Remembering Adela Vázquez, Beloved Trans Activist and Performer

Adela Vázquez, a beloved San Francisco transgender activist, died on Oct. 11 at 66 years old, her chosen family confirmed to KQED. The cause of death was a heart attack. Vázquez dedicated her career to advocating for HIV/AIDS healthcare and prevention, and paved the way for transgender Latinas in nightlife with her performance group, Las AtreDivas.

Vázquez studied to be a teacher in her native Cuba before arriving to the U.S. by boat as an asylum seeker in 1980. In the early ’80s, she made her way from Florida to a refugee center in Arkansas, then to Dallas and Los Angeles, where she began her gender transition.

In Dallas, she became roommates with Catherine Nelson D’Alerta, a drag performer who arrived from Cuba the same year. D’Alerta put Vázquez in drag and invited her to perform for the first time. When D’Alerta moved to San Francisco, Vázquez joined her in 1983.

In San Francisco, the charismatic, stylish Vázquez became instantly popular. “She was everywhere, everybody knows her,” D’Alerta said. “It was amazing.”

In 1992, Vázquez won the title of Miss Gay Latina from the community health organization Instituto Familiar de la Raza, which led her to her calling in health advocacy. As the AIDS epidemic raged on, she lost friends and loved ones, and decided to devote herself to uplifting trans people who were being misgendered, mistreated or ignored in the healthcare system.

“At the time there were hospitals that were housing people that were dying of AIDS,” Vázquez told KQED in a 2023 interview. “And I found the transgender people were unhappy in these places because they were not represented. They know that they didn’t have a voice in the community yet. So I thought to myself, ‘I need to get involved with it,’ because it bothered me.”

Vázquez joined forces with a Mexican performer who went by La Condonera (the Condom Queen), who’d hand out free condoms to queer people and sex workers. Together with several other trans and gender-nonconforming Latinas, they founded Las AtreDivas (the Daring Divas). The drag group would use their 1:30 a.m. performance slot at the gay Latinx bar Esta Noche to educate people about safer sex. They also fundraised for the HIV/AIDS healthcare organization Proyecto ContraSIDA Por Vida, where Vázquez eventually got a job to further her community outreach.

“She was one of the people who was [breaking] ceilings, being the first trans Latina to do a bunch of things, including talking for the first time in front of the Human Rights Commission to advocate for trans people in hospices,” said writer Julian Delgado Lopera in a speech at San Francisco Pride’s Ken Jones Awards earlier this year, when Vázquez received the José Sarria History Maker award.

Vázquez’s care for others also extended to her personal life. She was a mother figure to several queer and trans immigrants from Latin America.

“When I met her 13 years ago, I was running away, like many queer kids in San Francisco, from homophobia and transphobia in my family,” said Delgado Lopera, who grew up in Colombia, when presenting the award. “I found my mom. And in my mom, I found somebody who really taught me how to say, ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ I have so much love and so much respect for this woman who has really taught me how to hustle, how to be a bad bitch and how to love unconditionally.”

Vázquez and D’Alerta were roommates for over 30 years and became a chosen family. D’Alerta recalls Vázquez playing flamenco records and cooking delicious Cuban dishes like roasted pork. “Every morning she’d wake up singing and making jokes,” D’Alerta said. “She was amazing to me. Never a problem. She took care of me like she was my mother.”

Artist Marcel Pardo Ariza, who also became part of the family, featured Vázquez in several of their projects. Portraits they shot of her appeared in their 2022 SECA Award show at SFMOMA. At Pardo Ariza’s exhibition about transgender history last year at 500 Capp Street, they invited Vázquez for an AtreDivas revival performance.

“Hearing from someone who left their home country to be who they are and to be in San Francisco and to organize for the trans community felt so inspiring to me,” said Pardo Ariza, who is originally from Colombia.

“It almost always felt like she was just really in one way or another looking out for us,” they added. “And she just loved to cook. She loved to dance. She used to love to party.”

Pardo Ariza’s projects weren’t the first time Vázquez’s life inspired works of art. Artist Jaime Cortez published a graphic novel based on her life, Sexile/Sexilio, in 2004. Her story was also featured in ¡Cuéntamelo!: Oral Histories by LGBT Latino Immigrants, edited by Delgado Lopera; Queer Brown Voices, edited by Letitia Gomez, Uriel Quesada and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz; and Juana Maria Rodriguez’s 2023 book, Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, Working Sex.

After decades of working in community health and nightlife, Vázquez retired but found herself feeling lonely. In 2023, she started 50 and Fabulous, a support group for transgender women over 50 at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. As facilitator, she’d bring the women clothes and throw them birthday parties.

“It’s a lot of fun. I found community again. It’s so fantastic,” Vázquez told KQED last year. “It’s a group that has no form. Sometimes we talk; sometimes we eat; sometimes we cry. I don’t think transgender people over a certain age have a lot of representation … So now they have a place.”

Pardo Ariza and Delgado Lopera have plans to tell Vázquez’s story through their trans historical archive, Memoria Trans SF. Vázquez’s loved ones are fundraising for burial costs on GoFundMe, and on Oct. 27 at the Women’s Building in San Francisco, there will be a celebration of life open to the public.

“She was very private,” said D’Alerta, “but the community needs to say goodbye to somebody so special.”

Adela Vázquez’s celebration of life takes place at the Women’s Building in San Francisco on Oct. 27 at 4 p.m.