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.
[Liaam Winslet]: Once I shout «Raúl,» everyone raises their signs.
[Elizabeth]: Ok.
[Liaam Winslet]: What was the chant you were saying, Elizabeth?
[Elizabeth]: «Respect my pronoun.»
[Liaam Winslet]: «Respect my pronoun. Your transphobia kills us.»
[Elizabeth]: What if it goes on air?
[Liaam Winslet]: It doesn’t matter, we’re pissed off.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: One autumn morning in 2018, Liaam Winslet, Lorena Borjas’s right-hand woman and the current director of the TRANSgrediendo Collective — the same one who called Cecilia Gentili «Santa Cecilia, the mother of all whores»…
[Liaam Winslet]: Please cross, keep walking, don’t let anyone stay behind!
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Walks hurriedly through the center of Manhattan with about 15 of her friends, the most active and militant ones.
[Liaam Winslet]: So we will all sneak in together, no one’s left behind?
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Their mission? An ambush on the live broadcast of the number one entertainment show on Spanish-language television in the U.S.: El Gordo y la Flaca, which has been covering show business for more than 20 years.
[Women]: They have no idea what’s coming their way…
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The girls found out that there would be a live broadcast of the show in Times Square featuring El Gordo, Raúl de Molina — a presenter with several television awards and an influential voice among Hispanics across the United States.
[Liaam Winslet]: Ok, this is Times Square. I want you to see that this is Times Square.
[Woman]: Liaam, the tourist guide!
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: On one corner of the great plaza, they spot a circle of onlookers.
[Liaam Winslet]: No, he’s right here, he’s right here — run, run!
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And in the center, surrounded by lights and cameras…
[Elizabeth]: Oh yes, there’s El Gordo.
[Liaam Winslet]: There he is, there he is.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: De Molina, «El Gordo.» Ready to go on air.
[Liaam Winslet]: They’re turning the lights on, they’re turning the lights on. Girls, we all get behind him — everyone behind him, behind him.
[Woman]: Behind him.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The girls begin to spread out around De Molina, hiding among the onlookers.
[Liaam Winslet]: Let him go live, let him go live. But start moving everyone to the other side, like you’re crossing the street…
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: In their hands they carry signs: some show the hosts’ images crossed out with a red circle; others display the colors of the trans flag — sky blue, pastel pink, white — and others read in black letters «no more trans deaths.»
They take their positions. And just as the host receives the cue signaling the end of commercials and the start of the broadcast, Liaam counts to herself…
[Liaam Winslet]: One, two… Trans Power!
[Women]: Trans Power!
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The girls push their way through the crowd, which watches them with curiosity. Meanwhile, they raise their signs and belt out their chants at the top of their lungs:
[Chicas]: We’re not intruders! We are trans women and we are furious!
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Raúl de Molina is cornered. He looks confused, distressed. To buy time, he pauses his segment and the broadcast cuts to commercials. But Liaam and the girls are not going anywhere. What were they doing there?
In this episode, we follow the queens from Times Square to Roosevelt Avenue, to understand how today, more than ever, they must defend what others see as indefensible: being trans, being sex workers, and being migrants.
From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, this is Las Reinas de Queens. I’m Rula Ávila Muñoz.
Episode 7. The Battle for Roosevelt.
In 2018, Angela Ponce became the first transgender woman to compete in the Miss Universe pageant. She did so representing her country, Spain.
And in New York, Liaam was discussing the news with her friends. Because some of them were saying that Ponce looked a little chubby, or that she wasn’t feminine enough.
[Liaam Winslet]: I would say, like, «let’s not focus on that. Let’s see that one of our own is there, representing everything we stand for»… Maybe I don’t look like her. Maybe she’s whiter or lighter than me, and I’m darker. But I feel proud that she’s there because she’s going to open the door for others who come along and want to be in that place or that space.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Meanwhile, far more powerful people were questioning Ponce’s presence in the coveted pageant.
