Horacio N. Roque Ramírez (November 15, 1969 – December 25, 2015) was a

Salvadoran American Salvadoran Americans ( or ) are Americans of full or partial Salvadoran descent. As of 2010, there are 2,195,477 Salvadoran Americans in the United States, the fourth-largest Hispanic community by nation of ancestry.oral historian Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people wh ...

, writer and advocate whose work focused on

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term ...

Latino Latino or Latinos most often refers to: * Latino (demonym), a term used in the United States for people with cultural ties to Latin America * Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States * The people or cultures of Latin America; ** Latin A ...

communities and the Central American experience in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. He was a faculty member in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

Early life

Roque Ramírez was born in Santa Ana, El Salvador. Fleeing the

Salvadoran Civil War The Salvadoran Civil War ( es, guerra civil de El Salvador) was a twelve year period of civil war in El Salvador that was fought between the government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front The Farabundo Ma ...

, he immigrated to

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

at age 12, in 1981. He earned a B.A. in

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...

and M.A. in

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

, and a Ph.D. in

Ethnic Studies Ethnic studies, in the United States, is the interdisciplinary study of difference—chiefly race, ethnicity, and nation, but also sexuality, gender, and other such markings—and power, as expressed by the state, by civil society, and by indivi ...

from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. He

came out Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of ...

as a gay man in 1992.

Research

Roque Ramírez began his oral history work with

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

's queer Latina/o community, centered in the

Mission District The Mission District (Spanish: ''Distrito de la Misión''), commonly known as The Mission (Spanish: ''La Misión''), is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. One of the oldest neighborhoods in San Francisco, the Mission District's name is ...

, as a doctoral student at

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

in the 1990s, working with activists and organizations including

Diane Felix Diane Francis Christine Felix (born March 15, 1953), also known as Chili D, is an American disc jockey and LGBT activist.Cassell, Heather. "Music's the life for Chili D." The Bay Area Reporter. 27 June 2013. She is a third-generation Chicana from S ...

and

Proyecto ContraSIDA por Vida Proyecto ContraSIDA por Vida (also known as PCPV and Proyecto) was a non-profit HIV-prevention agency located in the Mission District of San Francisco that provided community-based healthcare for the Latino/a and LGBT communities. It was one of sev ...

, and documenting predecessor organizations such as the Gay Latino Alliance. At the time of his death he was working on the book ''Queer Latino San Francisco: An Oral History, 1960s-1990s''. He also served as an expert witness on political asylum and immigration.

Publications

* Alamilla Boyd, Nan, and Horacio N. Roque Ramírez. ''Bodies of Evidence: The Practice of Queer Oral History''. New York, NY:

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, 2012.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Roque Ramírez, Horacio 1969 births 2015 deaths Hispanic and Latino American academics Oral historians LGBT Hispanic and Latino American people Salvadoran emigrants to the United States University of California, Santa Barbara faculty University of California, Berkeley alumni University of California, Los Angeles alumni