GAYLETTER

Of course I grew up in the Dominican Republic hearing the word “maricón” around town, and I always pretended that I didn’t hear it whenever someone was saying it to another as an insult. For those of you that don’t know, “maricón” best translates to “faggot,” which we all know is not very nice. Sometimes Dominicans use to use the word and add ‘azo’ at the end, “mariconazo,” because I guess it sounded more dramatic and you know we Latinos love some drama. I personally never thought about the word when I lived there, it didn’t really haunt me, it just sounded ugly to me and I just decided to ignore it. But, after I came to NYC and I started to learn more about the power of words and the effect that they can have on others, I started to pay more attention and realized that language has way more power in America. Egos are also bigger in America and it’s easier to activate their collective pain bodies… All kinds of words get too much publicity here, and people give them bigger platforms, but I understand not everyone is able to remove the power from a word and just ignore it. People seem to just be more sensitive in the USA. I spoke to José (one of the organizers of this party, who's also DJing) because I was curious about why he called it Maricón. “I called the party Maricon because that’s a word that growing up I would hear constantly that I actually really hated, I just wanted to reclaim the word.” He told me that the party started about three years ago with his friend Sam, but he didn’t have time to really focus on it. Now he’s bringing it back! He told me to expect “lots of reggaeton, dembow, baile funk and more.” He seems very excited about it, I am too. “What I can hope for is lots of dancing, sweating, loving and celebrating of our roots…” Music by Stud1nt, Draqué, Hon2ou and Joselo. Los Maricones!  —Abi