Blog Archives

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.

[Archival audio]: Police officer: It’s a male, young, and no more information. 

Journalist: The age isn’t known? Or the name? 

Police officer: No, that either.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: I grabbed my head. I said: «That’s Walter.» «What?» my mom says. «That’s the guy who went with us.» «No, you’re crazy.» «Yes, Mom, yes…»

[Silvia Viñas]: Juan Carlos Cáceres, Juan Carlitos, is one of the River fans who went to the superclásico against Boca on April 30, 1994. We met him in the previous episode. His friend Walter Vallejos was with him for the whole match, and they climbed together onto one of the “mosquito” trucks—the ones that transport cars—to get away from the fights and stampedes outside the stadium. But when Boca fans started shooting at the trucks, they got separated in the chaos, and Juan Carlitos never saw Walter again. Until he got home and turned on the TV.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And I recognize him by his sneakers. Because he was covered with a black bag. «It’s Walter. It’s Walter. I have to go to his place, everyone there must be freaking out. Or maybe they don’t know.»

[Silvia Viñas]: His mom tells him no, that he’s crazy, he shouldn’t go. So Juan Carlitos thinks of another friend he went to the stadium with. Would he have seen the TV? Would he have found out that one of the dead is Walter?

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And that’s when I get changed. Bam, bam. I finished getting changed, and I left.

[Silvia Viñas]: Juan Carlitos walks to his friend’s house.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: «Hey, it’s this guy, man, what’s this?» «Let’s go to his place.» «You think so?» We were afraid of the reaction –we didn’t know what to sayto the father, to the mother.

[Silvia Viñas]: At that moment, they begin to have doubts: if the family doesn’t know anything, how do you break the news that their son, that their brother, is dead? What reaction could they face? But Juan Carlitos is determined. They get into his friend’s car and drive about twenty blocks to Walter’s family’s house.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And once there,  it was very sad to see the mom, really broken. The sisters, really broken. Inconsolable.

[Silvia Viñas]: Walter’s family already knew what happened; they had also recognized him by his sneakers when they saw on television the same images that Juan Carlitos had seen. 

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: I approached the aunt. No, no, I didn’t dare approach the mom –I didn’t dare. Not the dad either, no, I didn’t dare at that moment because they were devastated. I managed—I approached one of the aunts. I told her, «I was there.» «What do you mean you were there?!» because she also kind of got angry too, you know? And I tell her, «No, ma’am, calm down, we know him, we’ve been going to the stadium together for ages…»

[Silvia Viñas]: In the news, some of the first reports talk about a “clash” between the two fan groups.

[Archival audio]: When fans from both teams allegedly attacked each other with rocks and gunfire on Ingeniero Huergo Avenue…

[Silvia Viñas]: Walter’s aunt, angry, demands an explanation from Juan Carlitos.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: «Tell me, what happened?» You know, like that. I tell her, «Calm down, there was no clash, we had nothing to do with that. Nothing to do with it. You’ll see, nothing to do with it, nothing to do with it.»

[Silvia Viñas]: That «nothing to do with it» that Juan Carlitos repeats, about there not having been a «clash,» is going to become one of the key points of the case. And one of the people who will be in charge of clarifying this is a prosecutor.

[Paula Asaro]: My name is María Paula Asaro, I’m a criminal prosecutor, and at the time of the death of the two River fans, I was assigned to this case.

[Silvia Viñas]: At that time, Asaro was a young prosecutor, just starting. She had no idea she would take part in a case with national reach and that would turn out to be one of the biggest challenges of her career.

[Paula Asaro]: I didn’t feel like this would have the significance it took on as the days went by. I mean, it was like a phenomenon that hadn’t, hadn’t been experienced before.

[Silvia Viñas]: In this episode, we’ll revisit the first days after the crime: where the justice system starts to get involved, the media picks up the story, the families say goodbye to their loved ones. And we answer a question that, at the time, starts coming up everywhere: How did the barras bravas come to have so much power?

From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, I’m Silvia Viñas, and this is «Superclásico 94.»

Episode 2: Brokers of Fervor

[Archival audio]: Journalist: Did the operation reach this area, or how far did it go?

Police chief: No, not this far. 

Journalist: Number of people arrested?

Police chief: We don’t have that yet. We’re taking witness statements and questioning people…

[Paula Asaro]: I found out about the crime precisely because I was watching the match. I’m a Racing fan, but well, it was a Boca-River match. The truth is everyone watches it. And a few minutes later, well, what had happened started coming out on television.

[Silvia Viñas]: Today Paula Asaro is a well-known prosecutor, with some very important cases under her belt. But on April 30th of ’94, she was 28 years old and had been sworn in as a prosecutor only six months ago.

[Paula Asaro]: Being a prosecutor at that time, well, we were all very young –we’d all been instruction secretaries not long before.

[Silvia Viñas]: Mariano Pagella continues telling us.

[Mariano Pagella]: This «instrucción» that Asaro mentions is the first stage of a judicial investigation in Argentina. The law says that evidence must be presented to justify a case going to trial. That’s what «instruction prosecutor’s offices» are for.

[Paula Asaro]: When we got to the crime scene, it was chaos. It really was total chaos.

[Mariano Pagella]: About 24 hours had passed since the shooting. Police from the 22nd precinct, in the La Boca neighborhood, preserved the entire scene. It’s a very busy area because it has direct access to the port, so having part of the avenue closed off creates a complicated situation, with people passing by on their way to work and onlookers.

[Paula Asaro]: I had been at crime scenes before—I don’t know, a homicide, five stab wounds. There had been complicated incidents. But this was the first time I found myself at a scene that was literal chaos. I felt very small, thinking, «how are we going to get this organized?»

[Mariano Pagella]: The prosecutor’s office’s goal is to work with the police to reconstruct as faithfully as possible what happened. But of course, this isn’t an ordinary crime scene. Everything happened over hundreds of meters, in just a few minutes, with the trucks taking multiple shots, and with the fans ducking for cover and running in every direction.

[Paula Asaro]: Nobody knew where the shots had come from, how they’d done it, how it had happened. I mean, getting a handle on things amid that chaos was hard. People would come up to you. People who were there would come up to you offering to be witnesses, or they’d say: this happened, that happened.

[Mariano Pagella]: So one of the big challenges becomes telling apart rumors from what actually happened. 

[Paula Asaro]: And that’s when we started to get a sense that this was going to be a huge case, right? We went to every location to build a picture for ourselves: how the mosquito trucks moved through, where things were located.

[Mariano Pagella]: Bullet casings were recovered at the scene.

[Paula Asaro]: They started collecting the projectiles, I mean, the bullets…

[Mariano Pagella]: Several of those bullets left marks on walls on the riverside. Based on their trajectory, ballistics experts concluded they had all been fired in the same direction. No weapons were found on the fans who died either, and several witnesses to the shooting say they didn’t see anyone armed on the trucks. In other words, the River fans didn’t shoot.

In total, there were 10 people wounded, three of them seriously. Altogether, they received around 15 gunshots. And then there are the two who died.

Walter’s body was found on the corner of Huergo and Brasil. The autopsy determined he died from multiple traumatic injuries and internal hemorrhaging: the theory is that he fell from the truck—or maybe jumped, as many others did in the midst of the panic—and was run over by a vehicle coming up behind, or by the truck’s own rear wheels.

Three blocks away, the second body was found: Ángel Delgado’s. He had no identification on him, so he was registered as “NN”, meaning an unidentified person. Ángel was shot three times: in the hand, in one buttock, and in the stomach.

As Asaro and her team gather evidence and talk to witnesses, they start realizing this wasn’t a «clash» between fans. There was something premeditated. An armed group waited for the defenseless River fans to pass by so they could gun them down.

[Paula Asaro]: Somehow the families of the dead, of the wounded—who were a great many—started to show up. Well, they wanted answers.

[Mariano Pagella]: And among these family members who start mobilizing once the initial shock passes, there’s a mother searching for her son.

[Dionisia Delgado]: That day was terrible for me. I wouldn’t want to relive that day.

[Mariano Pagella]: Dionisia Delgado, Ángel’s mother. We’ll follow her search after a break.

[Mariano Pagella]: Dionisia Delgado always goes back to the day of the superclásico and the fear that her son Ángel would go to that match. That very morning, she hesitated over whether to call him and ask him not to go.

[Dionisia Delgado]: I went over to the phone and said, «Should I call or not?» And ask him not to go to the match. That was my idea. «I’d better not call, because he’s going to say to me, ‘you’re a pain, what a nag.'» It’s like a mother has a sixth sense, it seems.

[Mariano Pagella]: Ángel was killed when he was 25 years old. Dionisia remembers that he loved math, it was like a game to him. When he was in school, he always helped his classmates prepare for exams.

[Dionisia Delgado]: He was like a special person. He’d come help me do things, side by side. He liked, um, getting together, dancing. He was very family-oriented.

[Mariano Pagella]: He also really liked drawing. He wanted to be an electronic engineer, so he could fix things around the house. But above all that…

[Dionisia Delgado]: His passion was River. He always went out wearing the River jersey, the River sneakers. It used to make me so mad that he liked going to the stadium to support the «machine,» because that’s what he called them, «the machine,» because River never lost back in those days.

[Mariano Pagella]: As we mentioned in the previous episode, at the time it wasn’t unusual for there to be some kind of disturbance at a match, whether with the police or between rival fan groups.

[Dionisia Delgado]: I’d tell him, «Don’t go, come home early.» He’d tell me, «Mom, do you know when and how and where we’re going to die?» he said to me. «You don’t know, so let me,» he told me, «enjoy myself, live my life. I work, I study, I don’t hurt anybody.»

[Mariano Pagella]: In the weeks leading up to the superclásico, River won a match by a landslide while Boca tied and left the field booed by their own stands. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so crazy that River’s «machine» might break that eight-year streak without a win at La Bombonera. So, as the days went by, the anticipation kept building. Everyone knew the superclásico was always a «heated» match, and on top of that, River was playing away. Finally, Ángel made a promise to Dionisia.

[Dionisia Delgado]: He told me that would be the last time he went to the stadium, so that I wouldn’t worry anymore. He told me, «Let me be, because I’ve never been to the bostero’s stadium…»

[Mariano Pagella]: Meaning, Boca’s fans.

[Dionisia Delgado]: «…and I want to see the bosteros‘ stadium. I’m going to wear the ugliest clothes I have to go, and I’m going without any ID.»

[Mariano Pagella]: The idea was to dress plainly so as not to attract attention, and not carry a wallet or ID so as not to lose them jumping in the stands, or to have them stolen. This was extremely common at the time. So that day, Ángel asked at work if he could leave early…

[Dionisia Delgado]: The manager gave him permission. The owner wasn’t there. Because the owner told me afterward, «If I had been there, I wouldn’t have let him go.» But it seems that day was just meant to be his day.

[Mariano Pagella]: Ángel lived with two other friends in an apartment on Ecuador Street, in Buenos Aires. And on the Saturday of the superclásico, when the match ended…

[Dionisia Delgado]: My husband says to me, «Let’s stop by Ecuador Street,» he says, «to congratulate Ángel Luis, since his machine won.» «No,» I told him, «let’s go home, he’ll be with his friends,» I said, «having a wild time over there.»

[Mariano Pagella]: They decided not to stop by, so as not to be a bother. They went to sleep without knowing their son was dead. Sunday came and it was a day like any other, until in the afternoon, around four, five o’clock, the phone rang.

[Dionisia Delgado]: My husband’s mother calls. She said to me, «Dioni, I’m so sad.» I said, «why, Estela?» «Because those two kids, they say they died, two innocent kids, they could have been my grandchildren.»

[Mariano Pagella]: Dionisia didn’t understand what she was talking about. What dead kids?

[Dionisia Delgado]: And then, I made the connection, and I called Ecuador Street.

[Mariano Pagella]: She called the apartment where Ángel lived with his friends. One of them answered.

[Dionisia Delgado]: «No, he didn’t come home to sleep last night.» And I said to him, «And why didn’t you let me know he didn’t come home?» Right away we got in the car, we went around to hospitals and clinics, and we couldn’t find him. Then we asked a police officer, and he said, «You should go to this police station.»

[Mariano Pagella]: So they go to the police station handling the case.

[Dionisia Delgado]: We went there. When they showed me the clothes, that’s when I fainted. Because those were his clothes.

[Mariano Pagella]: The days and months that followed were very hard for Dionisia. She even attempted suicide at one point.

[Dionisia Delgado]: It’s like something inside you dies. We already know a child isn’t really ours –he belongs to life, but you want to have him anyway, even if just from a distance. To say hi, hug each other now and then. And all of that was over.

[Mariano Pagella]: Dionisia began receiving psychological care, and above all, support from her family. But no one could replace Ángel, her only son.

[Dionisia Delgado]: And during that time, I dreamt about him. He tells me, «Mom, I don’t belong to this world anymore. And you’re going to have another child.» Then, about two months later, I got pregnant. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t tell anyone until I’d had all the tests done.

[Mariano Pagella]: Two years after that April 30th, Hugo was born.

[Dionisia Delgado]: And here I have him. That one, he sent him to me from heaven.

[Mariano Pagella]: A few days after finding Ángel, Dionisia Delgado and her family say goodbye to him. The family of the other murdered fan, Walter Vallejos, does the same.

[Fernando Scalone]: And we were in shock. Something so recent, we couldn’t believe he was there in a coffin. We were all just like, this can’t be happening.

[Mariano Pagella]: Fernando Scalone, Walter’s best friend, whom we heard from in the previous episode. The wake is held at Walter’s family’s house, in his bedroom. Throughout the whole day, friends and family come by to say goodbye to him. Among them is Juan Carlitos.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: I saw the mom, I saw the dad, I saw the siblings, just devastated. It could have happened to me, and it would’ve been the same, you know, just in a different family.

[Mariano Pagella]: The next day, in the morning, they take the body to the cemetery.

