The following English translation was generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence and has been reviewed and edited by our team for accuracy and clarity.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Hello, a warning before we begin: this series contains sensitive content including violence, drugs, and sexual language. We recommend discretion.
Melissa was 42 years old. She was a trans woman, Honduran. She lived in the United States for more than two decades, in Miami and in New York. There, she was a sex worker on Roosevelt Avenue.
In 2018 she marched alongside Lorena Borjas in the first Marcha Puteril, the sex workers’ march in Jackson Heights. She dedicated herself to fighting for the community’s rights. People who knew her say she was funny, the kind of person who would grab the microphone and become the life of the party.
In December 2021 she returned to live in Honduras. But shortly after, she decided to come back to the United States. She applied for asylum, unsuccessfully.
In July 2022 she was deported back to her country. There, she tried to go on with her life. She finished building her house. She joined an equestrian club — she loved horses. She posted videos on TikTok with her friends, she took care of her family… But one night, three months after her return, she was approached on the street by men who shot her twice in the head.
[Archival audio]: Trans activist Melissa Núñez is killed as she leaves her home. Honduras continues to be one of the worst countries for a trans woman or LGBTIQ person.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And thousands of kilometers away, the trans Latin community of Queens came together once again, as they had done so many times before, to remember one of their own.
[Memorial attendee]: As trans women, we cannot return to our countries because death is waiting for us there. She, Melissa, did not want to return to her country. She was persecuted for being a trans woman.
[Memorial attendee]: And she was also the breadwinner for her mother and her entire family in Honduras.
[Bianey García]: We know that for all of us, a deportation — being sent back to our countries — means a death sentence.
[Mateo Guerrero]: So let’s fight so there are no more prisons! No more detentions, no more deportations!
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: In 2022, the year of Melissa’s murder, Latin America was one of the most dangerous places in the world for trans people. And today, four years later, it still is.
This is the last episode of this series. But we don’t want to leave without emphasising that this story is not over.
And that is why today we will return one last time to Roosevelt Avenue. And then we will cross the border, head south, and hear from the struggle of other Latin queens.
From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, I am Rula Ávila Muñoz and this is Las Reinas de Queens.
Episode 10: Beyond the Rúsbel.
In addition to the social work led by some of the queens we have met in this series, there are other groups focused on changing the laws that today affect the lives of trans people and sex workers in New York.
One of these groups is called Make The Road New York. It is an organization we already mentioned in this series. But we hadn’t heard yet from the people who work there.
[Bianey García]: My name is Bianey García. I am a community organizer with Make the Road New York. And it is a pleasure to be here with you.
[Mateo Guerrero]: Hello. Hello, my name is Mateo Guerrero. My pronouns are he and they, and I am also an organizer with the Trans Migrant Project. And it was here in the United States where I met people who changed my life. One of those people was Bianey. Where I was able to learn that being undocumented is power. And also where, for the first time, in this office, I was asked what my name was and was accepted as a trans man.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Bianey García is Mexican and Mateo Guerrero is Colombian. Both are trans. We heard them briefly at the start of this episode — they were at the memorial for Melissa Núñez in Queens. We spoke with them in March of this year. Here is Mateo.
[Mateo Guerrero]: We are fighting for different laws at the city level and at the state level to create more protection. When you fight for sex worker communities, it is not only the fight for the decriminalization of sex work — it is also making sure there is affordable housing, that there is access to gender care and gender-affirming healthcare for people. This fight is much larger, because the majority of the people we work with are living on the street or living in city shelters. So we want to make sure they have a life in which they don’t have to walk in fear on the streets because of the police, and also that they have a place to eat, a place to sleep, a place to have their own space.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And to do this kind of work, Bianey and Mateo divide their time between the streets and Albany, the capital of New York State.
[Bianey García]: Albany is the area where legislation happens, right? Where the senators are, where the assembly members are, and where community members have the opportunity to share their testimonies, to speak with politicians about the importance of passing legislation or repealing penal codes that are criminalizing communities.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: In other words, they lobby. It is a very long process that depends largely on the collaboration of legislators, their political affiliations, and how interested they are in passing — or not — certain laws. For example, the law to protect trans people from workplace discrimination took 16 years.
[Mateo Guerrero]: Passing driver’s licenses for undocumented people — a license that the girls who do sex work, who are undocumented and have vehicles, can now obtain in order to drive. That one took us 13 years.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We also asked them about another very important bill: the one that would decriminalize sex work in the state, which has also been in the legislature for years.
