Remembering a spirit with no limits

If Fred Martinez Jr. were still alive he’d be 26.

Just a year older than me.

On the 10th anniversary of his death – his murder – I can’t help but wonder what he’d be doing if he were still with us. Would he still be living in the Four Corners town of Cortez? Or would he have followed his dreams to Denver and then San Francisco, Los Angeles?

Would he, with his worldly consciousness – the same consciousness I believe all queer people possess if they choose to – be saving the world, one person at a time? Or would he be leading the fight for gay, transgender and Native American rights on a larger scale?

I’d like to think both.

Truth be told, I never knew Fred. We grew up about 300 miles apart. But after watching Lydia Nibley’s documentary Two Spirits last night – unbeknownst to me, the eve of the anniversary of his murder – I can’t help but hope he and I would have been good friends had our paths crossed.

That is, had he not been murdered by a New Mexican teenager, Shaun Murphy.

“It was a death that brought this quiet corner of Southwest Colorado into the confluence of raging issues about hate crimes, gender violence and long-standing prejudices against minority, homosexual and transgendered people,” Emery Cowan wrote in The Durango Herald‘s retrospective about Fred’s death.

Perhaps. But more importantly – and not to discredit Cowan’s topnotch reporting – it was the death of an individual, a Navajo nádleehí, or two spirit. An individual, born Fred but who woke up every morning defining himself, not by the opinions of other people, a collective, but how he choose to.

You see, Fred liked to be called F.C., sometimes Beyonce, after the singer. Somedays he wore men’s clothes, other days he wore makeup and fashioned his wardrobe with one of his mother’s purses. Once, he was sent home from school for wearing shoes designed for young girls. When his mother, Pauline Mitchell, picked him up from school she happened to notice another student – a girl – wearing the same shoes. She asked the administration, “why is this girl not being sent home like my son? She’s wearing the same shoes.”

She never got an answer.

Just like we’ll probably never have an answer to why Fred had to die.

In just a few days, Civic Center will be filled with gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders, allies and queers of all shapes, sizes, colors. We will celebrate this year’s Pride by drinking too much, wearing just enough to be legally scene in public and we’ll have the fifth-degree sunburn to prove it. But one very special person won’t be there – Fred.

I don’t mean to throw a wet blanket on the party. My intentions, I hope are more noble.

Before Fred was murdered – Murphy pleaded guilty to second degree murder in lieu of being prosecuted with a hate crime – he attempted to take his own life. But he survived and arose from those ashes proud of who he was. A second chance, perhaps designed just to be taken away?

This PrideFest, 10 years after Fred left us to join the great spirits, I encourage you all to question how you define yourself. Challenge your stereotypes. Challenge your pre-conceived notions, not only of others, but of yourselves. Ask, what does it mean to be gay, lesbian, bisexual? What does it mean to be, simply, me? Am I proud of the me I am without the fancy car or friends or labels?

Fred had little, but a passion for life. He was limitless. And, by all accounts, if he was challenged, he found away to overcome it. Even in death, according to his mother, Fred has found away to live on. Seriously, watch the documentary.

We can all learn a lesson from Fred. We too, are limitless. But we as individuals, as a society can only actualize this when we decided to remove the chains of oppression.

Fred knew, at a young age, what it meant to be himself. It’s too bad this world will never know what he could have been.

The Two Spirits documentary will air on Denver’s PBS affiliate Colorado Public Television throughout June. There will be a special screening, apart of Community Cinema, June 29 at the Denver Film Society’s theater on Colfax. There will be a panel discussion afterward. In Focus with Eden Lane will also have a special episode June 27 about the documentary. The first 20 minutes are embedded here:

Watch the full episode. See more Independent Lens.