[Audio de archivo, Lupita Jones]: I don’t agree because I don’t think this is a competition being held under fair conditions.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Lupita Jones, the first Mexican Miss Universe and the pageant’s representative in that country. A deeply respected voice across the region’s beauty circuits. Speaking about Ponce, she said — and I quote — that «a woman born a woman will never be the same as a transgender person.»
[Archival audio, Iztel Aidana Ávila Monreal]: Hello, how are you, good evening.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But what came next was a painful reminder of what was at stake for the trans community.
[Archival audio, Iztel Aidana Ávila Monreal]: I am a proud trans girl.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: This is the voice of Itzel Aidana Ávila Monreal, also Mexican. A few days after Lupita Jones’s comments, Itzel posted a nearly 7-minute video on Facebook. In it, Itzel speaks directly to the camera from a dark room. She strokes her long brown hair as she tries to gather her thoughts. And every word that comes out of her mouth comes from a very intimate place.
[Archival audio, Iztel Aidana Ávila Monreal]: I think it takes a great deal of courage. It takes a great deal of strength, a great deal of character to be able to become and be that person with whom you identify. Ms. Lupita Jones, I invite you. My name is Itzel Aidana Ávila Monreal and I am available to tell you my life story, and you will see that it has not been easy at all. But thanks to God, to God and to my parents and to the community that supports me day after day, I feel proud of who I am.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Shortly after uploading the video to the internet, Itzel took her own life.
And it was then that El Gordo y La Flaca picked up the story. On their show, they said that Itzel’s death was something terrible, that society should already be open to inclusion. They even added that their show was one of the first to hire a trans Latina person.
And then De Molina added that Lupita Jones had only shared her opinion, and that she could not be blamed for Itzel’s suicide.
[Archival audio, El Gordo y la Flaca, Raúl de Molina]: So, if this man or woman, whatever, whatever you want to call them, wanted to commit suicide, you can’t blame her because she had some problem that led her to take her life.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: «This man or woman, whatever you want to call them.» For Liaam, having someone with so much influence in the Latino community across the entire country refer to Itzel that way was the last straw. And so it was that, that morning in Times Square, she and her friends showed up unannounced on the El Gordo y la Flaca show.
When De Molina realized the girls were not going to stop protesting, he decided to give them a moment on the broadcast.
[Archival audio, El Gordo y la Flaca, Raúl de Molina]: We continue here from New York. As you saw before we went on a break, a group of transgender people who are here in New York came to protest, because they claim that what was said on the show a few days ago…
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And he began to argue with one of the collective’s members, Elizabeth.
[Archival audio, El Gordo y la Flaca, Elizabeth]: El Gordo said, «that man or woman or whatever you want to call them» — for us, that…
[Archival audio, El Gordo y la Flaca, Raúl de Molina]: No, no, I never said man or woman or whatever you want to call…
[Archival audio, El Gordo y la Flaca, Elizabeth]: We have the video. We can accept that, put up with that, from people on the street, but from public figures, trained journalists…
[Archival audio, El Gordo y la Flaca, Raúl de Molina]: And I want to tell you something: I should have you removed from the show right now, and I had you brought over so you could give your opinion. I want to tell you something — if I said that, first, I apologize. Second, I didn’t say it…
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: De Molina apologized, but immediately denied his comments. Meanwhile, Elizabeth held his gaze. She reminded him of the responsibility he carried as a public figure.
[Archival audio, El Gordo y la Flaca, Elizabeth]: You have to learn to address the community respectfully. We are no longer in the shadows — transgender women are now visible…
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: It’s not easy to hear, but Elizabeth insisted to De Molina: they had to learn to address the community respectfully because trans women have visibility. They are no longer in the shadows.
De Molina apologized again and denied his comments once more. Then he put the whole matter to rest and ended the broadcast.
The girls walked away from the square. Liaam, still full of adrenaline, kept talking.