[Fernando Scalone]: We did a raffle, we made a banner… Huge, I don’t know, it’s like six meters, I don’t know. And that day a friend from around the corner brought a bus. And we all went to accompany him to the cemetery with the banner on the bus, all of us dressed in River gear, singing.

[Mariano Pagella]: That’s how they say goodbye to their friend, celebrating as if they were still with him in the stands. Decades later, the grief over his death will still be there, present. Above all, one image stayed etched in Juan Carlitos’s mind to this day.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: The mom was in bad shape, really bad. She didn’t want to drink water. She didn’t want to eat, the mom wanted to die. The mom wanted to go with her son.

[Mariano Pagella]: That mom Juan Carlitos mentions is Walter’s mom, Carmen Cárdenas. Those first days after the superclásico were full of sadness and pain, of course. But very soon that sadness turned into resolve, into raising her voice.

[Archival audio]: 

Journalist: Carmen Amelia Cárdenas, who’s here next to me. She’s the mother of Walter Darío Vallejos, one of the boys who was killed.

Carmen: Well, Walter was 19 years old. He worked at a gas company, and when he didn’t have overtime there, he went to work at a produce store. I’ve been divorced for six years, and it was him who supported the household.

[Mariano Pagella]: We’re listening to Carmen, who has since passed away. But we have this recording from a widely watched news program at the time, broadcast less than a week after the crime. In the image, there’s a table. On the right side sits Mónica Cahen D’Anvers, the journalist interviewing her. Carmen is in the middle. And on the left, we see Juan Carlitos, then 24 years old.

[Archival audio]: Juan Carlitos: I looked out, I saw two guys in Boca jerseys shooting at us, and I heard screaming up on top of the truck. To this day I can’t sleep because it’s a nightmare.

[Mariano Pagella]: Behind them, standing, there are four young guys. One of them is Fernando, his best friend.

[Archival audio]: Carmen: It’s a senseless slaughter, because my boy was a clean kid, a hard worker. And then some nobody comes along and kills him in cold blood, just because, without even knowing him, without knowing, without even having anything against him, without even knowing who he was. He came and shot him and killed him.

[Mariano Pagella]: Carmen and Dionisia, Ángel’s mom—whom we met earlier—make the rounds of the media: television, radio, newspapers. And the constant coverage in those first days sparks outrage, accusations, anger, but above all it consolidates into a demand.

[Archival audio]: Journalist: The only thing I hope is that you can ask these sick people, this barra brava that nobody seems able to put a stop to… Still, there has to be a way to do something. 

[Mariano Pagella]: «There has to be a way to do something» about the barras bravas, the journalist says. Because, at the time, the violence and corruption surrounding them get pointed out again and again in the media.

[Archival audio]: Death came to the streets of Buenos Aires. The barras bravas case. Barras bravas and politicians. The barras bravas and power. The problem with the barras bravas is much more serious than sporadic outbreaks of violence. These are soccer’s barras bravas.

[Mariano Pagella]: The superclásico double murder seems to be the last straw. That pressure to «do something,» will keep growing, and it is felt especially in the prosecutor’s office handling the case, where prosecutor Paula Asaro, whom we heard at the start of the episode, works.

[Paula Asaro]: We felt like the press was giving it more significance than we had given it ourselves. We had no idea it would reach the proportion it did as days went by.

[Mariano Pagella]: The prosecutor’s office and the police station work on the initial investigation. The police station identifies witnesses and new evidence, and the prosecutor’s office is in charge of taking statements and analyzing everything.

[Paula Asaro]: It was overwhelming. The situation was really overwhelming. I’ll never forget that in those first days I didn’t sleep. I mean, I’d get home at five, six in the morning, rest a little, and the next day I had to be back. At the time, they constantly called you on the landline. I mean, they’d call from Clarín, from La Nación, from every newspaper– they’d call the prosecutor’s office phone, and they’d call the courthouse phone.

[Mariano Pagella]: Because beyond what was known about the wounded and the two dead fans, a kind of competition to get more scoops began.

[Paula Asaro]: Different media outlets started keeping watch, so that, for example, when you walked in, the press would start coming at you right away. I mean, there was no way to shake the press off you.

[Archival audio]: 

Journalist: What exactly is needed for public opinion to know for sure who fired those shots that tragic afternoon?

Asaro: Well, I’ll say it again: we’re under case secrecy…

[Mariano Pagella]: This is Asaro, speaking with a journalist at the entrance of the Palacio de Tribunales, where the prosecutor’s office is located.

[Archival audio]: Asaro: And well, there are deadlines so that, in due course, the indictment can be issued.

[Paula Asaro]: When we started taking depositions and statements, we’d take them at three in the morning, at four in the morning, I mean, after midnight, because otherwise you couldn’t get into the building. I mean, because of the crowds, because of the press. We didn’t sleep because it was this terrible adrenaline.

[Mariano Pagella]: While the prosecutor’s office is still trying to piece together the puzzle of what happened, the newspapers, television channels, and radio stations don’t let up. And some are already starting to focus on a group with a strong presence in Argentine society.

[Paula Asaro]: This was being pinned on the barra brava. That’s what the media outlets were saying. It was like a phenomenon that hadn’t been experienced before.

[Mariano Pagella]: We’ll take a break and be right back.

[Gustavo Grabia]: When I start working on the topic of violence in soccer, what I realize is that, unlike what was said in the media—that they were groups of misfits, outside the system—they were actually very much inside the system, I mean, they were a fundamental part of it because of their political, police, judicial, and sports connections.

[Mariano Pagella]: Gustavo Grabia is a journalist, and starting in the ’90s, because of this case, he began delving into the world of violence in Argentine soccer. Over the years, he has published several books specializing in what he calls «barra journalism.» Something he already knew about as a fan.

[Gustavo Grabia]: I was a huge fan of a soccer team, Ferrocarril Oeste, and I used to travel on the barra’s buses when I was young, as a teenager. In other words, I knew the web of connections a little bit. So I realized there was a story to tell that went completely beyond what happened on the soccer fields. It was a portrait, in a way, of what was happening in Argentina as a whole.

[Mariano Pagella]: The barras bravas are considered a phenomenon that started in Argentina, not because this is the country where violence in soccer was invented, but because the barras developed a series of very distinctive characteristics compared to other violent groups in soccer worldwide.

To better understand how all this came about, it’s necessary to know the history of how the barras emerged.

Since the professionalization of Argentine soccer at the start of the 1930s, fans who were a bit more «worked up» than the rest were already being identified. They’d fight with rival fans, throw objects onto the field, that kind of thing.

In Argentina, there are records of deaths from soccer violence going back around 100 years. Among the first recorded cases is that of two Boca fans who died in 1939 from police gunfire during a clash. One of the victims was a 9-year-old boy.

By then, somewhat more defined groups of fans who were a bit more aggressive than others were already starting to form, but it’s not until the late 1950s that they’ll start being known as barras bravas.

[Gustavo Grabia]: The term «barra brava» enters Argentine popular culture in 1958, stemming from one specific event. There was a match being played between Vélez and River at Vélez’s stadium. And, in the middle of the match, a situation arises, building tension between the visiting fans and the police, and then a clash breaks out.

[Mariano Pagella]: The visiting fans were River Plate’s, who had already been forming a fairly strong group for some years. The situation escalated very quickly, with River fans storming the field. The police reacted and began a brutal crackdown that ended with them firing tear gas canisters to disperse the fans.

[Gustavo Grabia]: And when all that smoke clears, what you see is that the great majority of people have left the stadium because of the effects of the tear gas, but in the visiting stands a lifeless body is left behind, which was the body of Alberto Linker.

[Mariano Pagella]: Alberto Linker was a Boca fan who was friends with River fans, so he went along with them to watch the match. Today this is somewhat unthinkable, but back then it could happen that a fan would go with friends to watch a match involving their rival, just because he felt like it. He died from the impact of one of the gas canisters, which fractured his skull.

Up until that point, deaths from violence in Argentine soccer had been sporadic. In fact, in the previous 15 years there had only been one. But in this case, the fact that it was someone unaffiliated with either fan group, and that it was caused by what the media called «violent fans, worked up, with primitive instincts,» generated greater outrage and gained a lot of attention. After Linker’s death, a new category, separate from traditional fans, starts to be identified more precisely: the barras bravas.

[Gustavo Grabia]: From then on, the press starts talking forcefully about the barras bravas to refer to this phenomenon of soccer violence that was just beginning and was starting to claim its first major death.

[Mariano Pagella]: As the years go by, these groups continue to grow and start evolving. And between the mid- and late ’60s they took a leap.

[Gustavo Grabia]: That’s when the first barras started forming, for Boca, for River, for the biggest clubs. And they’re the ones who start getting certain favors from club leadership, like free entry to the stadium, which is an important point for understanding them as, basically, the brokers of that fervor.

[Mariano Pagella]: «Brokers of that favor.» That’s how one of their fundamental traits was consolidated: their relationship with club leadership. But there’s also another ingredient added, according to Gustavo: starting in the ’60s, there’s a rise in street violence, with fights between gangs to decide who runs the neighborhood.

[Gustavo Grabia]: I want to be the one all the girls look at. I want to be the one all the guys admire. I want to be the one everybody has to ask permission from to walk down this block.

[Mariano Pagella]: Since every neighborhood has its club, a connection starts forming, growing stronger and stronger, between the street violence that existed in those neighborhoods and soccer. And the stadium becomes the ideal place to show off that strength. For example, the neighborhood of Avellaneda has two very big clubs: Independiente and Racing.

[Gustavo Grabia]: If I picture myself in Avellaneda, I’m the boss of Avellaneda, so I’m a Racing fan, and I’m going to outdo Independiente’s fans by stealing their banners, and I’m going to create a space where it’s validated that I’m the most important barra in that area.

[Mariano Pagella]: Little by little it starts to become normalized that the stadium stands and the surrounding areas are the setting for fights on match days, whether going in or coming out.

[Gustavo Grabia]: It starts as a seed in the late ’60s and explodes mainly in the ’70s, and the ’80s is maybe the decade that sees the largest number of barras fighting each other to prove to the other that they’re what’s often called around here the «capi di tutti capi.»

[Mariano Pagella]: The boss of all bosses. It’s an Italian expression that comes from the mafia and is usually used to refer to whoever has the greatest influence and power within a group. And in the case of the barras, being the «capi di tutti capi» meant being just one thing:

[Gustavo Grabia]: The biggest, the most powerful fan group in Argentine soccer.

[Mariano Pagella]: So by the time the ’90s arrive, the barras bravas are already big, powerful, and they’ve also acquired their other distinctive traits:

[Gustavo Grabia]: Here in Argentina, the phenomenon is very unusual, because the barras of every club have ties to a political party, to a local political boss, to a union.

[Mariano Pagella]: For example, there have been cases where two unions competed for a position of power and turned to barras from different teams to stir up a confrontation. Or times when a government wanted to break up a protest without using police repression, and turned to barras to infiltrate the crowd and stir up unrest from within. In exchange, the barra gets money, favors, and connections.

[Gustavo Grabia]: And that’s what makes the Argentine barras so unique: they’re inside the system, but not the soccer system—they’re directly inside the Argentine political system.

[Mariano Pagella]: So, we have a phenomenon that begins with a death, that of the fan Alberto Linker, and from there it starts evolving, slowly. Until, by the time the ’90s arrive—where this series starts—the barras are already an everyday topic, in the media and among people. But not all barras are alike. Generally, the biggest teams are the ones with the most powerful barras. And among those barras, there’s one that stands out.

[Gustavo Grabia]: La 12 is clearly Argentina’s ultimate barra brava, because it was the one with the most connections throughout this whole world I’m describing.

[Mariano Pagella]: La 12, Boca’s barra, which, on April 30, 1994, was led by one of the most important bosses in its history.

[Gustavo Grabia]: I think his fate was already sealed, because his last name was Barritta. His name was José Barritta.

[Mariano Pagella]: José Barritta, or «El Abuelo» [«The Grandfather»], as he was known. El Abuelo marks many turning points for La 12. In terms of organization, business dealings, and also in terms of violence.

[Gabriel Canay]: Insults come and go, us with Boca’s fans, them with us, this and that. And suddenly shots are heard.

[Mariano Pagella]: The story of La 12, El Abuelo’s rise to power, and the battle that changed all the rules. All of this in the next episode of Superclásico 94.

[Silvia Viñas]: Superclásico 94 is a podcast from Central, Radio Ambulante Studios’ series channel, and is part of iHeartRadio’s My Cultura podcast network.

This series was produced by Mariano Pagella, Alejandro Marinelli, and Sergio Renna.

Special thanks to Christian Krom and Fernando Guarini of the River Plate Fan Subcommittee.

The editors were Pablo Argüelles, Daniel Alarcón, and me.

Fact-checking was by Ana Prieto.

Mariano did the sound design, with original music by Nicolás Pagella, who also composed the series’ theme song. Martín Cruz was in charge of sound mixing and mastering.

The series’ graphics and art direction are by Diego Corzo. Digital production was by Andrés Centeno with Óscar Luna.

Business and strategic partnerships were led by Camilo Jiménez Santofimio. And Julián Santos and Eric Spiegelman gave us legal support.

Carolina Guerrero is the CEO of Radio Ambulante Studios.

At iHeart, the executive producers are Arlene Santana and Leo Gomez.

Radio Ambulante Studios produces and mixes its podcasts on Hindenburg PRO.

You can follow us on social media as centralseriesRA and subscribe to our email newsletter at centralpodcast.audio.

I’m Silvia Viñas. Thanks for listening.

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.

[Archival audio]: This is one side of this súperclásico: joy, overflow, emotion. River won two to nothing here at La Bombonera…

[Silvia Viñas]: It’s Saturday, April 30, 1994. River Plate has just won the superclásico against Boca Juniors, its historic rival. It’s a special victory because they won away, at Boca’s stadium, after eight years.

[Fernando Scalone]: We sang. We were happy. Thrilled. Well, after all the celebrating, the stands started to empty out. We started to leave, singing.

