Orlando's hard-hit Puerto Rican community pulls together after Pulse massacre
In a strip mall in Kissimmee, a small city just south of Orlando that is home to a large Hispanic community, flowers and religious candles fill the sidewalk in front of Juan and Luis' beauty salon.
In a strip mall in Kissimmee, a small city just south of Orlando that is home to a large Hispanic community, flowers and religious candles fill the sidewalk in front of Juan and Luis' beauty salon.
"Juan and Luis, two humans of love. You will be in our hearts," reads one of the Magic Marker remembrances taped to the window.
Shy Juan Rivera Velasquez, 37, who cut hair and met customers with a kiss and a hug.
Outgoing Luis Daniel Conde, 39, who turned the techno up loud and moved to the music as he managed the shop.
Juan and Luis, a couple since high school in Puerto Rico. Juan and Luis, inseparable in life and in death.
Juan and Luis, two faces of the group hit hardest by the Pulse nightclub massacre: Orlando's Puerto Rican LGBT community.
It was Latin night at Pulse. On this night especially, the club represented a safe haven for people to feel secure not just in their sexuality, but also in their heritage.
"A sanctuary where you can be authentically who you are in your sexual orientation, but also a space where, even if for just one night a week, you can speak your native tongue," said Gabriel Garcia-Vera, a LGBT advocate in Florida who works for the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. "A shared space with people just like you. A place that feels good, looks good, and feels like home."
Nearly all of the 49 patrons killed at Pulse on Sunday were Hispanic or of Hispanic descent; 23 were Puerto Ricans.
Central Florida is home to 1 million Puerto Ricans, a population second only to New York.
Many come here fleeing poverty and violence. Others, many of them members of the LGBT community, are leaving behind a culture where they feel unwelcome and ostracized, wanting a life where they are free to be themselves.
"So many Hispanics and Puerto Ricans come here so they can be more expressive - so they can show their love without judgment and guilt, and without being scared," said Laura Buitrago, 25, originally from Colombia, who volunteered Wednesday as a translator at a LGBT counseling center in downtown Orlando. "And then this happens."
The community they formed here is reeling, but is also rallying.
A coalition of Hispanic groups is working to offer counseling and other supportive services to victims and their families, including help to those who cannot afford to travel to Florida, and is offering translators to help them through the process of recovering lost ones.
In some cases, families had disowned their loved ones because of their sexuality, said Terry DeCarlo, a director at the LGBT Center of Central Florida, which has become the hub of relief efforts.
"Families that disowned them beforehand, and now have lost that child forever," he said. Those, he said, are the sad cases.
"I am seeing the Latino community pull together," he said, recalling how Wednesday morning, four Hispanic community members who were at Pulse but did not know each other held an impromptu therapy session at the center.
Days ago they danced together, now they mourn together. They move forward together.
In Kissimmee, the Hispanic community is drawing closer to honor the memory of Juan and Luis. It planned a vigil for Wednesday night. In the stores there, shoppers remembered the couple as people who brought life and energy to the strip mall.
How polite and sweet Juan was. How the couple doted on Juan's mother, Angelita, who also cut hair at the shop, and treated their small dog, Juicy, like a princess.
How much they will be missed.
Relatives of Luis hugged and cried in front of the memorial, while a few doors down, at the Armories Gun Shop, where so many high-powered rifles like the one used to kill Juan and Luis hung on the wall, store employees said they could not talk with the press. It was sad, they said.
Jennifer Alzate, 25, who works the counter in a scooter shop that shared a wall with the salon, was busy planning the vigil for her friends. For days she has cried. She played a video she had of Juan and Luis laughing.
"I don't see how it's going to be the same," she said.
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