’t come out because there’s no one there for them — (they think) there’s no one else like them here in Laredo. But there is. There is plenty of people.”

If young Laredoans don’t feel comfortable coming out in high school, PILLAR Senior Counselor Myrthala Alejo said they are more likely to come out at LCC or TAMIU. Here many LGBT students feel included and a part of a community, Alejo said.

Psychologically, adolescents 12-18 years old feel an overwhelming desire to belong, according to Alejo, so it can be harder for someone to come out if they do not already feel supported.

So even though most LCC and TAMIU students still live at home, the culture on these campuses fosters acceptance and encourages LGBT people to be themselves, she said.

Still, Alejo thinks there is still a large portion of young people in Laredo that don’t want to come out.

For the Laredoans unwilling to accept lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender individuals, it usually comes down to tradition, Alejo said.

The first and fundamental question parents of LGBT youth ask Alejo is how they will have grandchildren.

“That is the biggest concern, hands-down,” she said. “Procreation.”

But Laredo’s traditional tendencies extend further than this.

“Here it’s this whole system. Here you have to fight that traditional belief that you should not be talking about your problems, that you should take into account what your parents think, what your neighbors think, how everyone else is going to perceive you,” Alejo said.

Manny Sanchez continued this line of thought as it relates to a city like Laredo, where 95 percent of the population is Hispanic.

“As you’ll find with most border communities, there is a significant impact from the Mexican side, so you try to contend with the things like machismo that speaks to gender roles, especially in males. A man is supposed to conduct himself in a certain way and behave in a certain way, so anything that goes against the grain is going to be met with resistance,” he said.

“Not to mention, here in Laredo it’s a Catholic community, so now you have to factor in religion and the beliefs that come with that, that we all know don’t necessarily subscribe to same-sex behaviors.”

A 2013 report by the Human Rights Campaign grappled with the problems that arise at the intersection of LGBT and Latino cultures.

The study found that LGBT youth who identify as Latino face greater rejection from their communities and schools than their non-LGBT Latino counterparts.

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“The most difficult problems facing LGBT Latino youth are related to negative responses to their LGBT identity,” the Human Rights Campaign reported. “Concern about family acceptance is the top problem identified, and having their families accept and support them is a key change they wish for in their lives.”

A little more than half of LGBT youth are out to their immediate family, according to the study.

A 2015 poll conducted by Gallup found that San Francisco, Portland, Oregon and Austin have the highest percentage of LGBT people in the country, respectively.

Gallup explained that the metro areas with the smaller percentage of LGBT people, usually in the South or Midwest, are where the social stigma toward the non-heterosexual tends to be higher.

This would of course apply to Laredo too.

Austin’s metropolitan area has the third-highest percentage of LGBT people in the country at 5.3 percent, according to another Gallup survey.

But across the country, only about 3.8 percent of Americans identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

Of the estimated 255,473 who live in Laredo, that would mean about 9,708 would identify as LGBT.

Alejo said that number sounded low.

“I want to believe that our community is coming around. I don’t see us being made up of bad people, I just think that everyone evolves at a different pace,” Alejo said.

Julia Wallace may be reached at 956-728-2543 or jwallace@lmtonline.com