[Silvia Viñas]: This is Fernando. At the time, he was 19 years old, and like most matches, he went with his dad. After the superclásico, they leave the stadium with hundreds of River fans. Fernando and his dad head toward the bus stop to go home.

[Fernando Scalone]: When we started walking, we must have gone 400 meters, 500 meters, we see two empty «mosquito» trucks go by. Completely empty.

[Silvia Viñas]: In Argentina, the trucks that transport cars are called «mosquitoes.» They’re the ones with a two-tiered metal structure, very long, more than 20 meters. They can carry up to 10 cars.

[Fernando Scalone]: I say to my dad, «uh, look, a bunch of kids are going to hang off this truck to get away.»

[Silvia Viñas]: Fernando doesn’t know it at that moment, but his prediction is completely accurate.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: We couldn’t get on the first truck because other people got on- it filled up right away. We did get on the second truck. There must have been at least 50 guys there.

[Silvia Viñas]: Juan Carlitos is Fernando’s friend. He’s a bit older, he’s 24 at the time. They live in nearby neighborhoods, and since they’re both River fans, they became friends going to the stadium. But to that match, they went separately. So while Fernando is heading home with his dad, Juan Carlitos is with other fans on those trucks.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: We got on the mosquito to leave, because the idea was to leave, so, «let’s go, we’re getting on.» That’s how it was.

[Silvia Viñas]: They move slowly. As they make their way through the blocks, more and more River fans climb on. It’s an improvised victory pilgrimage that lasts about six or seven blocks, until they reach the intersection of Huergo and Brasil avenues.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: When I see the action, that a group comes out, to me it seemed like they were going to throw rocks at us, you know?

[Silvia Viñas]: A group of Boca fans, throwing something toward the trucks where the River fans are. Seconds later, when the truck Juan Carlitos is riding in passes by that group, he’ll find out that what they’re throwing aren’t rocks at all.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: To me, it was an execution.

[Silvia Viñas]: That day there were dozens of fans on those trucks. More than 30 years later, none of them have forgotten what happened at that intersection of Huergo and Brasil.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: I curl up into a ball, and you could hear gunshots: pim, boom, boom, boom, boom.

[Silvia Viñas]: Some stayed silent for years about the horror they lived through that day. Others carry the memory marked on their bodies.

[Diego Buenaño]: I was in a lot, a lot of pain. So, right there I realized it wasn’t a rock that hit me, that it was… that it was something else.

[Silvia Viñas]: And for others, that day represents an ending. The day something changed and was never the same again.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: The screams of the guys. That’s what I have in my head. The guys screaming. 

[Silvia Viñas]: Argentine soccer is known worldwide for its players, with superstars like Messi and Maradona. For its clubs, like River, Boca, Independiente, and many others that achieved worldwide fame. And for several years now, the fans have joined that expansion.

Juan Carlitos and Fernando, whom we met earlier, are fans. They follow their team everywhere and create a community in the stands. In international matches for a club, or with the national team in tournaments like the World Cup, Argentine fan groups tend to draw attention. They can generate admiration for their passion, and also rejection for some chants and attitudes. But they likely won’t leave you indifferent. And it’s undeniable that wherever they go, their presence is felt—they’re heard louder than other fan groups, as if they were playing at home everywhere, in any part of the world.

But behind those fans, something else is hiding. Another group that is now inseparable from Argentine soccer: the barras bravas.

[Archival audio]: They are soccer’s barras bravas. Barras bravas and politicians. The barras bravas and power.

[Silvia Viñas]: We’re talking about almost mafia-like organizations that do business outside and inside the stadium, and control everything that happens in the stands, and often within a club as well. And just like the clubs and their fans, they also expanded around the world.

[Gustavo Grabia]: In Mexico, until the 1990s, you could go to the stadium with both sets of fans mixed together. And today they’ve adopted a model quite similar to the Argentine one. In Colombia, the barras have organized themselves around the business they learned here in Argentina—the commercialization of barra products.

[Silvia Viñas]: All this growth of the barras and their international expansion has a turning point: that Saturday, April 30, 1994. What happened at that superclásico wasn’t just another act of violence, even though Argentine soccer, by that point, had already recorded more than 150 deaths.

[Paula Asaro]: When we arrived at the crime scene, it was chaos.

[Silvia Viñas]: It was a hinge point that changed the power relations within the barras.

[Daniel Vesselizza Randi]: «Go to hell, all of you. You don’t know what you did.»

[Silvia Viñas]: It sparked one of the most intense police manhunts of that time.

[Horacio Caride]: In a fairly makeshift shack was the person everyone was looking for.

[Silvia Viñas]: And it led to a trial that changed the history of Argentine soccer…

[Gustavo Grabia]: It was like being in front of the trial of Don Corleone.

[Silvia Viñas]: Over the course of these 10 episodes, you’re going to learn everything that happened that day. We’re going to get into the stands and the world of the barras bravas, their connections to power, to the clubs, and to the fan groups. But above all, we’re going to trace the repercussions that day had in the lives of many people, from fans who only wanted to cheer on their team to entire families who didn’t even get on those trucks.

[Fernando Scalone]: They say these things happen to good people. And that’s what happened that day.

[Archival audio]: The match ended two to two. River scored two goals, but we killed two of them.

[Silvia Viñas]: From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, I’m Silvia Viñas, and this is Superclásico 94. Episode 1: The Double Murder.

[Archival audio]: Journalist: Good afternoon, how’s it going, maestro? Boca fan: Boca wins today, dear. 

River fan: I wanted to tell you that today we’re going to beat Boca. And today we win easily, walking away three, four to nothing. 

Boca fan: 20 years of Bombonera, look, 20 years we’ve been coming to cheer for Boca. Boca, heart and soul. 

Journalist: And you’re not worried, like, that there’ll be trouble, River? 

Boca fan: Never.

[Silvia Viñas]: Let’s transport ourselves to that Saturday, April 30, ’94. And the one who’s going to tell us this story is Mariano Pagella, who produced this series along with Alejandro Marinelli and Sergio Renna. They’ve been working on it for more than a year, based on a huge archive of Sergio’s, with photos and documents collected since that very year, ’94. Here’s Mariano.

[Mariano Pagella]: It’s a beautiful autumn day, sunny, but not oppressively hot. The perfect day for this superclásico. River fans snapped up all the available tickets within a few hours. And among those who managed to get them are three fans. We’re going to start with the first one, whom we already heard: Fernando.

[Fernando Scalone]: My name is Fernando Scalone. And that day I was at the stadium watching the superclásico, at La Bombonera.

[Mariano Pagella]: La Bombonera is Boca Juniors’ stadium, one of the biggest soccer clubs in Argentina. It’s called that because the stadium has a rectangular shape and the stands are almost vertical, so it looks like a box of chocolates [«bombonera»]. It’s in the south of the city of Buenos Aires, in the La Boca neighborhood. Yes, that’s where the club’s name comes from. It’s one of the most important tourist spots in the city. These are streets with a lot of history because of their closeness to the port and for being an emblematic tango spot. 

Fernando has been a River fan for as long as he can remember. And whenever he goes to watch matches at the stadium, his best friend goes with him, someone very important in this story: Walter Vallejos.

[Fernando Scalone]: Walter and I met as little kids. Aside from his mom and his sister, I was the closest to him. I was his brother, his friend, there was no one else. 

[Mariano Pagella]: Fernando and Walter are neighbourhood friends. They played on the same soccer club team, and Fernando often stayed to eat at Walter’s house. This friendship grew over the years, bound by something special: their fanaticism for River. They shared everything. Their first River jersey? They bought it together. Fernando was dating a girl, and Walter was dating her sister.

[Fernando Scalone]: We spent birthdays together, we had barbecues together. Our birthdays were March 28th for him and the 29th for me, so we’d celebrate them as one shared birthday. It was pure friendship.

[Mariano Pagella]: The superclásico that Saturday, April 30, is a highly anticipated match. Even though River hasn’t won at La Bombonera in 8 years, they’re on a very good streak, and Boca is going through a rough patch. So expectations are high.

At that time, Fernando and Walter are 19 years old. They agreed to go to the stadium together, but Walter doesn’t show up. It’s getting late, so Fernando decides to go alone. There, outside La Bombonera, his dad is waiting for him.

[Fernando Scalone]: So I ask him, «Where is he? Did you see him?» He told me no, «we were together, but the police chased us and we got separated.»

[Mariano Pagella]: Back then the police exercised very aggressive control at the entrances to public events, under the excuse of fighting against drugs. At concerts and soccer matches, pat-downs, shoving, beatings, or even rounding up groups of people and holding them overnight were normal. So maybe it’s not so strange that there’s no sign of Walter.

[Fernando Scalone]: «Uh,» I tell him, «well, let’s go in, we’ll see him inside then.»

[Mariano Pagella]: Fernando and his father go into La Bombonera and climb up to the visitors’ section, which is already quite full. They choose their spots. But Fernando is still uneasy; he wants to find his best friend, Walter. Because that’s what they’re there for—to enjoy the match together, like always.

[Fernando Scalone]: So I tell my old man, «stay here, I’m going to walk around a bit and see if I spot him, see if I can find him so he can come sit with us, like always.»

[Mariano Pagella]: He makes his way through the crowd. But he doesn’t find Walter. Instead, he finds another friend they have in common.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: We were kids who went to watch River on Sundays. And that’s how I met Walter, who was younger than us.

[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlos Cáceres, or Juan Carlitos, as his friends call him, is the second fan in this story. At that time Juan Carlitos is 24 years old and knows Fernando and Walter through River.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: Walter and I knew each other from the stadium. Everything was fine, we knew each other from there and from the neighborhood. He loved River, that’s the truth.

[Mariano Pagella]: Fernando asks Juan Carlitos about Walter, and he says he thinks he saw him around, but he’s not sure. The stands are already bursting with people.

[Fernando Scalone]: «Why would you go looking for him now?» Juan Carlitos said to me. «What’s the point of looking for him?—look how many people there are. You’ll see him on the way out.» And he convinced me.

[Mariano Pagella]: He’s right. It’s ridiculous to look for him at that moment; they would talk later, at home, calmly. So Fernando goes back to where his dad was.

And down on the field…

[Archival audio]: Ladies and gentlemen, the Argentine soccer superclásico is about to begin.

[Mariano Pagella]: The referee starts the match and the ball begins to roll.

[Archival audio]: Gamboa, going for Ortega, McAllister’s with him, here comes Orteguita, watch out, River looking for the first goal, Ortega, Ortega, Ortega. Cedres! Boca saved once again…

[Mariano Pagella]: What we’re hearing is the actual TV broadcast of the match.

[Archival audio]: Sodero comes out, Rivarola marks him, what are you doing, guys? That’s a penalty!…

[Diego Buenaño]: It starts off with a penalty against us, so already, you know, you always say, «ugh, here we go again.»

[Mariano Pagella]: In the completely packed River section, we find the third fan we’re going to follow: Diego Buenaño.

[Archival audio]: Martínez! He saves it, ladies and gentlemen, diving…

[Mariano Pagella]: Around that time, Diego is 21 years old. He remembers that match perfectly. He’s with his group of friends, with whom he follows River everywhere.

[Archival audio]: Orteguita, a great goal, gooooool…!

[Diego Buenaño]: But anyway, after that the match was all River…

[Archival audio]: Goal for River, the «Burrito» Arnaldo Ariel Ortega…!

[Diego Buenaño]: We really enjoyed the match. Honestly it was a great game and it was awesome.

[Archival audio]: River keeps looking for the second one with Toresani, off the post, goal, Crespo goal, Crespo goal, Crespo goal, Goooooooaaaal…!

[Mariano Pagella]: Finally, with two goals in the second half from Burrito Ortega and Hernán Crespo, historic figures in Argentine soccer who were just starting out at that time, River manages to break that eight-year curse of not winning at La Bombonera.

[Archival audio]: The Argentine soccer superclásico went to River Plate.

[Mariano Pagella]: So it makes sense that their fans stick around for a while in the stadium celebrating.

[Fernando Scalone]: Well, after all the celebrating, the stands started to empty out. We started to leave singing.

[Mariano Pagella]: This is Fernando, whom we heard at the beginning. Remember he always used to go watch River with his best friend, Walter. But that day they couldn’t make it.. Because of the crowds and bad luck.

[Fernando Scalone]: Up until that point we hadn’t found him. We hadn’t seen him.

[Mariano Pagella]: What Fernando doesn’t know is that during the match Walter did manage to find Juan Carlitos, their mutual friend, and that now they’re celebrating together. But of course, they have no way to communicate. Keep in mind that at that time there weren’t that many cell phones. The number of people leaving the stadium is enormous, a tsunami of fans covering everything to the horizon. So Fernando scans the faces of the crowd around him, hoping one of them will be his friends. But nothing. Walter and Juan Carlitos don’t turn up. So Fernando and his dad walk toward the bus that will take them home.

But outside La Bombonera, very close to the stadium, the first flashpoints of conflict between River and Boca supporters begin. The two fan groups have separate entrances and exits, but apparently a group of Boca fans went over to the River exit and fights broke out.

It’s hard to know who’s your ally or your enemy. Many are without their jerseys on; and those who do have them on cover them up to avoid getting hit with a rock by a rival fan.

Juan Carlitos and Walter, Fernando’s friends, find themselves facing that chaos. Here’s Juan Carlitos.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: You see a… a mess, a stampede. People running. We kept walking toward the Riachuelo.

[Mariano Pagella]: Like most people, they’re trying to cover the four blocks leading to the Riachuelo, the river that borders the southern part of Buenos Aires. They’re hoping that by that point people will be more spread out. But they barely manage to go a couple of blocks when…

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: You hear shots, which at the time I thought were fireworks, those famous three bangs. And no, it turns out there had actually been a couple of real gunshots and people scattered.

[Diego Buenaño]: We heard what we assumed were gunshots, they were like explosions.