[Mateo Guerrero]: In 2019, when we launched the campaign for the decriminalization of sex work and made it public, we had many elected officials who came out saying, «yes, of course, we support you.» And then those elected officials decided to run for city mayor and backed down.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Mateo is referring to New York State Senator Jessica Ramos. She represents District 13, where Jackson Heights is located. And she was a candidate for mayor in 2025.
[Mateo Guerrero]: At one point she was speaking very publicly about sex workers, and she began to change her language and started saying «prostitution» instead of «sex work.»
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We reached out to Senator Ramos for comment but she did not respond.
[Mateo Guerrero]: So we started to see how that shift played out for the officials who were running for mayor. And this includes Zohran Mamdani, who in those debates, right?, was coming out so strongly in favor.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But of course, the debates are over and now Zohran Mamdani is the mayor. Mateo told us that it remains to be seen what specific strategies Mamdani will implement regarding sex work. What is certain is that he cannot decriminalize it, because that depends on the state government. But he can recommend that the district attorneys of the five boroughs — that is, Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Queens — commit to not prosecuting sex work cases.
[Mateo Guerrero]: Because that reduces the arrests that happen on the streets, because if someone is arrested for sex work and goes to court and the case is dismissed, then it is a waste of money for the city.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But as of the publication date of this episode, Mamdani has not used that option available to him. Meanwhile, in Queens, the effects of Operation Restore Roosevelt Avenue continue to be felt. We talked about it in Episode 7 — it was launched by former mayor Eric Adams. It was a major police deployment on the streets of Jackson Heights.
The most recent data, from January 2025, shows that arrests for sex work on Roosevelt Avenue multiplied by nearly five. And Bianey told us what sex workers there have shared with her.
[Bianey García]: What the girls have said is that a car pulls up, there’s someone inside the car who says, who shows them money from inside the car, as if to say, «I have money, I want to pay you.» If the person opens the door, gets in, and accepts the money. Or even if they don’t accept the money, the simple act of getting into the car is more than enough to be used against them. They have also said that, for example, one of the tactics the girls use is to first grab the person and check that they’re not a cop — as they say, if they let themselves be grabbed, they’re not a cop. But if they don’t let themselves be grabbed, they might be a cop. And now the tactic they are using is that they are letting themselves be grabbed — an undercover cop lets them grab their private parts in order to bring charges against the person.
[Mateo Guerrero]: A few months ago, two police officers were formally charged who had raided a location where sex work was taking place, stole a key, came back, and sexually assaulted the woman after they got off work. And this happened in Precinct 115, right?
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: That is, in Jackson Heights.
[Mateo Guerrero]: And for us it was very significant that these two officers finally, and for the first time, faced a legal process. And something about sex work that is very important to recognize is that a person who does sex work is never seen as being off the clock. The police always see that person as actively doing sex work. Even when they’re going to the pharmacy. Even when they’re going to the supermarket. It is a very serious problem we have here in New York City — the extreme surveillance of people who do sex work, or who are perceived as doing sex work.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And speaking of extreme surveillance, we also wanted to know whether in the neighborhood they had observed an increase in the presence of ICE, the immigration police. And whether they had heard of deportations of sex workers.
[Mateo Guerrero]: At this point, the only people I know who are no longer in New York left through self-deportation — because they are tired. They were tired of living undocumented, with the constant fear of the police, and because there is no money on the streets. Because I don’t know if perhaps the girls mentioned it in other conversations, but what we hear all the time is that there’s no money on the streets, that it is very hard to make money. And I think that is also an indirect result of Operation Restore Roosevelt.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Mateo and Bianey told us that they have not actually heard of many deportation cases, beyond that of Melissa Núñez in 2022, which we mentioned at the start of this episode. But that does not mean they are not alert and worried.
On one hand, Mateo mentioned a Make The Road project called Guardianes del Barrio — Guardians of the Neighborhood — in which they collaborate with the Queens community to share information about where on the streets there are federal agents.
[Mateo Guerrero]: Something very important to understand is that people who are street vendors or people who do sex work are people who are constantly on the street — they are the eyes of what is happening, right? They are the eyes and ears of the city. So they are the people who can directly report on ICE’s movements.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Mateo explains that this is how they found out that ICE agents were frequently gathering outside a bank in Queens before carrying out raids.
[Mateo Guerrero]: We found out about that through the voices of the streets — the people who are out on the street at four in the morning. And we have WhatsApp channels where people see what’s happening and say: immigration is at this location, right? And in that chat there are people who do sex work, trans people, street vendors, people who work in cleaning, people who work different shifts, in restaurants. And the idea is that through those voices we can know when immigration is out and where they are.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The other tool they are using, this time in the courts, is called Habeas Corpus. It is a legal resource to guarantee that the people they represent stay in New York courts and are not sent to other states if they are detained. Because despite everything, the city remains a sanctuary, and Mateo and Bianey want the girls to stay there.