[Liaam Winslet]: We are Latin immigrants and we will defend our rights to the end! We are survivors! Twenty-eight trans women have been killed across the United States and nobody says anything! And New York is hypocritical, because it claims to do a lot for us, but does nothing! We always end up at the end of the line! We are that invisibilized and discriminated population! And we will not be silenced! And this is for everyone!
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: On next Monday’s show, De Molina and his co-host, «La Flaca,» Lili Estefan, reflected on their encounter with the girls from the Collective.
[Archival audio, El Gordo y la Flaca, Raúl de Molina]: It wasn’t until she told me I had to call them «señoras» that I realized I didn’t know whether to call them «señores» or «señoras.» Because now I do know I should call them «señora,» and I address them as «señoras» with great respect.
[Archival audio, El Gordo y la Flaca, Lili Estefan]: I think things can be discussed. And little by little, one can learn about what is currently happening in society.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Two prestigious, cisgender voices with an enormous platform acknowledged that they still had a lot to learn about the trans community.
The Collective’s ambush had worked.
But today, eight years later, the outlook is less promising.
[Archival audio, Donald Trump]: No matter how many surgeries you have or chemicals you inject, if you’re born with male DNA in every cell of your body, you can never become a woman. You’re not gonna be a woman.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Donald Trump has said on multiple occasions that, in his view, trans women will never be women. And across the country, his administration and various local and state governments are increasingly denying spaces to trans people.
Educational spaces: nine states have banned LGBTQ+ topics from all school curricula.
Sports spaces: local and state governments are enacting laws that prevent trans women from participating on sports teams.
Healthcare spaces: twenty-seven states prohibit gender-affirming medical care for trans minors.
Workplace spaces: the federal government is eliminating protections for LGBTQ+ workers.
[Liaam Winslet]: A reality is unfolding and that is that a government that is waging war on us for no reason.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Throughout this series we have insisted that the queens of Queens have been pushed into a cycle of vulnerability. Not only for being trans, but also for being immigrants and sex workers.
And we have seen women like Lorena Borjas and Cecilia Gentili fight for decades to break that cycle. In courtrooms, in theaters, in legislatures, even in churches and police stations.
But today, that struggle — increasingly urgent — is also being waged in what we might call the queens’ home: Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights.
That’s where we head after the break.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We’re back on Las Reinas de Queens.
[Archival audio from protest, Hiram Montserrate]: Good afternoon, everyone!
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: In early fall of 2025, several dozen people gathered on the corner of 90th Street and Roosevelt. They belong to a coalition called «Restore Roosevelt Avenue,» made up of neighbors, retired politicians, homemakers, and some religious representatives. Most of them are Latino.
[Archival audio from protest, Hiram Montserrate]: We all know the problems we are living through, don’t we? Don’t we?
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: At that point, there were a few weeks left before the New York City mayoral elections.
[Archival audio from protest, Hiram Montserrate]: I say to Mr. Mamdani, who wants to be mayor, that you, sir, are wrong — that your platform to legalize prostitution is something evil…
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Zohran Mamdani, the frontrunner candidate, had recently said he did not agree with arresting sex workers. And conservative groups interpreted Mamdani as supporting the legalization of sex work.
[Hiram Montserrate]: Well, I think I represent a platform of people who use common sense.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Hiram Monserrate is the coalition’s representative. He is 54 years old, was born in Manhattan, and his parents are from Puerto Rico.
[Hiram Montserrate]: I grew up in Queens, the great borough of Queens. And as we know, the borough of Queens is incredibly diverse. So we always had a connection with other Hispanic communities: Colombians, Dominicans, and Ecuadorians, in particular.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: He served in the New York City Police Department for 12 years. He then represented the Jackson Heights neighborhood, where Roosevelt Avenue is located, both on the city council and in the New York State Senate.
In 2010, he was sentenced for assaulting his partner. He said it was an accident, and the Senate expelled him. Two years later, it was discovered that he had used hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funds during his Senate campaign, and he was sentenced to two years in prison.