[Mariano Pagella]: This is Diego, the third fan we met. He and his friends are also leaving the stadium and hear the same blasts as Juan Carlitos. But at that moment they do think it could be gunshots.

[Diego Buenaño]: And so we stopped and turned back to try to go around a bit and then try to cut through another street.

[Mariano Pagella]: Diego’s group had come by car, but they’d parked it very far from the stadium. So they decide to change route and cut through one of the cross streets to head north, toward the port area. They need to get out of there. Now.

A break, and we’ll be back.

[Mariano Pagella]: OK, let’s place ourselves in the scene for a moment. Fernando and his dad are already several blocks away from the stadium. They don’t see any of that chaos: the fights between Boca and River fans are very close to La Bombonera. They manage to catch a colectivo, the bus, and head home.

Meanwhile, Diego and his friends keep walking, trying to get away from the disturbances.

[Diego Buenaño]: We stopped at a kiosk to buy a drink. And while we’re there, one of the guys who was with us sees people starting to climb onto some trucks, there were two or three.

[Mariano Pagella]: Dozens of River fans are climbing onto mosquito trucks, the ones we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, that transport cars. They’re empty and moving slowly along the avenue that runs the length of the Riachuelo.

The drivers, frightened by the wave of people starting to climb on, barely manage to roll up their windows and lock the doors: they know there’s no way to get them to get off.

And for Diego and his friends, this is the opportunity they’d been looking for to finally get out of the La Boca neighborhood.

[Diego Buenaño]: It was far, we had to run, I’d say 100 meters. I was exhausted, and two of the guys start running toward the truck. And we looked at each other like that and said: let’s go. And we started running. We caught up to it and got on.

[Mariano Pagella]: Diego and his group climb onto one of the trucks. A friend climbs up to the upper level. Diego and the others stay in the back, almost hanging off. Remember these trucks have an enormous two-tiered metal structure. On the ground, along the sides, there’s a base where the cars go up. But the rest of the structure, including a good part of the floor, is hollow, like scaffolding. So they have to position themselves however they can and hold on tight.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: Let’s go on that one, let’s get on here!

[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlitos, who’s with Walter, also sees the trucks approaching.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: We couldn’t get on the first truck because other people got on, it filled up right away. We did get on the second one. We got on the mosquito to leave, because the idea was to leave, get out of there, because we saw the riot police coming too, so we saw people getting on to avoid trouble. No one said anything about the first truck and then the second one came along and we got on. We were able to get on, so we did. There must have been at least 50 guys there.

[Mariano Pagella]: The trucks continue on their way, driving along the Riachuelo.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: That whole stretch we went through was deserted. No one. Just the trucks.

[Mariano Pagella]: It’s around 6:15 in the evening and they’re passing through an area with little activity, where there are a lot of warehouses and mechanic shops. They’re already several blocks away from La Bombonera. And they reach the intersection with Avenida Brasil. This avenue marks the end of the La Boca neighborhood and the start of Avenida Ingeniero Huergo. Remember this intersection well: Brasil and Huergo. At that crossing there’s also a railway line, which forces the trucks to slow down a bit.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: I’m there, Walter’s there, and other guys too. And ahead of us, maybe 10 meters at most, was the other truck, also loaded with people. When I see the action, that a group comes out, to me it seemed like they were going to throw rocks at us, you know?

[Mariano Pagella]: When the first truck passes through that intersection between Huergo and Brasil, from the second truck Juan Carlitos sees, in the distance, a group of Boca fans appear. They had been hiding behind a building, on the left side of the avenue.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: «Look, there they are, man! They wrecked the first truck with rocks.»

[Mariano Pagella]: At that moment the first truck speeds up, crosses the intersection, and keeps going straight. The second truck, where Juan Carlitos is riding with Walter, and where Diego is also riding with his friends, reaches the same spot just a few seconds later. Here’s Diego.

[Diego Buenaño]: And that’s when we started to see people ducking down, and so on. And I started to hear the impact of what I thought were rocks hitting the metal of the truck. I heard: pin, pin, pin, pin, pin. But a lot of them.

[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlitos also sees something, but doesn’t quite understand what’s happening.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: You could see flashes, but I thought they were the three-bangers, those fireworks with three shots. I think the driver himself… the one driving the truck we were on saw it more clearly, more plainly, that they weren’t three-bangers, that they were gunshots.

[Mariano Pagella]: The truck speeds up and crosses the tracks at full speed. The movement is so abrupt it shakes the whole structure. The fans grab onto whatever they can. Then the truck swerves hard to dodge the group of Boca fans that had appeared.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: When it turns, well, I curl up into a ball and you could hear gunshots: pim, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

[Mariano Pagella]: This is how Diego remembers it:

[Diego Buenaño]: That’s when the truck speeds up and I feel something hit me like a rock on the side of my body, above the waist. But nothing, no pain. I just felt like something had hit me.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: It was a flash that lasted for –I don’t know how long, a minute, 10 minutes, but it was right as it turns, makes a curve, and they shoot the hell out of us. They shot the hell out of us. And that’s when I lose track of the others. Of all of them.

[Mariano Pagella]: In the middle of the chaos, Juan Carlitos doesn’t know where Walter is.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: To me it was an execution.

[Mariano Pagella]: One last break, and we’ll be back.

[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlitos is alone, separated from his friends, from Walter. When the truck finally slows down, he takes the chance to jump off. He’s three blocks from where they were shot at. Around him there are dozens of fans who also jumped off the truck and are running looking for shelter.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: I ran with a guy who was wounded, who had a bullet wound in one arm and a graze on his neck, into a warehouse that’s there.

[Diego Buenaño]: And we started running.

[Mariano Pagella]: Diego and his friends also got off the truck. They need to get to the car they’d driven to the match in, which is several blocks away.

[Diego Buenaño]: I don’t remember how much I ran, but it wasn’t much, must have been 20, 30 meters, and I told them, «I can’t run anymore.»

[Mariano Pagella]: His waist hurts a lot. He thinks it’s from the rock that hit him on the truck.

[Diego Buenaño]: I do remember at some point looking at my side where it had hit me and seeing smoke. And that’s when I think I realized something more than a rock had hit me.

[Mariano Pagella]: It’s a bullet. With his friends’ help, Diego sits down at the entrance of a building. The pain above his waist keeps getting worse and worse. While some go to get the car, another one of his friends, a medical student, stays with him.

[Diego Buenaño]: And he tells me, «don’t worry, if anything I can help you with the bullet.» I mean, we were all like something out of cowboy movies, thinking you bite down on a piece of wood, take a swig of whiskey, and pull the bullet out with tweezers. Unfortunately the bullet was on the other side, so it was more complicated than that.

[Mariano Pagella]: While Diego waits, bleeding more and more, Juan Carlitos is still holed up with the wounded guy in a warehouse, until the caretaker shows up.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: «No! What are you doing here?» I tell him, «look, he’s wounded!» «No, leave, leave.»

[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlitos begs the man to at least call an ambulance for the wounded fan. But the man kicks them out.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And when we go outside, of course, the guy looks to the right and over there on the corner it was… it was total chaos. You could still hear blasts, I don’t know if they were gunshots, but it was total pandemonium.

[Mariano Pagella]: That chaos is the intersection of Huergo and Brasil. The first ambulances had started to arrive.

Meanwhile, Diego is still sitting at the entrance of a building, wounded. He’s bleeding a lot and the pain from the gunshot is becoming more and more unbearable. Luckily, his friends soon arrive with the car. 

[Diego Buenaño]: I sit up front. Poor guy, I must have stained the whole car. And then a police officer stops us, at some traffic light or on the street, and tells us, «no, no, if you’ve got a gunshot victim, go to Argerich.» And they send us to Argerich.

[Mariano Pagella]: Argerich is a public hospital located in La Boca, three blocks from where everything happened. So they head the car in that direction, moving slowly amid more and more police officers. They reach the hospital. Diego gets out of the car with great difficulty and goes in to be treated. There’s already a lot of activity there. That’s where they discover that one of their friends is wounded too. A bullet went in and out through his arm. With the adrenaline of the moment, he hadn’t even noticed.

[Diego Buenaño]: They took my statement at the hospital. First a police officer came, and then a police officer came with a forensic expert. I think everyone who’d been shot had ended up there, we were eight in total. The bullet entered above my waist and went straight through my whole body and ended up lodged on the other side, right on the other side. It made an almost straight line. It punctured my intestine three times and went in and out of my liver. They operated on me and, well, I made it through.

[Mariano Pagella]: Meanwhile, Juan Carlitos is still out on the street. Remember, they’d kicked him out of the warehouse where he’d tried to take shelter. He gets separated from the wounded fan. He’s disoriented, almost in shock. And he thinks about his friends, about Walter.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: I don’t know if they stayed on the truck, because honestly that’s how it is, I don’t know. So I start running.

[Mariano Pagella]: He decides to look for a way out of that area, and the only option he can think of is an avenue behind Boca’s stadium. To get there he has to go back through the area where he saw the fights between fans—that is, through where he’d tried to escape by getting on the trucks.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And I start running. And on the corners there were Boca guys, with sticks. I imagined, «well, this is for beating people, they see a River jersey and they’ll go after him with clubs.» And the first thing that came out of me was, «man, here comes la gorra, here comes la gorra,» so they’d let me through.

[Mariano Pagella]: «La gorra» — meaning the police.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And I got through.

[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlitos gets on the first bus heading toward his house. He’s shaken, scared, confused. As soon as he gets on he realizes the driver has the radio on and they’re talking about what happened. So he stays in the front seat, to listen closely.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And on the radio they were describing what supposedly had happened, they said, «clash between the barra bravas,» and I said, «no, what clash? Nothing like that. We were fans. All of us, fans.»

[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlitos’s trip home takes more than an hour. It’s already past eight at night when the bus reaches his neighborhood. He feels sick, he has a knot in his chest. He doesn’t know if Walter made it back from the stadium.

[Archival audio]: Several wounded who were taken to Argerich hospital just minutes after the end of the clásico between River and Boca.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And well, I got home and my mom: «hey, those sons of bitches! Did you see, the kids, apparently there are deaths?» «No, mom, I’m going to take a shower.»

[Mariano Pagella]: Several news outlets have already arrived on the scene and are showing the first footage on TV. But Juan Carlitos doesn’t want to know anything about it. He wants to shower and try to release the tension. He gets in the shower and, when he comes out, his mom calls him: on TV they’re showing that someone was killed. 

[Archival audio]: Police officer: It’s a young person, but we haven’t  identified them yet. 

Journalist: Would it have been from a gunshot? 

Police officer: Apparently he has, he would have a gunshot wound to the hand.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And when I look, the first one I see is Delgado and I tell her, «mom, I saw that guy.» «What?» she says. «I was on that truck, mom.» Ugh, here we go again, another scolding. Poor thing, my mom.

[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlitos recognizes him because he’d been standing next to him on the truck. His name is Ángel Delgado.

His mom gets angry, gets upset, tells him he can’t go to those matches anymore, that they’re too dangerous. Juan Carlitos wants to go to his room and try to forget about that day. He leaves the living room, but his mom calls him again: on TV they’re saying there’s apparently another dead fan.

[Archival audio]: Police officer: It’s a male, young, and no more information. 

Journalist: The age isn’t known? And the name? 

Police officer: No, neither.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And I recognize him by his sneakers. Because he was covered with a black bag. When I saw the sneakers, I grabbed my head. I said: «That’s Walter.»

[Mariano Pagella]: Walter Vallejos. His friend. And Fernando’s best friend.

Fernando, remember, hadn’t managed to find Walter that day, despite trying before and after the superclásico. And he also didn’t see the chaos of the fights, or everything that Walter and Juan Carlitos went through on the trucks.

[Fernando Scalone]: I was totally disconnected. I said, «well, we celebrated, I’ll go see him tomorrow, the day after. He’ll be happy.»

[Mariano Pagella]: After the match, Fernando was invited to a barbecue. He has no idea about everything that happened. He assumes Walter left the stadium at some point and that’s it. So, after eating, Fernando comes home late, at night. And there they tell him that Walter’s mom called about 20 times, because Walter never came home.

[Fernando Scalone]: «How strange, he must be locked up. I hope he’s not there in La Boca. Maybe they picked him up, got him because he had long hair.»

[Mariano Pagella]: As we said before, at that time it’s not unusual that if there’s some kind of disturbance at a soccer match, the police start rounding people up and hold them overnight, to release them the next day.

[Fernando Scalone]: And well, I went to bed. The next day I woke up to the news: that in the footage, his sister had recognized his sneakers. And that’s when it hit me, that’s when my world fell apart.

[Mariano Pagella]: The deaths of Walter Vallejos and Ángel Delgado are only the beginning of this story. A story that not only changed the world of soccer in Argentina but also impacted many people in different ways. For Ángel Delgado’s mother, for example, it meant an endless search.

[Dionisia Delgado]: He was like a «John Doe,» because he hadn’t brought any ID with him, nothing.

[Mariano Pagella]: For a young prosecutor it meant a professional challenge.

[Paula Asaro]: It was the first time I had to take part in a scene that was literal chaos. There was no way to get the press off your back. Statements had to be taken; they were taken at three in the morning.

[Mariano Pagella]: And running through all these stories, one constant: the power of the barras bravas…

[Gustavo Grabia]: What the Argentine barra brava has is a relationship with power — not only with sports management, but with local political power, with unions, with pressure groups that don’t exist anywhere else in the world.

[Mariano Pagella]: All this in the coming episodes of Superclásico 94.

[Silvia Viñas]: Superclásico 94 is a podcast from Central, Radio Ambulante Studios’ series channel, and is part of iHeartRadio’s My Cultura podcast network.

This series was produced by Mariano Pagella, Alejandro Marinelli, and Sergio Renna.

Special thanks to Centrojas for sharing part of the archival material for this episode.

The editors were Pablo Argüelles, Daniel Alarcón, and me.

Fact-checking by Ana Prieto.

Mariano did the sound design, with original music by Nicolas Pagella, who also composed the series’ theme music. Martín Cruz was in charge of sound mixing and mastering.