After the break we turn south and speak with four queens from Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, who will update us on the battles being fought in Latin America, beyond the Rúsbel.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We are back on Las Reinas de Queens.
In March of this year I spoke with four trans women from Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, who have worked in different ways to strengthen their respective communities.
My guests joined the call slowly from different parts of the world — from Mexico City and the Colombian mountains, all the way to Berlin.
The first to arrive was, precisely from Germany, María Belén Correa, director and founder of the Archivo de la Memoria Trans de Argentina — the Trans Memory Archive of Argentina. Then Rojo Genesis joined, a Mexican visual artist, curator, and researcher, best known for her work through the Museo de Arte Trans Femenino — the Trans Feminine Art Museum — in Mexico City.
And we began to talk about a theme that has been there all along, underpinning this series: family.
[Rula]: I would love to start by asking you — could you tell me what family means to you? What “home” means?
[Belén]: Well, first it means survival…
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: This is Belén.
[Belén]: It is the mechanism that communities in different places have used in order to survive. Living in community was the form of resistance that was used, even when we were not connected across countries.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Then came Rojo.
[Rojo]: For me, at least, it has also been very useful to think of family as a clan, right? I mean, and how clans have historically functioned — and I think trans women and travestis operate from that place, right? From how we also build these counter-genealogies, and who our references are. It is clear to me that not all of us, perhaps, can be family to each other. But I think we are all also referenced in another travesti, another trans woman, who basically walked before us, right?
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Very soon the two queens we had been waiting for joined the call. Natalia Lane, a human rights defender in Mexico City, communicator from UNAM, and founder of the Coalición Laboral Puteril. And, from the mountains of Colombia, Daniela Maldonado. She is an activist, community educator, and co-founder of the Red Comunitaria Trans, as well as representative of the Latin American and Caribbean Network for trans people.
[Rula]: For you, Natalia and Daniela — how do you understand the meaning of family? And also, well, Daniela, you went even further and said: I am also going to mother, to be a mother…
[Daniela]: Well, yes — sometimes recognizing ourselves as women is already a huge challenge. Now recognizing ourselves as women and mothers — that is a scenario that ends up being very violent, very unsafe, because of my activism, because I am a sex worker. I did not see myself in this maternal role. So while it has been wonderful and it completely changed my life — and my daughter is seven years old and is a marvelous person who fills my heart, who fills me with love, who makes me feel the strength to keep being alive and fighting — it also generates a lot of uncertainty for me, right? I think a lot about my daughter’s future, like when she is older and can access social media… Feeling, reading that hatred toward people who are like her mother. And then on the other hand, there is the fear on the street. I am terrified of being in a shopping mall and having her need to use the bathroom, and having to go with her, because someone might say, «well, this is a degenerate sneaking into the women’s bathroom with a little girl.» Right? It is that dual thing. On one hand, it is powerful to also inhabit motherhood. But it is a very big challenge.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: OK, I want to pause here because what Daniela shared with us is not a small thing.
Together with her partner, she was the first case in Colombia in which two trans people managed to conceive a pregnancy. An experience that, as we just heard, challenges many ideas about motherhood — and that also shows the multiple forms in which these families exist and are built. Natalia had something to say about that.
[Natalia]: Well, I am deeply moved listening to Daniela. I mean, what she said really touched something in me, because I think it is a very real fear. And so I see Dani’s stories with her daughter, doing this pedagogy — because they are everyday pedagogies, right? There is sometimes much more power in the everyday, in the real. Not necessarily because people understand what it means to be a travesti or what it means to be a sex worker, but they understand what it means to have nothing to eat; they understand what it means to have to work and go out every day to find the money to keep life going. So I feel that is where those families are woven together. And particularly with sex work — well, it has given me two great mothers in sex work, right? Women who taught me how to do sex work, how to charge clients well, how to charge more and spend less time. I mean, I feel that those things that your sex-worker mothers teach you stay with you forever, right? So I think family is a concept that is changing — from knowing that the street sex worker who shared a corner with her sister was truly her family, was truly the person she wanted to spend her life with. So I feel that conversation is always there. We are betting on being able to sustain each other, right? Which is already, in itself, a huge undertaking.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And if taking care of a family is already a huge undertaking, imagine building a home thousands of kilometers from where you were born, with a chosen family.
As we know, the various forms of violence that trans people face in their countries of origin push them to move to wherever they might feel safer. So I asked my guests about the migration of trans people in their different corners of the world. Here is Belén.