As of the publication date of this episode, he is once again a candidate for the New York State Senate with the Democratic Party. And he has publicly acknowledged his — and I quote — «mistakes made in the past.»
In other words, Monserrate is a seasoned politician who knows how to mobilize potential voters.
[Hiram Montserrate]: Dozens of people call me every day complaining about different things, looking for guidance. Right now I have practically become an activist.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And starting in 2024, that activism has focused on the issue of sex work on Roosevelt Avenue.
Now, before we continue, we need to make something clear: the women we have met in this series are not the only ones doing that work on Roosevelt Avenue. About three years ago, many other immigrant women began arriving in the area — mostly Latinas and Asians. They were doing sex work on the street and also in several unlicensed massage parlors along the avenue.
What Monserrate says is that, unlike in past decades, they were now doing it openly, night and day.
[Hiram Montserrate]: Now it has changed completely: from being something discreet, it is something out in the open.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Also near schools.
[Hiram Montserrate]: Children and parents, little children walking down the street in front of the women, and the women trying to bring some of the teenage boys inside — 13 and 14 year olds.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: So by 2024, a perception had already taken hold among several residents that Roosevelt Avenue was a lost space.
[Hiram Montserrate]: That was the opportunity for us to come together and establish that body, Restore Roosevelt Avenue. To try to push back and clean up our neighborhood a little.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And that «cleanup» began by marching down Roosevelt Avenue and protesting outside establishments where sex work was suspected to be taking place.
[Hiram Montserrate]: I understood the following: that behind these women, almost all of them, there is organized crime. Organized crime from Venezuelan, Mexican, Ecuadorian, and also Chinese gangs.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: This was one of the coalition’s main hypotheses: that in recent years, human trafficking networks and gangs, like Tren de Aragua, had brought women across the border, indebted, and then exploited them to pay off those debts.
We will look at this more closely later. For now, let’s stay with what Monserrate says:
[Hiram Montserrate]: Many of them are victims and should be seen as victims. But ironically, the only way to identify whether they are victims or not is through the judicial process. And for me it is a simple platform: the authorities must do their job and enforce the law.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And that — «enforcing the law» — began with having more police on the street.
[Hiram Montserrate]: One hundred percent. We cannot send a social worker to arrest a gang member.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: So they began pressuring the city government to do something. And they succeeded.
[Archival audio, Eric Adams]: That’s why we are here. And the manpower’s real: nine lieutenants, 42 sergeants, 176 police officers, and they took action today…
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: In October 2024, the then-mayor Eric Adams launched Operation Restore Roosevelt Avenue, with the mission of eradicating illegal brothels, street-level sex work, human trafficking, and the avenue’s unlicensed vendors.
During the day, police focused on street vendors, and at night, undercover officers took to the streets to catch sex workers by surprise.
The operation lasted several months. Until, in June 2025, the Adams administration announced that they had arrested eight alleged gang members and 397 people on prostitution charges. But they did not specify whether those individuals were sex workers acting of their own free will or trafficking victims.
[Hiram Montserrate]: If they determine, through an investigation, that a given person is a victim, then that person should receive not only assistance but protection.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And these were the solutions the operation offered to detained sex workers: legal and psychological counseling. At its core, the idea was that they should earn their living some other way.
[Glennis Gómez]: You can be a nurse for the elderly. You can be a teacher. You can be a psychologist. You can work doing manicures as a stylist. So how is it that in 2025 a woman would want to prostitute herself when there are so many opportunities?
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Glennis Gómez was born in the Dominican Republic. She is a Queens resident, mother of two children, and a member of the Coalition — which, incidentally, is made up mostly of members of the Democratic Party.
[Glennis Gómez]: I am a Democrat, but I consider myself a conservative, moderate Democrat.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We interviewed her a few meters from Roosevelt Avenue only a few days before the mayoral elections. And she spoke with such confidence about what she believes sex workers need that we asked her if she knew any.