The series’ graphics and art direction are by Diego Corzo. Digital production by Andrés Centeno with Óscar Luna.

Business development and strategic partnerships were led by Camilo Jiménez Santofimio. And Julián Santos and Eric Spiegelman gave us legal support.

Carolina Guerrero is the CEO of Radio Ambulante Studios.

At iHeart, the executive producers are Arlene Santana and Leo Gomez.

Radio Ambulante Studios produces and mixes its podcasts using Hindenburg PRO.

You can follow us on social media as centralseriesRA and subscribe to our email newsletter at centralpodcast.audio.

I’m Silvia Viñas. Thanks for listening.

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.

[Archive audio]: This is one side of this superclásico: the joy, the exuberance. The emotion.

[Silvia Viñas]: Buenos Aires, 1994. River Plate has just won the superclásico against Boca Juniors, their historic rival.

[Fernando Scalone]: We sang. We were happy. Elated.

[José Barritta]: Before the match, it was a real party. I never thought it would end with this barbarity.

[Silvia Viñas]: Because what should have been pure celebration…

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: The kids screaming. That’s what I remember. Their screams. 

[Silvia Viñas]: …turns into a crime that shakes Argentina.

[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And then a gunshot is heard: boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Boom.

[Paula Asaro]: When we arrived at the crime scene, it was chaos.

[Silvia Viñas]: Behind this case is a group that is now inseparable from Argentine football:

[Archive audio]: They are the “barras bravas” (organized fan groups). “Barras bravas” and politicians. “Barras bravas” and power.

[Silvia Viñas]: The “barras bravas”: almost mafia-like organizations that do business in stadiums, that control what happens in the stands, sometimes even within the clubs themselves…

[Gustavo Grabia]: It was like being in front of Don Corleone’s trial.

[Darío Vesseliza Randi]: He spoke to you in a certain way and already made it clear that “this is it, this is what I’m telling you.”

[Silvia Viñas]: In the new season of the Central podcast, from Radio Ambulante Studios…

[Darío Vesseliza Randi]: “Go to hell, all of you, you don’t know what you’ve done.”

[Silvia Viñas]: We’ll learn everything that happened that day.

[Archive audio]: The charge is double aggravated homicide…

[Silvia Viñas]: We’ll go into the stands.

[Marcela Mora and Araujo]: This has nothing to do with war. This is joy. The fundamental heartbeat of the Argentine fan’s passion.

[Silvia Viñas]: And inside the world of the “barras bravas”, their connections with power, with the clubs, and with the fans.

[Fernando Scalone]: They say these things happen to good people. And that’s what happened that day.

[Archive audio]: The match ended two-two. River scored two goals, but we killed two of theirs, man.

[Silvia Viñas]: This is “Superclásico 94,” the story of the day that changed Argentine and Latin American football forever. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Follow us on social media at centralseries and subscribe to our newsletter at centralpodcast.audio. New episodes every Thursday, starting September 10.

Este podcast es propiedad de Radio Ambulante Studios. Cualquier copia, distribución o adaptación está expresamente prohibida sin previa autorización.

This podcast is the property of Radio Ambulante Studios. Any copy, distribution, or adaptation is expressly prohibited without prior authorization.

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.

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]: Hi, a heads-up before we begin: today’s story doesn’t contain as much sensitive content as some other episodes, just a few swear words, a mesmerizing nude scene, and a whole lot of beauty and talent. Discretion is advised. 

Valentina is a trans girl from Ecuador. She’s 22 years old. She arrived in the United States around 2023, after a month-long journey across half a continent.

[Valentina]: I arrived here when I was 19 years old. I came because in my country things are very tough. Trans people are barely heard in our country, in Ecuador. I didn’t come with a visa, I didn’t come by plane, I came by land. I crossed the jungle.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The Darién Gap. That 160-kilometer jungle between Colombia and Panama that hundreds of thousands of migrants have attempted to cross on their way to the United States. An extremely dangerous place.

[Valentina]: I didn’t know anyone, I felt alone, I got lost and I cried by that river, but I would get down on my knees and tell myself I had to get out. When you finally leave there, it’s like you can breathe again.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: It’s March 2026 and we’ve just met Valentina. She’s sitting on the third floor of an apartment in Corona, Queens. She moves her feet anxiously, staring into the distance. Barely smiling. Hans, a friend who works as a makeup artist, hair dryer in hand, blows warm air over her head, which is covered by a fake plastic skin. A bald cap.

[Diego Senior]: Can I ask what you’re doing?

[Hans]: I’m gluing this little cap on her so I can then glue the bald piece on top, to expose all her hair.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: He’s transforming her. We’ll soon find out why. Diego, our reporter, is with her. He asks her more about her crossing of the Darién.

[Valentina]: It took me two days. 

[Diego Senior]: Two? 

[Valentina]: Yeah, I went in at noon, by 6 PM I was already at the first camp, I slept there. At 5 AM they got us moving. They left us right in the middle of the Panama-Colombia border. And from there everyone followed the blue flags, along the trail that people leave marked, and you have to walk hard. It took me two days because I teamed up with some Venezuelans. And Venezuelans, as they say, have personality. They have strength, they don’t give up. And there were a lot of Venezuelan girls. And when I saw there were women I said: I’ll join them here. I walked in the early morning hours, it was still dark. And I made it to the camp where there are indigenous people. That’s where you see a lot of people who charge you 40 dollars for the boat to get to the Panama camp.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But all this was years ago. Now Valentina has more important things to think about. Because today is the final of the Nuestra Belleza Latina Trans 2026 pageant, a beauty pageant in Jackson Heights, with a 1000-dollar prize. And Valentina is one of the contestants competing for the crown.

[Diego Senior]: How are you feeling?

[Valentina]: A little nervous. I just want to do things right, but I’m kind of scared — not scared of anything bad, just nervous-scared.

[Diego Senior]: I mean, you made that crossing and now you’re getting nervous over this.

[Valentina]: I think it’s very different because out there you’re just praying, you’re… You see it as a competition for yourself. But here in a pageant there’s so much… It’s like, I think it’s different. Very different from that adrenaline.

[Laura Martínez]: Hello. Yes. One, two, three. We’re good. Hurricane winds. So welcome.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: In this episode of Las Reinas de Queens we return to Roosevelt Avenue to witness up close a one-of-a-kind beauty pageant.

[Laura Martínez]: Talent, talent, talent, talent!

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We’ll follow it from start to finish. Tracking step by step the preparation, the excitement, the highs and lows of the contestants, to see how a new crown connects a group of trans migrant women with a brilliant past and future.

[Laura Martínez]: Nuestra Belleza Latina 2026 is…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, this is Las Reinas de Queens. I’m Rula Ávila Muñoz.

Episode 9. From the Darién to the True Colors.

In mid-January 2026, just as New York City is bracing for a historic ice and snowstorm…

[Laura Martínez]: Sweetheart, oh my God! Nuestra Belleza Latina 2026 is back! One thousand dollars, one thousand dollars! Four categories, of course: fantasy, talent, evening gown, question and answer.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura Martínez, the reina madre we’ve heard from in several episodes of this series, announces on her social media: a historic pageant is coming back — one that was last held 11 years ago, Nuestra Belleza Latina Trans. It’s inspired by a Univisión reality show of the same name.

[Archival audio]: The public decided that the XII queen of Nuestra Belleza Latina is…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The rules of Laura’s contest are simple: to participate you can be a trans person or a drag performer, and you simply have to choose a Latin American country to represent on the runway. When we found out, we asked Laura if we could document the entire process. And she…

[Laura Martínez]: Hello. Hello, good, good morning. Everything’s fine…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She starts sending us voice messages on WhatsApp. She tells us that in the first week of the open call, three contestants have already signed up: Miss Ecuador, Miss Venezuela, and Miss Guatemala. Everything is very exciting. We picture an epic pageant, with contestants from many countries, a star-studded jury, a big Latin party! But at the end of February, with the storm intensifying and just ten days before the night of the contest, Laura sends us this message:

[Laura Martínez]: It’s still snowing. It snowed yesterday, and well, that was supposed to be the candidates’ presentation. Yeah, no more people have signed up, just three. Times are tough and honestly, it had me feeling discouraged, but no — we have to keep going with three candidates or however many there are. We have to move forward.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She tells us that the mood in the community really isn’t in the right place for pageants.

[Laura Martínez]: Because fewer girls are showing up to the clubs, fewer people from the community, because things are also happening… Many of them have been deported. Others are afraid to go out.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Between the cold and the fear of ICE raids, very few girls seem interested in a beauty and talent pageant that also requires investing time and money. But Laura isn’t giving up.

[Laura Martínez]: So we’re going to resist — of course we resist, because the people in this community are very strong when it comes to situations like this.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She adjusts her crown, shakes the snow off her shoulder, and carries on as if nothing happened. She tells us the pageant is being pushed back a week and will be split into two nights. The first will be Monday, March 9th, when each candidate will present herself to the audience in a fantasy costume inspired by the country she has chosen to represent. And a week later, Monday, March 16th, will be the grand final. There, the contestants will face three challenges. The talent portion…

[Laura Martínez]: They can perform whatever song they want. Maybe one will dance, another will do a ballad, someone will go tropical, ranchero — but that’s up to them, whatever they feel like, whatever talent they have.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And then they’ll have to get through the Q&A  part and show off their evening gown.

[Laura Martínez]: Which is judged on how she wears the dress, how it fits. Whether it’s too big, too small. Whether she knows how to walk, how to be a model. Her presence on the runway is judged, her confidence… Most importantly, how she carries herself on stage, which is very important: is she nervous, does she smile, does she have glamour?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And speaking of glamour, a week before the first night we start talking with the four candidates who signed up for the pageant. A new generation of queens.

[Ani Alexa Chuinda]: Good morning. My name is Ani Alexa Chuinda. I’m 25 years old and I’m now representing my country, which would be Miss Ecuador.

[Kendra Bracho]: My name is Kendra Bracho. I’m 28 years old and I’m in this pageant representing the country of Venezuela.

[Catriel Gray]: Well, my name is Catriel Gray. I’m from Guatemala.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And finally: Valentina, the Ecuadorian girl who crossed the Darién. She explains that since her country was already taken, she chose another one that inspires her greatly:

[Valentina]: Right now I have the great honor, the pride, of representing Puerto Rico. It felt like a country where, like, the island of enchantment, its culture, its customs — it’s a little similar to Ecuador’s. And I said, «I’m going for Puerto Rico.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Each of them has her own journey and her own reasons for competing for the Nuestra Belleza Latina Trans crown. Ani, Miss Ecuador, was queen of a trans pageant in her country. She’s a professional choreographer and TikToker with more than 150 thousand followers.

[Ani Alexa Chuinda]: I feel like this pageant is going to help me open more doors, because my goal is to reach Miss Queens Universe, where contestants from all countries participate.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Catriel, Miss Guatemala, has been preparing at home with the help of friends from different Latin American countries.

[Catriel Gray]: It’s something wonderful to share each experience, each culture. Each mentality is different, but that doesn’t hurt us or make us any less — we are one big Latin family and we are truly here for all of us to shine, to share that essence, you know?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Kendra, Miss Venezuela, is not trans: she’s a guy who loves the art of drag. But she has never won a crown.

[Kendra Bracho]: I went through a very tough time and when I started getting into the drag world I was very self-conscious about my appearance. I was embarrassed, I didn’t want to go out. I started doing all of this and it was like building a suit of armor inside me. So every time I’m on a stage it’s like: I’ve got my armor on, I’ve got my armor, my alter ego is pounding, and «you can do it, you do it, you are the best. Enjoy it, live it, savor it.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And even though Valentina is the youngest contestant at 22, she arrives feeling very confident. She says her greatest strengths are her attitude and her elegance on the runway.

[Valentina]: And I believe I’m the best — you have to believe it to be able to win. Because if you don’t believe in yourself, if you don’t have confidence in yourself, you’ll never do better. Because you know what? Attitude beats Beauty.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Attitude beats beauty. The four candidates share one thing: they have an almost infinite confidence in themselves. Something necessary, but not sufficient to win. Because wanting to take on the world means nothing if you don’t first leave the judges speechless. And in the case of the Nuestra Belleza Latina pageant, that jury is made up of some unquestionable stars:

[Laura Martínez]: There are five reigning queens. The five queens are this year’s queens: Valentina Jácome, who is Señorita Colombia Oneida 2025; Fonsi Fox Martínez, who is Miss Curaçao — she already holds that international crown from that small South American country. We also have Adaimé LaCosme Martínez, who holds the Miss Reina de Reinas crown. There’s Alejandra Olivares, who is Miss Oneida. And we also have here the queen of Miss Mundo Latino. That’s our jury.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And well, as you can see, there are a lot of pageants, a lot of crowns, a lot of titles. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed — it sure happened to us. So, here’s a quick breakdown of how this universe works. Pageants go from local to regional, then national, and finally international.

Near New York, in Washington DC, Pennsylvania, or New Jersey, there are competitions like Reina de Reinas and Miss Oneida, organized by other Latin LGBTQ+ communities. At the national level, Miss Mundo Latina USA is a well-known pageant that has grown in recent years. And the Mount Olympus of pageants is Miss Continental, in Chicago — the ultimate stage. I don’t know if you remember Lady Catiria from the last episode. She won it twice.

But the very first step on this path is Nuestra Belleza Latina Trans. It’s with that first crown — the one of a newcomer — that you start making a name for yourself. Something especially important for the four candidates we’ve met: they all arrived in the United States just a few years ago. So if they really want to carve out a little place for themselves in the pageant world, they have to give it their everything. And in March of this year, with Nuestra Belleza Latina 2026 just around the corner, the candidates know it. Kendra, Miss Venezuela…

[Kendra Bracho]: Well, yes. I really have prepared quite a lot in getting my wardrobe ready, on being able to visualize all the ideas. I want this to be this way. I want this runway walk to be like this, to be able to turn at this moment like that. To look out, to captivate the audience. So getting ready is exhausting, because we spend hours trying things on. We rehearsed with dresses, we rehearsed without dresses, we rehearsed with the wigs, we rehearsed with makeup, we rehearsed without makeup…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Catriel, Miss Guatemala, with her talent for sewing, tells us she made her fantasy category costume in one week. But she also confesses she’s had other setbacks.

