Digital Transgender Archive

Interview with Christopher J. Cuevas

An interview with Christopher J. Cuevas, an Indigenous-Latinx, non-binary community organizer, educator, and peace practitioner based in Orlando, Florida. Since co-founding the organization in 2016 following the Pulse nightclub shooting, Cuevas has served as the executive director of QLatinx, a racial, social, and gender justice movement working toward the advancement of intersecting LGBTQ+ Latinx issues. Additionally, Cuevas has served as a fellow with the Trans Justice Funding Project, and as a board member of the Peace and Justice Institute and the City of Orlando's Office of Multicultural Affairs. In this oral history interview, Cuevas discusses their early life as a child of migrant agricultural workers in southwest Florida and initial forays into activism and queer and trans community organizing, their work to build and maintain healing and organizing spaces for queer and trans people of color in the Orlando area, especially following the Pulse nightclub shooting, their experience as a fellow with the Trans Justice Funding Project and their thoughts on the U.S. trans activism landscape broadly, and their visions of a better future. Additionally, they discuss the impacts of COVID-19 on queer and trans people of color in tourism-dependent central Florida, the direct aid programs set up by QLatinx in response, and the racial justice uprisings in central Florida in the summer of 2020 and the responses to them.