[Glennis Gómez]: Yes, I’ve known many!
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She told us it was through her church.
[Glennis Gómez]: We are the first ones to receive people with their… I’ll say, with their heaviest burdens. I have heard the testimonies of women who have had to be in these brothels against their will, because they were deceived, because they were sold a dream that wasn’t real. They come alone, they have no family here, so they would say: I need to eat. And maybe that’s the easiest… The easiest work they can find. I don’t like to say «work» because selling your body and prostituting yourself is not something I really consider work, no matter how much people say it’s the oldest profession. But no, it has never been a profession. It has simply been a way to subjugate women, to abuse women, and to use them. And then they have told me in their testimonies that they have had to sleep with 30, 70 men a day. Imagine that. It’s a business. It’s a cruel business.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And it was precisely for this reason that Glennis, Monserrate, and the Coalition could not tolerate a city where sex work was legal.
[Archival audio, Zohran Mamdani]: My fellow New Yorkers, today begins a new era…
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: On January 1st of this year, Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor of New York City.
Two months later, in March, he created the Office of LGBTQAI+ Affairs. To lead it, he appointed Taylor Brown, a trans woman and the first transgender person to head a mayoral agency. Her mandate is clear: to work to protect and strengthen New York’s status as a sanctuary city for the entire community.
But on the topic of sex work, as of the publication date of this episode, Mamdani has not advanced any public policy on the matter. In fact, what the Coalition had feared has not yet happened: prostitution remains codified as a crime throughout the state. For the simple reason that no mayor can change a state law just like that.
It is a long and cumbersome legislative process, full of political, legal, and moral debates — something particularly true in the case of sex work. So much so that the New York State Legislature has two bills under discussion.
The first has a name: «Cecilia’s Act,» because it was Cecilia Gentili — you know, Santa Cecilia, the mother of all whores — who championed and defended it before she died. It would fully decriminalize sex work, the consensual one, between adults, and not involving human trafficking. One of its sponsors was Zohran Mamdani, when he was a state assembly member.
The second bill has a longer name: the «Sex Trade Survivors Justice and Equality Act.» And its scope is far more limited: it seeks to decriminalize sex workers but not their clients. This approach is known as the Nordic model because it has been used in countries like Sweden, Iceland, and Norway.
But according to several sex worker organizations in New York, it is far from perfect. Because some studies have suggested that a client who fears going to jail becomes unpredictable, even violent. He may, for example, offer a sex worker less money; force her to forgo protection or to meet up at a dangerous location, while she has no negotiating power.
So there you have it: two rival bills around a complex, nuanced issue that has been stalled in New York legislative committees for years.
[Liaam Winslet]: I mean, we also have to understand that we need to listen to the community that is actually doing sex work on the street. We can’t just talk, to be liked or to supposedly fix a system that is completely broken, but, rather, understand a little more of the reality that we sex workers live.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: After the break, we return to Roosevelt Avenue, this time alongside the sex workers.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Hello again. On January 3rd of this year, we met with Liaam at the Intercultural Collective TRANSgrediendo, in a basement below Roosevelt Avenue, just a few meters from where sex workers have walked for decades.
It was precisely for that reason that Lorena Borjas founded the Collective there in 2015.
[Liaam Winslet]: The only community center led by sex workers, by migrant people, by trans migrant women. And more than a center, we are like a space to feel free, united…
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: In addition to providing health services, food pantries, and legal support to the community, they have a space dedicated to sex workers in the area. Every year they receive around two hundred of them — all trans, Latina, immigrants.
[Liaam Winslet]: We talk about that, about strategies we can use when we’re doing street work, or when we’re in a hotel with a client, or when we receive clients at home.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: In other words, they share information that protects them. We visited Liaam, who runs the Collective, because we wanted her to tell us what she had recently observed on Roosevelt Avenue and among the community. So we asked her about the Restore Roosevelt Avenue Coalition and how its members have portrayed sex workers — starting with the claim that they are a threat to the neighborhood’s children.
