Esperanza Peace and Justice Center
922 San Pedro Avenue, San Antonio, TX 78212

San Antonio, Texas, March 16, 2020-The Esperanza Peace and Justice Center is postponing Monica Palacios’ performances until a later date in order to ensure the collective health and wellbeing of our community members. We will announce the new performance dates soon!

Monica Palacios’ relationship with the Esperanza has spanned almost 30 years starting in the early 1990s through the mid-late 1990s when our cultural programming was the target of public attacks in the media. Right wing zealots began an assault on our art exhibits, film festivals, pláticas and performances until they achieved their goal of eliminating City of San Antonio arts funding for Esperanza in 1997. Our LGBTQ programming was a primary focus of the attacks as were programs that made cultural or political reference to Latin America, Cuba or the Middle East. Newspaper articles written mostly by white males in the mid-90s attacked renowned artists like photographer, Laura Aguilar (now deceased), artist Ana ernández and comedian-performer, Monica Palacios among others. In 1998, having heard about Esperanza’s de-funding, Monica returned with performances of “Greetings from a Queer Señorita,” to benefit Esperanza.

Monica is the creator of solo performance pieces, plays, screenplays, short stories, stand-upcomedy and poems that feature the Latinx LGBTQ experience. In 2019, she became the Lucille Geier Lakes Writer-in-Residence at Smith College and on the same year she was granted The McKenna Guest Artist Award during her fall residency at Holyoke Community College. She is featured in the new queer documentary STAND UP, STAND OUT: The Making Of A Comedy Movement by David Pavlosky. Monica was selected as the playwriting faculty for the 2020 Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, a program of the national organization Lambda Literary at Otis College of Art and Design. In October 12, 2012, the City of Los Angeles declared “Monica Palacios Day” in honor of her groundbreaking artistic work. For more information please contact Imgard Rop at pr@esperanzacenter.org or 210.228.0201