This weekend’s Latino Gay Pride Festival has a message — and Jujubee
Last year, as the fifth annual Latino Gay Pride Festival was winding down in Hyde Park, the event’s founder and organizer, Mario Canedo, stepped on the stage, took the microphone and made an emotional speech.
He recalls: “I was crying at this point and said, ‘It’s time for me to say goodbye. I can’t do another festival. It’s too much hard work to produce this thing, to build it up every year.’ I was angry, exhausted — done.”
Canedo, who has always mounted the festival without a committee or many volunteers, was angry that five local drag performers had canceled at the last minute, leaving him with few acts to fill the one-day event’s rented stage. Canedo played recorded music instead, and other performers added encores to their sets. The show went on. And Canedo soon changed his mind.
“Everyone was having such a good time, and so many people asked me not to quit,” he tells me. “So I agreed to keep doing it.”
He also increased the festival’s scale. For the first time since Canedo started the event, in 2009 — 25 people showed up that first year, and 600 came last year — the festival is a two-day party. Friday night marks an adults-only street fair in Westport, with alcohol for sale and a national headliner, Jujubee, the Laotian-born veteran of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
“Saturday, we’re back in Hyde Park,” says Canedo, a former local Hispanic radio personality. (Today, he’s a community prevention specialist for the Good Samaritan Project.) “And it’s still a family event. Last year, we had 150 kids in the audience.”
While children are entertained in a separate play area, Canedo’s main stage is set to showcase a variety of local acts, including at least one of the drag queens who disappointed him last year. (“I’m a very forgiving person,” Canedo says.) And there’s another national headliner, Puerto Rican drag personality Yara Sofia (also a RuPaul’s Drag Race survivor).
“It’s not just a gay event,” Canedo says. “We attract families who want to support their gay family members and the community. And plenty of non-Hispanic people come, too.”
“The family event is like a big picnic,” says John Long, publisher of Camp magazine. “I’ve gone every year, and you see many more families with children there than you see at the annual Gay Pride Festival.”
No alcohol will be sold at the Saturday event, which runs from 3 to 8:30 p.m. Canedo is offering free bottled water, soda and snacks — specifically, tacos. “We try to have enough food to last through the day,” he says.
“I went for the first time last year,” says Elizabeth Anderson, co-host of gay-focused KKFI 90.1 program The Tenth Voice. “It’s a very welcoming gathering, whether you’re Hispanic or not. It’s relaxing, and the Hyde Park setting is beautiful and a great place to enjoy the cooler weather. People bring their kids and their pets.”
Canedo, who moved to Kansas City in 2000 to be an announcer for the AM station that was then KKHK 1250, says he started the event “to change the perceptions in the Hispanic community of what gay means.” He goes on: “Our community is very influenced by our religion, our family life and that sense of machismo. Our message to gay men and women in the Hispanic community is that it’s OK to be yourself.”
Canedo says 2014 is the first year that he has had a team of volunteers. “I finally realized that I can’t do it myself anymore,” he says. Also for the first time, there’s a professionally designed website and a major sponsor, AT&T.
The Saturday event is still free, but entry to Friday night’s party costs $5. Jujubee is flying in from Boston, after all.
Canedo says he’s ready this year for the challenge — no emotional closing speeches. “Last year, I became ill from all the stress,” he says. “I wasn’t sleeping or eating. I’m a perfectionist. I want everything to be just right. But I’ve gotten a lot of good advice over the last 11 months.
“I’m so lucky,” he adds. “I’ve had a lot of doors open for me in Kansas City. And if I see an obstacle in front of me, I kick it out of the way.”