[Liaam Winslet]: There is no evidence whatsoever and there has been no report of a female sex worker having abused a minor, for example. That does not happen.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: For Liaam, the danger to children has been used as an excuse to discriminate against and criminalize sex workers.
But perhaps the greatest driver of that criminalization is lumping sex workers together with gangs and human traffickers.
Let’s break it down.
Although the Department of Justice has confirmed the presence in Queens of individuals who identify with the Tren de Aragua gang, Liaam told us that at the Collective they have found no evidence of gang members extorting or exploiting the girls.
[Liaam Winslet]: Look, we did our own research. We went out to the street when these comments were being made, and most of the girls were saying: «that’s not true, Liaam. I’m standing here because I want to work and because I have to pay my bills and because I have to send money to my family and because I am helping…» Some of them have sons, daughters.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: On the other hand, there is human trafficking. There is evidence that sex workers, including trans Latinas, have been victims of human traffickers in Queens — for decades.
Lorena Borjas herself was one. So were Laura Martínez and Cecilia Gentili.
[Liaam Winslet]: If someone is living through a situation of human trafficking, we will be the first to say so, to go and report it and provide support. But if I decide to do sex work freely and voluntarily, that is my right. And I deserve to have my right respected. But I also deserve to have my rights guaranteed.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And rights are guaranteed through laws. But even a law like «Cecilia’s Act,» which would fully decriminalize sex work, would have flaws and problems. Because, according to Liaam…
[Liaam Winslet]: It is not the same to be a sex worker of color, to be Latina, to be an immigrant and work on the street, as it is to be a white woman who works behind the door of her apartment, where her clients probably pay her three times more than they pay me.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And so we arrive at the greatest concerns of Roosevelt Avenue’s sex workers.
First: trans clinics and organizations are no longer receiving enough condom donations from the government. There is a citywide shortage that puts the health of the community and their clients at risk.
Second: arrests for sex work in Queens are increasing. And not only that.
[Liaam Winslet]: Everything that is happening right now with the current government has activated this cruel side of the police, continuing to harass our trans women on the street.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Since Operation Restore Roosevelt Avenue in 2025, the police seem to have grown bolder. For example, they shine their lights on the women in the street until they move, and they mock them. There are even reports of police officers stripping them in public to search them and pressuring them to perform oral sex in exchange for not being arrested.
And of course, there is now the added fear of ICE, the immigration police. Let us remember that many of the queens are undocumented. As we said before, they are vulnerable on three counts: trans, sex workers, migrants.
That is why Liaam told us that since January 2025, when Donald Trump took office, the Collective has had a new security protocol.
[Liaam Winslet]: For example, all of the office doors are made of glass, transparent glass. We had to cover these doors with paper. We had to put signs on the doors to warn each other that doors must be kept closed at all times.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And if ICE ever shows up, they will shout «code red,» so that everyone shuts the door and stays inside.
[Liaam Winslet]: Maybe this will help us, maybe it won’t, but we genuinely want to make sure that no one in our community feels affected by the… For example, if you come to pick up a food pantry bag and suddenly ICE shows up and arrests you — how would we feel?
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: For now, ICE’s presence in New York City has been reduced compared to other places like Minneapolis or Los Angeles. The city is protected by its sanctuary laws, which prevent local police from cooperating with immigration authorities.
But the fear among trans Latina sex workers on Roosevelt Avenue is tangible. Some have chosen to self-deport back to their home countries. Others do not want to go out on the street. Even working online is dangerous because undercover police operate there too.
[Liaam Winslet]: Oh, I don’t know, it makes me very sad. It really touches my heart, truly. When this government came in, seeing how they harass people… It’s sad. And it happens a lot within the community. It hurts me to see my friends, my community members, suffer because of that. It’s hard, because most of us have medical conditions, and if they deport us to our countries, it’s hard. It won’t be the same. I know — I have been an activist for a long time and I know that there is, for example, in South America, in Ecuador, a severe shortage of medications. The community cannot access treatments and it’s difficult. Many people have fled because of violence, and that is a low blow because you think: what is going to happen to them, if they get deported?