[Catriel Gray]: My health isn’t quite at a hundred percent, so I haven’t had that much time, because I’ve been in and out of the hospital. It’s been a little complicated, but we’re working on it.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And Ani, Miss Ecuador, tells us on the Friday before the pageant:

[Ani Alexa Chuinda]: Now I have three days left because I have to keep preparing for that day, which is Monday. I already know… I’m excited and I’m also way too… I’m quite nervous, because remember that all of us here, all four of us, are talented.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: After the break, the first night of the Nuestra Belleza Latina Trans pageant.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We’re back on Las Reinas de Queens. The pageant venue is the True Colors bar on Roosevelt Avenue, where Laura performs every week with her «Lunes Picantes.»

[Manager]: G52, G52, G52, G52! And the strippers have arrived…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: It’s just past midnight, about two hours before the contest begins, and the bar manager is calling out numbers for a bingo game.

[Manager]: G56, G56, G56!

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Diego approaches one of the judges. Her name is Fonsi Fox Martínez — she’s Dominican, Laura Martínez’s daughter. And she has an impressive pedigree.

[Fonsi Fox Martínez]: Yes, I was Miss Colombia Oneida in 2017. In 2016 I was Miss Hombres Lounge. In 2015 I was Miss República in my country. In 2018 I was the LGBTQ Pride queen back in my country too, where they hold a pageant. After that I was Miss Selene. Oh, I’ve won so many!

Diego Senior: OK, so you’ve been competing for a while, learning…

[Fonsi Fox Martínez]: Around eight, just over eight. But I think it’s more.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Fonsi has nearly 100 thousand followers on Instagram. Tonight she’s here at True Colors in recognition of her mother Laura’s legacy. And that’s why she takes her role as a judge very seriously.

[Fonsi Fox Martínez]: The candidate’s stage presence will show.

Diego Senior: And is there a scoring system?

[Fonsi Fox Martínez]: Yes, from 1 to 10. The beauty of the costume, whether the theme of each candidate’s costume is respected — these are fantasy costumes representing each country.

[Diego Senior]: Ok.

[Fonsi Fox Martínez]: So that’s going to be heavily evaluated, and the one who’s best in all those things tonight will be the winner of the costume category. Then that score gets added to the other categories coming up next week…

[Diego Senior]: The following Monday.

[Fonsi Fox Martínez]: Which will be talent, evening gown, and question and answer.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: More people join the audience. With the beers and the margaritas, the day’s troubles fade away. And then…

[Manager]: And here comes Ms. Laura Martínez. Welcome to your home, True Colors.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura arrives accompanied by two assistants carrying the dresses she’ll wear tonight. And she disappears through a door behind the bar. Diego follows her down a narrow, steep staircase. And arrives at a basement. There are stacked beer boxes, an old sofa, a dirty rug, an uneven floor like a dungeon. It’s the bar’s storage room. Or if you prefer: the True Colors dressing room. Because that’s where Laura and all the contestants are, getting dressed side by side, without any inhibition whatsoever.

Kendra, the Venezuelan candidate, is getting undressed to put on her fantasy gown. In the center of her chest is a large owl tattoo. Diego asks her how she’s feeling.

[Kendra Bracho]: Well, it really is… It’s an emotional rollercoaster. But just the fact of being here, seeing the work you’ve put in for so long, what  you’ve worked for. And not just you, because behind us there’s a whole team — maybe the person who helps you glue on your lashes, who helps you stick that last rhinestone on your costume. It’s very meaningful to see all your work come to life on one closing night, where it’s not just about choosing a winner — it’s about bringing art to life. And that’s what we’re here for tonight.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Ani, the Ecuadorian, is nearby, also getting ready to put on her costume.

[Ani Alexa Chuinda]: Yes, right now I’m here, very happy, let’s see what God has in store. We are four candidates and each one looks beautiful. All representing their country with their hearts and honoring it, because remember that Latin beauty isn’t just about the community, just  all Latin people from every country.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And Valentina — as you know, representing Puerto Rico — is with Hans, her makeup artist friend. He’s fitting a kind of harness on her back, as if he were about to attach a pair of fake angel wings. They look completely focused.

[Valentina]: We have to enjoy it, because moments like these only happen once in a lifetime.

[Diego Senior]: Exactly. It’s 2 in the morning. How do you manage to be awake at this hour?

[Valentina]: I think the excitement of taking part in this is because for us it’s a beautiful experience. And may everything flow, and may the best one win.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And in the center of the dressing room is Laura, wearing makeup and a wig, lit by the white light of the bulbs. Two of her daughters quickly undress her. For a few seconds she stands there half-naked. It’s impossible not to stare. At 62, she has an incredible body — curvy and firm. She looks like the statue of a Greek goddess. With her stern gaze she scans the room and gives instruction to the staff members who are rushing to get the pageant started. Everything feels improvised, chaotic. But Laura isn’t rushing it.  And so, after 2 in the morning, she asks a staff member to bring her the microphone. It’s time. Laura comes up from the dressing room to a packed True Colors. The judges are already in place, seated in front of the dance floor.

Laura Martínez: And well. Welcome all! Today we begin Nuestra Belleza Latina, with the regional fantasy costume presentation. I wish you all luck. There are four candidates: Guatemala, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico, ladies and gentlemen. So I know, everyone out there is supporting their candidate. And well, we wish each and every one of them luck. And next week, the grand finale, which will be talent and evening gown. So now you know — here it is after 11 years, because 11 years ago, well, with all the changes and so many things, Nuestra Belleza Latina hadn’t come back. And today, do you know why Nuestra Belleza Latina is happening? Because of the government in place. Latin people are being discriminated against today. Today they look at us like we’re weirdos, and that’s also why I decided to bring Nuestra Belleza Latina back. Because us Latinas are the hottest, the happiest, the richest, the most joyful. Yes we are. So welcome, and well, today we begin, and thank you. And I wish all four girls luck. Any one of them can be queen. So tonight we welcome our friend country: Ecuador!

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Ani begins her number, inspired by the Shuar culture of the Ecuadorian Amazon. She wears a blue dress with necklaces and bracelets. She takes small leaps across the stage to the rhythm of the music, as if in a ritual dance. And then, Ani gives her speech to introduce herself to the audience.

[Ani Alexa Chuinda]: As a trans Latina today I’m not just representing a traditional costume. I am Ani Alexa Chuinda, I am 25 years old. I proudly represent my beloved Ecuador. Thank you so very much.

[Laura Martínez]: Ecuador! 

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura takes back her role as host, completely focused. Until the handsome True Colors waiter walks quickly across the dance floor with a broom, and everything spins out of control for a second.

Laura Martínez: There’s our new waiter. I don’t know his name. What’s your name, sweetheart? Oh! Oh!

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Well, let’s continue.

Laura Martínez: Where is Venezuela?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Kendra appears on the dance floor. Her dress is strapless and bears the colors of the Venezuelan flag. On her head she wears a white polka-dot headscarf with red dots. She’s dressed as the woman from the Harina Pan logo — that iconic Venezuelan cornmeal brand used to make arepas.

[Kendra Bracho]: I want to tell you that I’m inspired by one of the most iconic dishes from my country. It’s the dish that brings back memories, and even though I had to cross so many borders, every time I taste it, I’m back in my Venezuela… [applause] All my Latin brothers and sisters, thank you for your support. My name is Kendra Bracho, at 28 years old I come here today to represent the country that gave me courage: Venezuela!

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The next turn…

[Laura Martínez]: We welcome our third candidate, and we’re heading to the  Island of Enchantment — Puerto Rico!

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Valentina wears a very form-fitting costume, and from her back fan out long, lush peacock feathers like a tail. She barely fits on the dance floor and the audience’s reaction says it all. And it’s at this moment that the guests themselves become part of the show. Several of them have known Laura for so many years and so many «Lunes Picantes» that they feel comfortable making demands every now and then. Especially one of them — short, with a mischievous face and a playful attitude. Almost like a little elf. Laura calls him «señora Simpson.» He shouts from the bar demanding an explanation for how a trans Latin beauty pageant could be missing a representative from his own country: Mexico.

[Laura Martínez]: There was a representative for Mexico, but Mexico was one of my daughters.

[«Señora Simpson»]: But no one cared. 

[Laura Martínez]: No! That’s not it.. What happened is I didn’t want to — I didn’t want Mexico because it was my daughter. And if I put one of my daughters in, there are judges who are also my daughters, so that’s not good.

[«Señora Simpson»]: Fraud!

[Someone from the audience]: Peru is also missing! 

[Laura Martínez]: I can’t put one of my daughters in because then it would be fraud. OK? Exactly. So that’s why Mexico didn’t come. Let’s welcome our last and fourth candidate tonight — where is Guatemala?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The lights go out, and Catriel takes the floor. She’s accompanied by the recorded voice of an announcer.

[Announcer]: The quetzal, symbol of freedom, sovereignty, and natural beauty. Known for its emerald green plumage, yellow beak, and red chest. For the Maya, the quetzal was a sacred and divine bird, called the God of the air…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She’s dressed as Guatemala’s national bird, the quetzal, with an extraordinarily long tail of green feathers. She begins to dance slowly, while from a small bag she carries in her hand, she pulls out bright green glitter and tosses it toward the audience, like a fairy godmother. And she introduces herself:

[Catriel Gray]: We have spent decades fighting for our stories. Let us be the architects of our own history. From Guatemala, the land of eternal spring: Catriel Gray — Guatemala!

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And so, after all four candidates have presented themselves before the judges and the audience, the night comes to an end. With a promise from Laura, reminding us what’s still at stake.

[Laura Martínez]: Next week is talent. Talent, talent!

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We’ll be right back.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Hello again. After the first night of the pageant, the week goes by fast. Friday arrives and we talk again with Catriel, Miss Guatemala, and Kendra, Miss Venezuela, to find out how their preparations for the final night are going.

[Catriel Gray]: I’m so nervous. I’m like, oh no! I can’t believe it. I don’t want that Monday to come.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Will the dress fit right? Will they have rehearsed enough…

[Kendra Bracho]: Right now I’m completely consumed by the talent category. The talent category is what I’m more concerned about.  Tomorrow I’m going to finish sorting out the details of the costume, of the evening gown for the final night. So, super anxious, super anxious, but oh no! The more the days go by, the more nervous I get. This is madness.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And when we speak with Valentina, she tells us that on Monday — the day of the second night — she had her breast implant surgery scheduled. But she cancelled it to be in the pageant. It’s a testament to her dedication to her art. But she also tells us this:

[Valentina]: And I’m going to be honest with you and tell you the truth: I haven’t rehearsed at all. I don’t even know how I’m going to dance. I’m not putting it all together until Sunday.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Sunday — one day before the final night. So Valentina is either very reckless or she blindly trusts in her own abilities. We ask if we can join her that day and she says yes, that she’s going to prepare at a friend’s house.

[Diego Senior]: Hi, good evening. How are you?

[Laura’s son]: Good, all good, thanks.

[Diego Senior]: Should I take off my shoes?

[Laura’s son]: No, it’s fine.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And that friend…

[Laura Martínez]: It’s discipline. That’s all it takes to win a crown. It’s not easy.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: …is Laura Martínez.

[Laura Martínez]: Nothing is easy.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Sunday in the mid-afternoon, the Martínez house is full. Several of her daughters are there doing their hair, passing the time. And Valentina, shy and nervous. And I know what you’re thinking: why is Laura helping Valentina and not the other candidates? Laura tells us she always helps out all contestants.

[Laura Martínez]: I told all of them that if they needed anything to come to me, that whatever I could do I would… But nobody called me. Nobody said, «ma’am, I need this.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She knows the reputation of her event depends heavily on the quality of the performances, so she wants to do everything she can to make sure they’re all spectacular. That said, she also knows she’s walking a tightrope. Anything she does could give the impression that she’s tipping the scales in favor of one of the candidates. That’s why she doesn’t have any of her own daughters competing in this pageant. But she also admits to us that she was the one who recruited Valentina, because she knows she has a lot of talent.

[Laura Martínez]: And she didn’t want to — she said, «no, first of all I don’t have money. Who’s going to support me? I have nothing.» So I took it upon myself because she has the projection of a queen, but she needs attitude — and also she shouldn’t have so many opinions, because she doesn’t have the experience I have. You understand?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The thing is, Laura has already seen Valentina compete. It was at a pageant a few months earlier. There, Valentina was the runner-up — she came in second place.

[Laura Martínez]: You danced beautifully, very pretty, but you didn’t move your lips. Period.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She would have won if she had done her homework and learned the lyrics of the song she was supposed to lip-sync.

[Laura Martínez]: The audience gave it to her. She has essence. She has spirit. She has a presence on the runway. She has a lot — that’s why I’m helping her, not for any other reason. Because there’s a queen here, she just needs to be polished. She’s like gold — still in the rough.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And now she wants to make sure Valentina doesn’t make the same mistake again. So that afternoon, Laura stacks all the furniture in her small living room into a corner and makes a kind of improvised stage. And there, she teaches Valentina a choreography that many other divas have used in the past. The number tells the story of a trans person with AIDS. It’s based on a song by Ana Gabriel called «Huelo a Soledad.»

In a way, it reminds us of Lady Catiria, the diva of La Escuelita we met in the last episode, who died precisely from complications related to AIDS.

The number begins like this: a trans woman is in a wheelchair, bald, near death. She tries to stand but falls to the floor. And then she looks at herself in a mirror and compares her sorrowful reflection to an old photograph of when she looked healthy and beautiful.

