Growing up in the Lima distrito Miraflores, Cesar Rojas Soria, the creator of our guide to the city, was surrounded by animals, including chickens, turtles, cats, dogs, guinea pigs, rabbits and two two pet monkeys. So it was natural that upon his arrival in San Francisco in 2004 that one of his first trips–after the Castro of course–was to the zoo, where he got friendly with a peacock (above).
Cesar is proud as a peacock of his adopted city, where he is studying in the medical field. “It was amazing coming from Lima, where the only place you can be gay is inside your own apartment or in a gay club, to San Francisco, where people are openly gay in public,” he says. “I remember lesbians with their strollers walking down the street, and men holding hands. I almost tripped.”
Even so it was not a always an easy transition. Cesar served in the Peruvian Air Force, which afforded him many priveledges, and he ran his own successful restaurant that specialized in ceviche. In his free time, he hung out with the drag queens and strippers in Lima’s closeted but colorful gay scene. He misses his parents and older brother. Yet he still considers it a worthwhile sacrifice: “I just couldn’t live in a place where no one understand being gay, where everyone thinks you are sick.”
Cesar hopes to return to his hometown one day, when “I’m gonna use what I learned here in America to try to fix things in Peru. I’m stronger now, and I wouldn’t care what anyone thought any more.” In the meantime, he encourages visitors to get the process started by visiting Lima and supporting the fledgeling gay community there.
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Photo credit: Cesar Rojas Soria
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Cesar,
I know your city very well as the area where you lived. I have a very good friend that has an apartment across from the Golf Club and rents it out to Embassies or Diplomats.
I hope you get to go back and initiate a movement for LGBT acceptance. I am not Gay but I respect and fight for Human rights. I am an avid collaborator of the LGBT community; you could go back as a representative of IGLTA as did another good friend of mine. Clovis Casimiro and now he is also working closely with TAM Vacations on the LGBT Segment and heavily promoting diverse number of Brazilian destinations.
(Just a thought).
Will you be in Toronto for the IGLTA Conference?? If so look me up.
Good luck and I miss the Tiradito and the Fnaja Azul?? Amazing food.