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: All of these battles have taken their toll on Liaam. She is no longer the same person from that morning in Times Square, shouting at the top of her lungs, fury right at the surface.
[Liaam Winslet]: I think that after Lorena’s death, things haven’t been the same for me. These last few years have been really hard because, well, keeping a space like this going costs a lot. I don’t mean financially. I mean in terms of your energy, you know? Your commitment. I often feel very worn down, honestly. I feel very, very exhausted. I can’t do everything alone. I can’t give myself out alone. I need to find someone or people to help me, because otherwise in the end I’m going to end up like Lorena.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Exhausted to the point of martyrdom. The same thing that happened to Cecilia Gentili — the same thing that turned her into a saint.
[Diego]: It’s a very sunny day. The sky is blue. There are one, two… There are four police cars accompanying the march.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: In September 2025, Diego, our reporter, attended the eighth sex workers’ march of Queens.
[Woman]: This corner is mine — mine, mine, mine!
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: It is a protest that Lorena Borjas started in 2018 and that has been organized every year since on Roosevelt Avenue.
[Woman]: Whore yes, whore no — that’s for me to decide!
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: That day, Liaam was there, and so was Jessica Guamán, whom we met in the previous episode. And also Laura Martínez, the queen we met in episode 2. It was Laura — seeing that there were not as many people as in previous marches — who stepped up to give this speech.
[Laura]: It makes me sad that after eight years there are so few of us, because truly, year after year there should be more of us.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The purpose of the march is for neighbors and business owners to see, in broad daylight, the people who do sex work. To let them know that these women, beyond their work, also have the right to be in that space. But the dwindling attendance undermines the protest’s legitimacy.
[Laura]: We are whores and we should not be ashamed of our work, because if we ourselves are ashamed of it, then where are we headed? Who is going to believe us? How are we going to open the path for sex work to be seen, above all, as something normal by people? Truly. We need to unite. We need to support each other to grow. Because if we don’t, we are going to stay stuck!
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura’s words echo through a community that has seen better days. Because, although Mayor Mamdani has committed to protecting New York’s LGBTQ+ population, the federal government’s battle against trans people continues.
There is also a palpable absence of Lorena Borjas and Cecilia Gentili — protective mothers who built bridges with political power in New York City and the state.
That is why staying still is not an option for the queens. Not when they are told repeatedly that they do not belong — for being trans, for being sex workers, for being migrants.
So they keep going out, again and again, to explain themselves. On television, in the streets, wherever it takes. But having to constantly explain yourself is exhausting. It’s like shouting at a wall.
In the next episode, guided by one of the most legendary queens, we will travel to a mythical place in New York’s nightlife where they did not have to justify themselves. A place now gone, but essential for understanding why the Queens — I assure you — are not going anywhere.
Las Reinas de Queens is a podcast from Central, the series channel of Radio Ambulante Studios, and is part of iHeart Radio’s My Cultura podcast network.
This series was produced by Diego Senior and Pablo Argüelles, with additional production and reporting by Nikol Pizarro, Joana Toro, Andrés Sanin, Sindy Nanclares, and Sofía Campero.
The editors were Daniel Alarcón, Silvia Viñas, and myself.
Fact-checking by Bruno Scelza and Nikol Pizarro.
María Linares handled 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 was done by Ana María Betancourt and Óscar Luna.
Business development and strategic partnerships were managed 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 Sanin.
The 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 «Spreading Love Through Media» initiative, with support from the John Templeton Foundation.
You can follow us on social media as centralseriesRA and subscribe to our email newsletter at centralpodcast.audio.
I’m Rula Ávila Muñoz. Thank you for listening.