[Belén]: For a very long time in Argentina, the system was to escape. If you look at Latin American migration from Central America upward, the migration was toward the United States. But if you look at South America, the migration was toward Europe. The migration of the poor Argentine was to cross into Uruguay, Brazil, or Chile — doing whatever you could, walking, crossing by bus. Or those who had a friend who had already made it to Europe and sent them the ticket, and that’s how it went. That was a tradition from the 60s, 70s, 80s. Until the 1990s arrived, when activism began to emerge. From after the 90s until 2000, there was a pause and many were returning. Between 2001 — which is during the crisis, which was the time when I left — and 2004, the crisis had everyone leaving. And from 2004 to 2015, almost everyone came back, because it was the time of the 2012 gender identity law. It was a sweeping change in Argentina in terms of rights — they stopped having state persecution policies, and began to have inclusion policies. Today, most are thinking about leaving again because of the economic situation. Also, the persecution has intensified this past year. They are arresting the girls who are sex workers, who are standing on street corners. And the rise of the right — we see how they are beating people when they leave a nightclub, how they are spreading that hatred. It is no longer something that happens in one country or another. It’s a question of which country is starting again, or in which country it is awakening. The violence is institutionalized, and part of the hatred is directed squarely at our community.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Now, here is Natalia.
[Natalia]: I was thinking about the issue of migration because Mexico has also become a destination for migrant populations — not only for trans travestis, but in general. Many people from Central America, right? Particularly from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, come to Mexico seeking to flee violence and improve their living conditions. We go to the sex work areas and we realize that the Mexican sex workers themselves say, «it’s just that the Venezuelans or the Colombians or the Central Americans came and took our work,» right? That same logic that all racist and xenophobic prejudices follow in many places around the world. So we feel that it is also very complex work, right? Very complex, because Mexico City has also become a place where many things are disputed: migration, sex work, identity.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: These are disputes that, as we have seen, stretch from Queens to Argentina and beyond.
In 2022, Natalia was a victim of a trans femicide attempt in a hotel in Mexico City while she was doing sex work. And on April 13th of this year, a judge found her attacker guilty of attempted femicide.
This marks an enormously important precedent, as it is the first time a trans sex worker has lived to see her attacker sentenced. But Natalia reminded us that to get to that point she has had to raise her voice in a thousand ways.
[Natalia]: You need to make noise, protest, break things, shatter things, burn things, shout at the State in the face about everything it is doing wrong. And the omissions that over the years have accumulated in cases of trans femicide, of hate crimes against LGBT people. But I think the fact that today we managed to bring my attacker to trial, to a sentencing phase and to reparations, is a very important social message, right? It is a message of hope, in some way, right?
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We’ll be back after the break.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We are back on Las Reinas de Queens. The conversation continued, and Belén returned to the topic Natalia had raised earlier, about the arrival of immigrants to Mexico City.
[Belén]: Before thinking about xenophobia toward our fellow sex workers, we have to think about the fact that we are talking about a job. So it is not the same to think as a trans community as it is to think as a community of sex workers. Because as a community of sex workers, it doesn’t matter if you are a man, a woman, a travesti, or a transsexual — you are the competition standing next to me. So solidarity among sex workers is very difficult. Going back to Argentina, where there is the complicity of a group of gay and lesbian people who have shifted to the right — there is also a group of travesti people who are abolitionists, who are against sex workers.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Because as Belén says, and as Mateo and Bianey said earlier, this — the criminalization, the discrimination, the persecution, and the lack of access to basic services — is something that has been going on for many years, in many places.
That is why it is impossible to think of this story as something that happens only in one place, in a single moment. So I wanted to end my conversation by asking each of my guests: how do they see their struggle today, from their own territories? And above all, what reasons do they have to keep going? Daniela began.
[Daniela]: Well, we have received death threats for our activism from the Tren de Aragua, which has taken over the country. Right now, while you were talking about migration, I have also had to leave Bogotá and go live in the mountains. We found a farm four hours from Bogotá. There we are creating and building the travesti eco-village — it is called La Riqueza, because travestis are never going to live in poverty again. We want to build a refuge house for older trans women. We already have the land and we want to build a community, because many of us come from rural backgrounds. It is also about bringing the struggle back to peasant movements, to rural movements. So it has also been wonderful — decentralizing the fight and being able to take it to other territories where supposedly there are no travestis, but, actually, we are there. And we are also like a new generation of neo-peasant women. So it is marvelous.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Then Rojo spoke again.
