Adelita’s Revenge fuses queer and Latinx culture

When you walk into Viento y Agua, a coffee shop on 4th street in Long Beach, neatly tucked away in the corner is a vibrant gift shop called Adelitas Revenge. 

If you sit down in the coffee shop long enough, and let the smell of fresh espresso and toasted bagels invade your senses, you will notice that lots of people begin to flock to that corner, checking out the many gifts Adelitas’ Revenge has to offer.

Some customers stay for over half an hour, laughing and chatting with the owners Marina Carranza and Yvonne Márquez, two queer indigenous Chicana women born and raised in Los Angeles county.

Adelitas Revenge gets its name from a group of Mexican revolutionary women. Márquez said that during the Mexican Revolution women had to take up arms to protect their homes and communities from the government. Some of these women were transgender and lots of them became generals in the army. These women were called Las Adelitas.

“I've always loved the story of Las Adelitas because they are just strong badass women. I was telling Marina one day, ‘let's honor Adelitas’ and we used revenge as part of a play on words,” Carranza said. “It's not really revenge but it's like our turn now.”

Adelitas’ Revenge is loaded with children's books, items from Mexico, crystals and queer flags. The shop has about 35 vendors from small businesses. 

“We curated it with lots of love and wanting to help our small business family and the people we have known throughout the years. We are excited that we can give this opportunity to some of these people that wouldn’t have much opportunity,” Carranza said. “When you are queer, a woman, Latinx or Latina you know you can’t just walk into any gift store and be like ‘hey can you sell my stuff?’ So we wanted to be that place for marginalized groups.”

After finding success in doing many pop ups, Carranza and Márquez opened their brick and mortar location in 2022, right next door to Viento y Agua. That is until unexpectedly, the landlord wanted their space back and gave the two women 30 days to move during the holidays.

“It was more like our ideas and visions were not aligning anymore, they had a different vision for who we were,” said Márquez.

Prior to this Márquez had a 9-to-5 job in account and payroll, but both Carranza and Márquez were laid off from their jobs in 2020 due to the pandemic.

Márquez and Carranza knew the owners of Viento y Agua, Jenny Laforce and Nick Kofski, from being neighboring businesses and about four or five days after being asked to leave their space, Laforce and Kofski offered them a space inside the coffee shop. The two ladies at first thought this would be a temporary situation until they found a new place. 

“It's looking like a permanent home for us,” Carranza said.

Carranza and Márquez also host an array of events at the coffee shop such as lotería night, Karaoke, wellness days, open mic night and a book club focused on Latinx authors; currently they are reading Too Soon for Adios by Annette Chávez. 

Yoli Luna Ibarra has been a barista at Viento y Agua for just about a month now but met Carranza and Márquez in April 2022, at 4th Street’s “Fourth Fridays” when they used to be vendors. Luna Ibarra kept seeing the two women and said that very quickly the ladies became like family to them. Luna Ibarra even got the job at Viento y Agua through Carranza and Márquez, who told them that the coffee shop was hiring.

“I see them as my elders, I see them as family, like my aunties. It has helped make Long Beach feel like home,” Luna Ibarra said. “Before meeting them, my spouse and I were contemplating on maybe moving somewhere else and through a few kind of serendipitous events, one of them being meeting Yvonne and Marina, we decided that we have a very lovely community here and they are a part of that.”