[Laura Martínez]: You are doing a theatrical performance. You are performing a monologue. A monologue means you are telling what happened to you, what you went through — but you have to convey that to the audience. If it doesn’t feel real, you don’t win.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The hours pass and Laura directs Valentina again and again.

[Laura Martínez]: OK, so here we are. We come wrapped in the blanket. The song starts. So listen to it — that’s when you start to act, but don’t overdo it.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Every gesture she makes must have a purpose.

[Laura Martínez]: And you’re going to look like this. You’re going to grab hold of who you are and look at the audience sideways, like this. You are furious at this wretched life. Where are you? How did you end up like this, unable to move? And then you throw yourself to the other side too. Like this, strongly. That’s it.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And she shares all kinds of tricks — for example, how to cry on stage. The secret is to put a little ointment, Vicks VapoRub, near your eyes.

[Laura Martínez]: You have to cry along with the audience, because you have no one. You are all alone.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And Laura throws herself to the floor again and again. She’s not afraid to get dirty so that Valentina understands.

[Laura Martínez]: And at the end, «ay, ay, this sun » — that’s when you throw yourself to the floor, dragging yourself, but let them see your face, do it like this, but let them see you… You are dying. «Oh, how lonely I am!» And let them see you. That is going to mean… You’re crying, you’re like this, right? And that’s where you finish. But always let the audience see your face — you, because if you’re like this… then you’re not going to convey anything. Those are the key points.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Valentina suggests some gestures and movements. She wants to show that she understands what Laura is talking about.

[Valentina]: And I look at my photo and I grab my face. And then I throw my glasses off and it’s like my legs give in, like I’m trembling and I fall back into the chair.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But the teacher loses her patience.

[Laura Martínez]: You want to do things your own way.

[Valentina]: No, they’re just ideas.

[Laura Martínez]: No, hold on — before the ideas. You are a newcomer. You have never performed a talent number. Number one, you have to listen to what I’m telling you. Don’t add things you want to do. You’re going to do what I say because you have never seen that talent performed. And I know what you need to do.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The rehearsal lasts almost three hours. And at the end we find out something: the day before, Valentina saw a TikTok from Ani, Miss Ecuador, and realized she would be performing the same number with the Ana Gabriel song. For a moment Valentina wavered.

[Laura Martínez]: She was afraid. I said, «don’t be afraid — two people can do the same song, ‘Suavecito’ or ‘Dos mujeres, un camino,’ but let’s see who does it best.» That’s even better. It’s a challenge.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: OK, it’s 10:30 at night on Monday. Tonight is the Nuestra Belleza Latina Trans 2026 final and Laura is at home, still in her pajamas, gluing rhinestones onto a dress. One by one, with tweezers, because her nails are too long. She has the patience of a saint. Or almost. Because the candidate she decided to help — Valentina — is running late to get her makeup done.

[Laura Martínez]: She may be able to win the crown but she’s not a good queen. She’s not a good queen because I’ve seen rookie girls who are very punctual and who make the sacrifice.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: When Valentina finally arrives, Laura gives her one last scolding and heads out to pick up her dress. And so we’re back to where this episode began — the moment when Hans, Valentina’s friend, starts doing her makeup and putting on the fake bald cap for her talent number. All while they recall the crown she lost a few months ago.

[Hans]: The thing is she had everything it took to win. She was the people’s queen. But since she was a beginner, her first pageant — she is not used to this scene, she doesn’t know how it works. So what hurt her was the talent category. What happened? In the talent segment, a lip sync is exactly what the name says: you have to sync your lips to the music. She put on a perfect show, she danced, she moved, she did everything — but she didn’t move her mouth. And I once did a show and didn’t know the song, and I just started saying maracuyá, maracuyá, maracuyá.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Maracuyá, maracuyá, maracuyá.

[Hans]: And nobody noticed I didn’t know the song.

[Diego Senior]: That doesn’t apply here.

[Hans]: No, not for pageants.

[Diego Senior]: Not for pageants. Also because…

[Hans]: I’m kidding, but for a pageant it doesn’t apply because there they’re watching your every word.

[Valentina]: But if I happen to forget, I could just kind of mime it — maracuyá.

[Hans]: Sure, just don’t get dizzy.

[Valentina]: A little dizzy, even just a tiny bit.

[Laura Martínez]: Cheers, cheers, cheers! To everyone, cheers!

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: True Colors. And the ultimate night.

[Laura Martínez]: Real quick: «Popeye the Sailor on his boat toot toot, screw whoever doesn’t raise a toast.» Cheers, cheers, cheers. Cheers to all, cheers everyone.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: With her toast, Laura baptizes the night.

[Laura Martínez]: Shall we begin? Here comes the best part of any pageant: talent, talent, talent, talent.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And we get to it. Talent category. First candidate: Ani, Miss Ecuador. Let’s remember she chose the same song as Valentina. But her interpretation is very different. She dances and lip syncs while drinking a beer. She staggers, stumbles across the stage as if she were drunk. Her number is clearly an allegory about the destructive power of alcohol.

Second candidate: Kendra, Miss Venezuela. She takes the floor and surprises everyone with an emotional speech about immigrant life in the United States. Definitely not the kind of talent we had in mind. And the audience’s reaction is lukewarm. But applause for her courage.

Third candidate: Valentina, Miss Puerto Rico. She enters the floor in a wheelchair, wearing sunglasses. Let’s remember her number tells the story of a trans woman with AIDS on the verge of death. The production and the performance are flawless — Laura Martínez’s mentorship shows — but what about the lip sync? She’s not saying «maracuyá maracuyá maracuyá,» but she’s not singing the lyrics either. Her lips move a little, out of sync. She’ll surely lose points for that.

And fourth candidate: Catriel, Miss Guatemala. She sits gracefully on a tall stool and lip syncs «Aunque sea en otra vida» by Ingrid Contreras. And the truth is her lip sync is incredible — her lips seem perfectly in time with the music. Will it be enough?

After the talent category, there’s a short intermission. And I head downstairs to the True Colors dressing room to catch Laura. I’ve just found out that tonight two crowns will be awarded. One for the pageant we’ve been following, Nuestra Belleza Latina. And another to represent New York in a different regional pageant, Reina de Reinas, to be held in November of this year. I ask Laura about it.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Why did you decide to have two crowns tonight?

[Laura Martínez]: Well, to keep the girls more motivated to keep competing we have to make them feel good. You understand? It’s motivation, above all. What’s the word? Motivation for the girls to keep competing, because many wanted to but didn’t have the means — the support, the financial help. The country is going through a pretty difficult moment. You know that. And for me it’s wonderful when they come to me, when they ask me for advice. And that they have to keep going. If they have problems, to help them and support them — not so much financially, but psychologically, emotionally, spiritually. Because that’s what a trans woman needs. So I love motivating them. I love giving them a little piece of advice. Not just one, but all of them.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: I’m going to come to you for advice, Laura.

[Laura Martínez]: No, no, no…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Right then and there I ask Laura to adopt me. She laughs and says nothing, so I take that as a yes. And as the newest member of the Martínez family, I head back up to the floor for the last part of the event: the candidates walk in their evening gowns, and then a member of the jury takes it upon herself to remind us what’s left before we know the final result.

[Judge]: Hello, hello, hello. OK, OK, OK. You already know who your favorites are. But please, silence, because this part is very important — the candidates need to express themselves and tell the judges… It’s going to be the same question for every single one of them, so silence, please, and listen to the question. Tonight’s question is for all four candidates: why do you want to be the next queen? One by one. They will give their answer. They will come to the center facing us. 

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Let’s hear them. First, Miss Ecuador.

[Ani Alexa Chuinda]: I feel that Trans Latin Beauty doesn’t only look out for my country — it looks out for all the countries that are here in this country. We all have a dream that, like me, we are working to make real.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Then, Miss Venezuela:

[Kendra Bracho]: I want to leave a message for the entire community. The world is not ready to see our brilliance. Remember that in a gray world, we are the rainbow. Good night and thank you very much.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Third candidate, Miss Puerto Rico:

[Valentina]: Being a queen is not just about wearing a crown; being a queen is not just about being beautiful; being a queen is about showing our principles, our values, our humility. And together, hand in hand, not walking but running in the right direction, so that our voices and our rights are heard. Thank you so much!

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And finally, Miss Guatemala:

[Catriel Gray]: I want to be a leading queen. I want to be a transformational leader, a person who fills spaces, a person who will not be distant or inaccessible; a person who arrives and carries that great weight that all of us as Latinos carry in this country. Thank you so much!

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: At last, the jury tallies up each candidate’s points, including those from last Monday.

[Laura Martínez]: Well, it’s the jury’s decision, girls. I am the producer, the director, but there is a jury — they are queens…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And Laura takes charge of reading the results. The four candidates stand at the back of the stage, giving nothing away. First comes the Reina de Reinas crown.

[Laura Martínez]: With 126 points, Reina de Reinas 2026 goes to our candidate from Venezuela!

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Kendra steps forward and smiles coyly as the sash and crown are placed on her. Now three candidates remain in the running.

[Laura Martínez]: And well, now comes a very difficult moment, truly. Please, the three girls, come forward.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: With the crown so close, Laura gives them one final lesson in what truly matters in this world.

[Laura Martínez]: And I want you, please, to be there for each other and to keep moving forward, and that there will be better moments ahead, and that you will each leave a legacy going forward. So tonight, with 138 points, the winner of this evening — we get to crown our candidate from… The winner of 2026 is… Nuestra Belleza Latina 2026 is Puerto Rico!

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Valentina. She finally lets out a small laugh and then allows the crown and sash to be placed on her. Three years ago she fled Ecuador and crossed the Darién on foot. Today she is the new queen of Nuestra Belleza Latina Trans.

Past 3 in the morning on this cold, foggy Tuesday on Roosevelt Avenue, Valentina becomes the latest heir to a movement that began more than fifty years ago at the Stonewall bar in Manhattan; at La Escuelita; and also in the bars of Queens and Jackson Heights: El Krash, Lucho’s, Evolution, Trio, and now True Colors.

This is no small thing. This is the city where Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson raised their voices for trans people; these are the streets where Lorena Borjas handed out condoms and stood up for sex workers; these are the stages where Cecilia Gentili healed her community with her stories.

And these are the celebrations where today, Laura Martínez tries to instill in a new generation of queens — newcomers from all across Latin America — the value of a legacy. And now it’ s up to them to take on that legacy and give it a future.

Long live the Queens, the Queens of Queens!

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 Sanin.

The 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 for the series are by Diego Corzo.

Product development for Las Reinas de Queens was handled by Natalia Ramírez. Digital production was by Ana María Betancourt and Óscar Luna. Lina Rincón handled the English translation.

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 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 «Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude» 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’m Rula Ávila Muñoz. Thank you for listening.

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. 

Lorena St. Cartier picks up her Parliament cigarettes pack, takes out the umpteenth one of the day, brings it to her lips, lights it, and takes a drag.

She’s Dominican and 59 years old. She’s a little tired from all the walking between visits to the bank, the market, and especially the doctor. She has a lot of back issues.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: I’ve been in this career for 30 years, dancing. And I dance on five inches, so…

[Diego Senior]: Meaning, wearing five-inch heels…

[Lorena St. Cartier]: Five inches. I don’t dance on one inch. Sneakers, never…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Three decades of dancing take a heavy toll on anyone, even more so if you do it in heels. But Lorena won’t let them go. In fact, she was wearing them the day Diego, our reporter, visited her. She also wore deep eyeliner, a blonde wig, red lips, and blue contour. She lives on the 14th floor of an affordable housing building in Corona, Queens.

[Diego Senior]: What’s that, can I see it? Oh, wow.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: That’s a calendar…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: On one wall hangs a calendar nearly half a meter wide and tall. It has photographs of several trans women posing seductively, including Lorena.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: And I got August, which is a hot month. And the clothing is provocative, it’s hot, I’m in rollers, like I’m at home…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She appears wearing red heels and a tiny sleeveless white top, torn, with her breasts almost exposed.

[Diego Senior]: Amazing, super sexy, super sexy.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: On the other side of the room, there’s a counter where trophies, crowns, old photos, and the occasional upright sex toy are piled up. Souvenirs of epic victories. Lorena has that gift all queens share: an almost infinite confidence in herself.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: You come like on a mission, you come like with a seal of what you’re going to do in life. I gave everything to this career. It cost me a lot of work, a lot of money, to achieve the position I achieved. Because I know how hard it is to carve your way through here with your bare hands.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Wrapped in the smoke of her cigarettes, Lorena doesn’t hide the pride of having earned the admiration of the greatest trans divas in New York. And of an knowing and demanding audience. She was made in another era.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: The era where there was no internet and there were no likes. So, people love me and respect me and adore me, not because they saw a little video. They lived it live. They know what it’s about.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Because Lorena hasn’t only reaped applause.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: I am the transgender woman with the most crowns in New York City regardless of any ethnicity: white, Black, Latina, Asian, none of them has surpassed me.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Something difficult to verify, but for Lorena it is indisputable.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: I have won 39 crowns. I was the queen of every bar there was here in New York, Latin ones…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And among all those bars and nightclubs, there is one that stands out in Lorena’s memories.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: There was a very famous nightclub called La Escuelita.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: On 39th Street, near Eighth Avenue in Manhattan.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: But what was the power of La Escuelita? If you wanted to be a star — not in New York, but anywhere in the United States — you had to face the audience at La Escuelita. If La Escuelita said yes, you were it. But if La Escuelita said no, you would not make a career out of this.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Our story takes us today to the New York of the 80s and 90s, very painful times for the LGBTQ+ community. But also a golden era for the art of shows and drag performance.

And the mecca of that art, where queens crowned other queens, and dethroned them, was probably La Escuelita. A place where for nearly half a century, Latino trans culture shone like never before. A place that has since disappeared and of which only memories remain.

From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, this is Las Reinas de Queens. I’m Rula Ávila Muñoz.

Episode 8. La Escuelita.

Before we continue listening to Lorena, we need to meet an old colleague of hers: a legendary drag queen.

