"Mira, yo soy boricua y estoy aquí": Rafa Negrón's Pan Dulce and the queer sonic latinaje of San Francisco

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"For a little more than eight months in 1996–1997, Calirican Rafa Negrónpromoted his queer Latino nightclub “Pan Dulce” in San Francisco.A concoction of multiple genders, sexualities, and aesthetic styles, PanDulce created an opportunity for making urban space and claimingvisibilities and identities among queer Latinas and Latinos throughmusic, performance, and dance. Building on the region´s decades-oldlgbt/queer history, and specifically diasporic queer Puerto Rican andCaribbean cultures, Pan Dulce became a powerful site for latinaje: themultilayered hybrid process of creating Latina and Latino worlds andcultures from below. In the context of HIV and AIDS, gentrification,and the Bay Area´s hegemonic white queerness, Pan Dulce created aqueer pan-Latino, caribeño world for building multigender communityspace and history. As a Calirican’s experiment in cultural expressions,musical styles, and queer erotic desires, Pan Dulce was a heterogeneoussite simultaneously for opening instances of Puerto Rican-inflectedlatinidad and differently gendered queer lives."