[Rojo]: Well, from the Museo de Arte Trans Femenino, I think the challenge is always to keep the space open — in the sense that when it is sustained by two trans women who also don’t have their own physical space — I mean, their own home — then obviously maintaining a collective space is also quite a challenge, right? Also, obviously, continuing to grow the space in terms of access, right? I mean, who can access the place. As I was saying, the museum starts from a dream. You don’t always think your projects can be taken seriously until other travestis take them seriously, right? So it all starts by saying: well, if trans women can’t access museums as artists, then we need to make a museum for trans women. And for the first time in Mexico we inaugurated the physical space in 2025. And today we are there generating exhibitions by trans women from Mexico, from Latin America, and beginning to have conversations with a more international scope. Sofía Moreno and I work there full time. And in a closer collaboration, Antonela Rubens as well. The three of us are now the ones who shape the space.
[Natalia]: In the Coalición Laboral Puteril, we are very clear that our political commitment is with sex workers, right?
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The one speaking is Natalia.
[Natalia]: There have also been complex conversations about how sex work has diversified, right? The street is no longer what it was 30, 40 years ago. The virtual, the digital, content creation, the other forms of sex work that are no longer the conventional ones. Now we are also focused on pushing a labor rights agenda, because we are very clear that the fight of sex workers is not a fight for sexual freedom or a matter of gender identity. It is a labor struggle. It is a working-class struggle, a struggle of popular sectors. So right now there are already some proposals taking advantage of the context of the World Cup — the social cleansing, the reshuffling. Why do we say the World Cup has had an impact on sex work? Because geographically, the soccer stadium where the World Cup matches will be held, at least here in Mexico City, is very close to, or has a direct route to the sex work zone on Calzada de Tlalpan, right? Which, as I mentioned, is one of the most important areas here in Mexico City. And also, obviously, we know that with the arrival of the World Cup there will be a higer demand for sex work, right? There will be more of our fellow workers working in hotels. So we are also there trying to put pressure on the government to create safety protocols — protocols that prevent femicidal and trans femicidal violence inside hotels, right?
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Finally, it was Belén’s turn to tell us about her projects for the coming months and why, in the end, all her work is grounded in the sharing of knowledge.
[Belén]: Quickly. We are working on the second Latin American congress of trans archives. Two years ago we held the first congress, where we began to bring together trans archives from Latin America. Following our work, around 26 groups have formed that manage archives, that manage the memory of the LGBT community — from Archivo Cuba Queer, to Archivo de la Memoria Trans México, Archivo de la Memoria Trans Chile, Archivo de la Memoria Trans Colombia… Different memory projects are joining. We always believe that education and the sharing of knowledge is part of power.
[Rula]: All I can do is thank you all so much for joining, for giving us a little of your time and all your heart and your souls.
[All]: Thank you, girls. Thank you so much. Love you…
[Rula]: I love you all!
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And so we reach the end of this series. But this story does not end here. It continues on the streets of Queens, in the United States, throughout Latin America, in every place where a trans woman has to fight to exist.
And also in every place where they organize, support one another, and keep building life.
On the streets, in beauty pageants, in bars, in homes.
Because trans people have always existed. And I assure you that we always will. And it is in our history where we find the strength to keep going.
The strength to shine.
Las Reinas de Queens is a podcast from Central, the series channel of Radio Ambulante Studios, and is part of the My Cultura podcast network on iHeart Radio.
This series was produced by Diego Senior and Pablo Argüelles, with additional production and reporting by Nikol Pizarro, Joana Toro, and Andrés Sanín.
Special thanks also to Bianey García, Mateo Guerrero, Natalia Lane, Belén Correa, Daniela Maldonado, and Rojo Genesis for participating in the episode.
And to all the people we interviewed for this series.
The episode editors were Daniel Alarcón, Silvia Viñas, and myself.
Fact-checking by Bruno Scelza and Nikol Pizarro.
María Linares did the sound design and mixing, as well as the original music.
The graphic design and art direction of the series are by Diego Corzo.
Product development for Las Reinas de Queens was handled by Natalia Ramírez. Digital production by Ana María Betancourt and Óscar Luna.
Business development and strategic partnerships were led by Camilo Jiménez Santofimio. And Julián Santos and Eric Spiegelman provided legal support.
Las Reinas de Queens is an original idea by Diego Senior, Joana Toro, and Andrés Sanín.
Executive producers are Diego Senior, and from Radio Ambulante Studios, Carolina Guerrero, our CEO.
At iHeart, the executive producers are Arlene Santana and Leo Gomez.
Part of the funding for this project was provided by the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, as part of its «Expanding Gratitude Through Media» initiative, with support from the John Templeton Foundation.
You can follow us on social media as centralseriesRA and subscribe to our newsletter at centralpodcast.audio.
I am Rula Ávila Muñoz. Thank you for listening.