By A.P. Thayer
Author's note: As I wrote in part one, there are many terms given to both the heritage month we just celebrated and the community at large. My chosen vernacular is Latine and that's what I'll be using for the rest of this article series.
Now that Latine Heritage Month is over, let me clear up some things.
Hispanic is not the same as Latine.
A Hispanic person is someone with Spanish ancestry. This means Hispanics are either Spaniards or the descendants of people colonized by them. This was a term invented by the government of the United States for census reasons in the 1980s. This group does not include non-Spanish speaking countries in Latin-America.
Also, there is no land of Hispania.
Latine, on the other hand, is a modern, inclusive term used to describe a person who has Latin American heritage. That’s anything south of the Texas border (and some could and should argue, some areas north of that border) all the way down to Águila Islet, Chile. Including Brazil.
Spain, obviously, is on a different continent.
Things have been moving from Hispanic to Latine, thankfully. For example, the Horror Writers Association has been doing an interview series during Latine Heritage Month (though they titled it Latinx Heritage Month, using the anglicized term). They have interviewed tons of Latine-identifying writers, myself included.
They have also, however, interviewed Spaniards.
This is the kind of stuff we need to talk about.
When I am calm, I can see the path taken to arrive at a place where Spaniards were interviewed for Latinx Heritage Month. It was originally called Hispanic Heritage Month, after all, no? And the interviews are self-reported and self-submitted. A call goes out, people sign up, they get an email with questions, fill them out, send them back… bingo bango, a single volunteer throws the interview up on the website and schedules an Instagram post with the author’s picture (and most of the time it’s the right picture, too!).
But I’m not always calm. I have bad days. I have days when I’m tired, and not just because it’s been a long day of day job bullshit and the writing isn't flowing like I want it to and I’ve gotten another rejection in my e-mail. That's just another day that ends in -y.
I’m talking about a day when there’s a fatigue deep within me born of teaching and correcting. Of doing the work for others. Of bearing the responsibility of others and doing it with a rictus grin because if I don't, no one will.
Those days, thankfully, are rarer.
When the above situation was brought to HWA’s attention, among the many responses was “...if you have four names our committee can reach out to for interview requests, please forward them to me…”
We grin. We bear it. We do the work and educate. And the Spanish interviews stay up, the Latine-identifying writers remain uninterviewed, and the wrong picture is still up on social media for one of the authors.
I told you in part one of this series that I would be writing about what’s been done and what’s worked in the past. I guess I started with what isn’t working.
Let me go back even further. And this time I’m telling hard truths about our Latine community. About myself, too.
At FiyahCon in 2020, I made some of my first speculative fiction connections ever with Latine identifying writers. A small group of us even chatted in one of the breakout rooms. After the conference, a WhatsApp group chat was started.
That same FiyahCon, the founders of Constelacion met for the first time and came up with the idea for the bilingual magazine. From there a Kickstarter campaign was born and it was funded.
Constelacion no longer exists and I left the group chat less than a year after it was formed. I only talk to one person from that breakout group and that's not on any regular basis.
We do this to ourselves. We should know nothing is handed to us and we have to fight for it, but then…
Look at what Fiyah magazine has been able to accomplish with both their magazine and in the awards and convention space. FiyahCon is the standard to which I hold all other speculative fiction conventions. Fiyah knew nothing would be handed to them and they fought.
I didn’t even stay in a WhatsApp group chat.
This is why I say we must work within and without the Latine community.
I'm not all doom and gloom, though. There are small victories to laud. Even Constelación's limited run should be celebrated and its successes shared.
First and foremost, it showed there was interest for a Latine magazine. A bilingual one, at that. They raised over $22,000 for a quarterly magazine that not only paid pro rates to its authors, but separately paid translators, never mind all the cover and interior artists.
They succumbed to what can often happen in indie speculative spaces, yes, but they burned bright for a brief moment in time. Almost every Latine-identifying writer I've met since Constelación shuttered has at least heard of the magazine, if not read it.
We were almost there.
I know of at least one attempt to start a Latine only series in a magazine. Before I permanently deleted my Twitter account, I saw several offers by Latine people to guest edit an issue of a magazine, too. That I know of, other than Clarkesworld, none of the major speculative fiction magazines have done this.
And that's where we stand in the community. We exist in the fringe and sometimes our yelling gets noticed and sometimes not even our own attempts at building space are successful. We are relegated to an interview series that is run with the barest amount of effort once a year from September 15 to October 15.
I see the loud Latine voices. Voices like Karlo Yeager Rodriguez and Pedro Iniguez—Karlo for calling out the shortcomings in the community, Pedro for championing Latine voices, both for being passionate examples to inspire and follow. Their efforts continuously keep the Latine community in the conversation in speculative fiction spaces.
But you know what else we do to ourselves? We are our own worst gatekeepers. I've heard it said many times over the years, “no one hates a Mexican like another Mexican.”
You're too dark. Too indigenous. Too estadounidense. “Eres un no sabo kid.”
And we hate south of the border, too, talking shit on our neighbors in Central America. So why would I be surprised when I find an author with Latine heritage who doesn't announce it? Why be surprised to hear them say they don't feel Latine enough?
What the hell are we doing?
In the meantime, we are, if we are lucky, talking on panels at conventions with 101-level topics.
“Spotlight on Latinx SFF”
That's what we get. A spotlight. We should be wrestling that spotlight onto us. Demanding it. Give us interview questions about our specific cultures. Organize panels to talk about why a Latine doesn't have to be a hard magic system. Let us talk about how our storytelling is different and how many times western, white editors reject our stories from a lack of understanding. Or even, have more than one Latine author on a topic that has nothing to do with Latinidad.
Let us… exist in the spaces proudly and loudly.
Okay I'm off my soapbox. For now.
In the final part of this series, I'm going to get into the nitty gritty. What can we—Latine-identifying folk—do to not only give ourselves the best chances for success in speculative fiction, but what we can do to organize and create the space we deserve. And I'm going to get into what allies can do, too. Readers, editors, agents, friends, members of the community… everyone.
¡Manos a la obra!