7. The return home

Read from the Magazine Edition

By Fernando Velez

In the early 2000s, Puerto Rico experienced a shift that would impact many of us working in the entertainment industry — one that would eventually lead me to leave home. Telemundo, which originated in San Juan in 1954 before becoming a major U.S. network, began relocating much of its production to Miami after being acquired by a major American media company. Other sectors of film and television followed a similar path. Shows that Puerto Rican crews had once worked on locally were now being filmed elsewhere, and for many of us, continuing in the industry meant leaving the island.

I eventually found myself working in Miami alongside actors and crew members from Puerto Rico whom I had previously worked with on the island — people who, like me, had relocated not out of desire, but out of necessity. Puerto Rico didn’t lack talent or vision, but the infrastructure that supported those dreams was beginning to move away.

I didn’t want to leave. But I understood that if I stayed, I would not be able to build the studio or the company I had imagined since I was a teenager.

So I made a
decision.

I would leave in order to chase the opportunities I couldn’t find at home, with the intention of one day returning with the resources, knowledge, and platform needed to create those opportunities for others.

After moving to the United States in search of those opportunities, I experienced something I had never felt before — discrimination. People, even other Latinos, would make jokes about my accent or the way I pronounced certain words. Even today, some still do. Back then, I was just eighteen, in a new state, in a new city where I didn’t know anyone, in a place where the way I spoke, the color of my skin, my hair, even my eyes could influence how I was perceived.

Opportunities often went to those who didn’t speak like me, didn’t look like me, or didn’t come from where I came from. And without realizing it, rejection by rejection, I began to tone down parts of who I was in order to be accepted.

Somewhere along the way, I internalized the idea that being Latino made me smaller. That to be taken seriously, I had to dilute my accent, my culture, my identity.

As the comic began to take shape, I started to feel afraid of the journey ahead — the scale of it, the years it would require, the sacrifice. I questioned whether I should keep going or stop before it was too late. Whether I should follow the path society often sets for us before we are even born — work a stable job, live quietly, and not risk everything for a dream. It felt as though a part of me had faded, just as it had when I first moved away from home.

While searching for inspiration, I came across an old disc filled with notes, ideas, and stories I had written as a kid. In reading them, I realized I was still using those stories — but I had forgotten the boy who created them.

I had carried his ideas across countries, pitched them, rewritten them, expanded them. But somewhere along the way, I had abandoned him.

And I understood that I needed to return home — not for inspiration, nor nostalgia, but to find myself again.

About ten years ago, I went back to Puerto Rico and stayed for three months, living with my parents, reconnecting with family, and walking the same streets I used to walk after school while listening to music and dreaming of a future that once felt impossible. Something inside me began to realign. Pieces of Fernandito started to awaken.

I visited my old art school, Escuela de Bellas Artes de Ponce, where everything began. On my first day, a teacher doubted I would ever pass the casting for the school’s play. A few months later, I was acting alongside her in that production. That experience taught me never to let anyone undermine me.

It was there that I wrote my first script — the one where I named a character Kraven. It was also the school that later expelled me for missing too many classes because I was traveling to San Juan to perform in plays. One door closed, but those plays led me to work on a television movie.

I remembered the dreamer who, at sixteen, would drive two hours from a movie set just to make it back to school the next morning. The one who envisioned building a company that could become a queer entertainment empire. The one who asked his mother for half a million dollars to buy old Hollywood equipment so he could film his first movie — writing scripts, drawing storyboards, believing anything was possible.

He wasn’t afraid to present the Kraven Studio idea to a government business program, explaining how it could impact the island’s economy. At sixteen years old, he was selected to take business classes for a year.

Going back reminded me that I don’t just create stories — I create spaces where we are seen. I didn’t listen to the noise around me that told me things were impossible, because I believe I am possible.
Fernandito didn’t see limits. He wasn’t afraid to dream, to try, or to fail. He was excited to live for his dreams — especially because his brother never had the chance to live his own.

Reconnecting
with my past allowed me to stop abandoning
Fernandito.

Sitting by the beach at sunset, listening to music, I realized I had once been a kid who carried notebooks filled with ideas — a kid who believed stories could change the world, not because he understood how hard it would be, but because he believed the world around him needed to heal.

So, I made
  a promise.

I promised Fernandito that I would not abandon his dream just because it became difficult. That I would not shrink it to make other people comfortable. That I would not let rejection, discrimination, or exhaustion silence something that once felt instinctive. That I would keep pushing forward, believing everything is possible — because he believed it first.

The comic stopped being a project. It became a commitment. Puerto Rico is where I learned to dream without limits. It is where I first believed my stories mattered. It is where a younger version of me filled notebooks with ideas that decades later would become The Queen’s Heroes universe.

And every time I return home, I remind myself of that promise — that I would not abandon the dream he once believed in. 

Soon, I will return again — bringing with me the universe that first began in his notebooks.

What began as a personal response to rejection, displacement, and survival slowly evolved into something larger than a single story.

And it all began because a queer kid from Puerto Rico never stopped dreaming. Because that’s who we are: resilient, hardworking, dreamers, and proud to be Boricuas—even when we are far from home.