[Ángel Sheridan]: My character’s name is Ángel Sheridan.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And the creative director of La Escuelita for almost 15 years.

[Ángel Sheridan]: I’m living here in Orlando now. But my family is from Cuba. Ever since I was very young, my dream was always to sing, dance, put on a show…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Ángel Sheridan was and is hugely talented. She studied musical theater in London and began her career in Florida in the late 80s. And word about a nightclub in New York reached her all the way there. 

[Ángel Sheridan]: Everyone would say, «oh, when you go to New York, you have to go to La Escuelita to do a show, kid. They’re going to love you there.» This and that. I always heard: La Escuelita, La Escuelita, La Escuelita, La Escuelita, La Escuelita.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She arrived in New York in the early 90s and very soon carved out a space for herself in a company called «An Evening at La Cage,» inspired by the legendary play and film «La Cage aux Folles.» They did impersonations of stars like Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Cher. That was her Broadway debut and that was how her career as a drag performer began.

One night, after the show, a man approached her. His name was Raúl de la Paz and he was Cuban. They already knew each other from Miami. But now Raúl wanted Ángel to perform at his club: La Escuelita.

La Escuelita was in the basement of a building on the corner of Eighth Avenue and 39th Street, in Manhattan. When Ángel visited it for the first time, it was a large, poorly lit and even more poorly ventilated ballroom, accessed by going down a flight of stairs.

[Ángel Sheridan]: It was nothing special. All the tables were different. The chairs were broken. The benches… Well, a disaster, right? The bathrooms… The water was overflowing from the bathrooms. It was, well, it was a disaster.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: There were leaks. There were rats. And there were cats wandering between the legs of the drag queens and performers who were putting on their shows, impersonating the big singers of the time. And there, Ángel did an impersonation of Cher.

[Ángel Sheridan]: I stepped out onto the stage and the audience came and the audience… It filled up. The entire stage where they were giving me money, putting money in my boots, and putting money in my wig, and all that. I said, «but my God, what is happening here.» I couldn’t move.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Ángel had never experienced such an intimate communion with an audience. And among all the people who approached her that night, she remembers a very old and very sick man. His name was Iván El Terrible. It was said he was Puerto Rican and had been a drag performer. He had AIDS. And he was one of the guardians of the community’s memory.

[Ángel Sheridan]: He opened my eyes to the New York scene and to the life that existed before I got there, you know what I mean?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Iván told Ángel many stories about how hard it was to be a trans Latina person in New York. And he also told her about a historic place for the LGBTQ+ community in the United States.

[Ángel Sheridan]: He lived it, he lived through all those problems, the fights at Stonewall.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Stonewall. It was a bar in the West Village of Manhattan, in the sixties. It was frequented by gay men and women, drag queens and trans people, many of Latino and African American origin.

Every so often the police would raid it. But in the early hours of June 28, 1969, when officers arrived at the venue, the people who were there   resisted and threw them out with punches, bricks, and bottles. Iván el Terrible was there. Within hours, a protest erupted that lasted six days and energized the LGBTQ+ rights movement in the United States.

But very soon, the role that trans people of color had played at Stonewall was conveniently forgotten by the white gay mainstream. And it was a trans Latina person who took it upon herself to remind the community of this injustice: Sylvia Rivera, a New Yorker with a Puerto Rican father and a Venezuelan mother. She was at Stonewall. And in 1973, during the Pride march in New York, she climbed onto a platform, grabbed a microphone, and delivered a speech that has since become historic.

[Audio de archivo, Sylvia Rivera]: I have been beaten. I have had my nose broken. I have been down in jail. I have lost my job. I have lost my apartment for gay liberation, and you all treat me this way? What the fuck’s wrong with y’all? Think about that…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: «I have been beaten, I have had my nose broken, I have been thrown in jail, I lost my job and my apartment for gay liberation. And you treat me this way?» And she added: «Without the drag queens there would be no gay liberation. We were on the front lines.»

As you can see, Sylvia deserves her own series. But what we need to know is that she, and another trans Stonewall veteran — Marsha P. Johnson, an African American woman — founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, an organization dedicated to supporting homeless trans people and sex workers.

They became mothers to many of those people. And since then, both of them are like saints to the community, just like Lorena Borjas and Cecilia Gentili.

The point is that, after Stonewall, more and more bars and clubs for the LGBTQ+ community began to open in New York. And that brings us to the second story Ángel heard from Iván el Terrible.

[Ángel Sheridan]: Why do they call this place La Escuelita? It’s the basement of a building, right? And he tells me, «oh, because this wasn’t the original location»…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Iván told her that, before La Escuelita settled definitively at Eighth and 39th, it had lived a wandering life through several Manhattan venues, fleeing gentrification and pressure from the authorities.

It all began in the 1970s. Shortly after Stonewall, a group of Latino people, including the Cuban Raúl de la Paz, wanted to open a club for the Latino gay community, a place, and here I quote, «where men could dance with men, and women with women.»

And on a corner of Broadway, in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, they found an old school for dentists that had a sign in English: «The School,» La Escuela.

[Ángel Sheridan]: So, when they opened the bar there they didn’t have the budget to put up a new sign and this and that, and they left it as it was, they kept the name just like that: La Escuelita. It was la escuelita. That’s why it’s called la escuelita.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Imagine: the venue still had the chalkboards on the walls where students had received dental hygiene classes. But now, the new Latino attendees left all kinds of love messages there. And the Puerto Rican customers, who were the majority at the time, wrote the lyrics of an old Puerto Rican children’s song: «Mi escuelita, mi escuelita, yo la quiero con amor, porque en ella, porque en ella, es que aprendo la lección.» (My school, my school I really love it, because it is there, it is there that I learn.”)

And what did La Escuelita teach? Well, when Ángel arrived in the early nineties, La Escuelita offered, above all, a life lesson. Those were the worst years of AIDS, very painful times for the community. In fact, shortly after Ángel met Iván el Terrible, he died.

[Ángel Sheridan]: So, that trauma was killing us. You’d arrive at La Escuelita and La Escuelita was… It let you — how can I put it — breathe, right? You could be who you were, the goddess you believed yourself to be, the… You know, the most beautiful boy. All of that was for the Latino audience, right? For Latino gays in New York that was — I don’t know how to tell you — a sanctuary.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: A sanctuary.

[Ángel Sheridan]: So, when we arrived at La Escuelita, it was something where you’d say, «oh, here we are. Our community. We’re listening to our music. We’re speaking our language,» you know, «we’re all together.» And it wasn’t like, «oh, I don’t like this person. I don’t like Mexicans, I don’t like those people, I don’t like Salvadorans, that they’d fight with this one.» No, no, no. There, everyone was Latino. That was our place. You know what I mean? Of course, some white folks would come, this and that, they loved the vibe and all. But that was ours, and the best of ours.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The vibe, the love, the warmth. But La Escuelita had many other things that set it apart from other gay clubs in the city. Ángel told us that on Sundays, Raúl, the owner, would offer a meal for the trans community in the area.

[Ángel Sheridan]: Everyone who had been thrown out on the street, you know, whose parents had thrown them out, who had no money, who were surviving God knows how, you know, all of them would come to La Escuelita and everyone ate at La Escuelita that day.

[Larry La Fountain-Stokes]: My experience of going to La Escuelita was one of breaking structures. having my world turned upside down.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: He is Larry La Fountain-Stokes, a Puerto Rican researcher. He arrived from San Juan to New York in 1991 to pursue his doctorate. And he set out to explore the gay bars of Manhattan. But very soon he realized that La Escuelita was different.

[Larry La Fountain-Stokes]: In American gay bars it would be unthinkable to have a table with a cake, with pastry, to bring your family, your family, your mom… Your mom, your grandmother, your aunt, your godmother. I mean, not the queer family, not the trans family. I mean your family, family.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: He was fascinated by the diversity: gay Latinos, lesbian Latinas, trans Latinos; Latinos from different social classes; Latinos of various generations and skin tones, arriving from all over the city, even New Jersey.

[Larry La Fountain-Stokes]: I think what was beautiful was the way music, art, dance, drink, — love, sex — brought us all together, right?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Of course, sometimes there were irreconcilable tensions. Sometimes the groups wouldn’t even look at each other, even while dancing to the same catchy merengue. But, according to Larry, there was a moment, at one AM, when everyone looked in the same direction for sure. Because at that hour, what made La Escuelita so famous would happen: the drag performers’ shows.

[Larry La Fountain-Stokes]: I mean, the night would stop for an hour, an hour and a half, to focus on the art of drag performance. So, at a certain point, you know they’re going to start playing the Star Wars music. And that means the show is on its way. And then, right? These spectacular things would happen that I say were like going to mass, like being in church, because those divinities would come out onto the stage from behind the curtain, and suddenly these lines of people would form who wanted to give them money, give them kisses, be hugged by the artists. So much so that the poor artists, I think sometimes it was very hard for them to lip-sync their songs and dance, because there was so much interaction with the audience. And they developed all kinds of skills in how to control the audience in order to show off, dance, lip-sync their songs, and also interact in such an intimate way with their audience who were their adorers.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And those adorers came from everywhere. For example, it was at La Escuelita where film director Pedro Almodóvar first saw a drag queen performing the song «Puro Teatro» by La Lupe. I don’t know if you’ve heard it, «Teatro, lo tuyo es puro teatro.» It’s very famous. Almodóvar made it even more iconic in his film «Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.» What I want to tell you with all of this is that the quality of the shows was extremely high.

[Larry La Fountain-Stokes]: At least in the 90s, New York was the epicenter of drag. So the drag was very, very, very, very good.

[Ángel Sheridan]: It was the best of the best. The best of the best.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Ángel again.

[Ángel Sheridan]: And if you weren’t at a level, right? at a professional level, you didn’t come to La Escuelita to perform. Not just anyone could come here. 

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We’re talking about artists who in many cases had studied theater, dance, singing. Some, like Ángel, were drag queens. And others, the majority, were trans.

[Larry La Fountain-Stokes]: It was hard to understand how she could be so beautiful, so gorgeous. How… The charisma she had, her costumes, her makeup, her hair, her jewelry, her clothes.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Imagine being able to be so close to all that beauty.

[Ángel Sheridan]: The people who came didn’t have money to pay $100 to go see a Broadway show. They didn’t have money to go to a Janet Jackson concert, to go to a Madonna concert, and so on. They’d scrape together their coins, gather their coupons and all that to come and watch at La Escualita. We were their stars.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And in those years, there were several stars who dominated the stage at La Escuelita. Their names were fabulous: Jeannette Valentino, Christina Piaget, Lady Catiria. Each one was in charge of hiring other drag and trans girls for their own shows.

[Ángel Sheridan]: So, they were in competition to see who was… «The dopest show is Jeannette Valentino’s.» «The greatest show is this one’s.» «The most incredible show is that one’s,» right? So when they performed,  –maybe didn’t pay rent that month, but when they showed up at La Escuelita, they had the best of the best. The best designer dresses, beaded gowns, feathered gowns. Well, I can’t even tell you how many stars and legends were made in that place.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And among all those legends, Ángel remembers one we met at the beginning of this episode.

[Ángel Sheridan]: The Latina diva of all divas, my God, is Lorena St. Cartier, who is still out there looking absolutely stunning, still turning the world upside down doing shows.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Lorena St. Cartier. After the break, we return with her and her deep voice, seasoned by cigarettes, rum, and endless nights.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We’re back on Las Reinas de Queens.

Lorena St. Cartier has the ability to light a cigarette, kiss it with her red lips, smoke it, and at the same time tell the stories of three people, four events, and two places — all before the first ash falls into the ashtray.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: I’m an artist, I need to smoke to create.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: When she arrived in New York in 1987 from the Dominican Republic, she identified as a young gay man. She was 20 years old, came from a Christian, conservative family. And she loved theater. In her country she studied choreography, dance, directing. And with that pedigree she sought what so many others seek when they arrive in the city: fame and work. In that order.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: I arrived and worked in every Latino theater there is in New York. All of them.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Teatro IATI, Repertorio Español… Believe me, fine places.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: I was the lead dancer at the Teatro Rodante Puertorriqueño. That’s why many people associate me with Puerto Rico. See how things fall into place?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And by now you can imagine: very soon, Lorena discovered the Latino bars and the drag shows.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: And I’d arrive at the nightclub, sit down at a corner of the bar. I went to watch that theatrical transformation, which I found unique.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Because the divas didn’t only imitate Iris Chacón or La Lupe, they were also something more, like from another dimension.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: What I want to say is that it was so impressive to me. I had never seen this in my life. I came from a Christian family, and just the fact that I danced already made me a sinner. 

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Lorena couldn’t even imagine herself as a drag performer, much less as a trans person. So she stayed in what we might call the traditional world of theater and dance. She began teaching classes. But the world of drag performers wouldn’t let her go. One day a Cuban trans girl approached her asking for help with an event. And then her own cousin, who was beginning her transition, also asked for her help.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: And I told her, «if you’re going to do it, you have to be number one, because you’re my cousin and you can’t be anything less.» So, I started putting together productions for her.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The first of those productions was at none other than  La Escuelita. They asked Raúl, the owner, for an opportunity, and he gave them a slot on Sunday, which is the weakest day of the week.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: I put together a spectacle never before seen in New York City, with 25 dancers in a gay nightclub, working with transsexuals. In the number, dancers came out dancing, jazz, voguing, dancing flamenco. And at one point in the song, we all came out. Some dancing hiphop too.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The owner of La Escuelita was impressed.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: And it was like a revolution, because all the transsexuals started to come by. 

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Lorena found, let’s say, a market niche. She realized she earned far more as a show choreographer than as a dance teacher. She admits that was her main motivation for entering the world of drag performers. And very soon she expanded her repertoire. Because at La Escuelita many beauty pageants were also held that needed talented choreographers.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: I started watching the pageants that were held that year, which were entirely for girls with breasts. It was Miss Latina Continental and Miss Manhattan Continental.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Miss Continental is to this day the most important beauty pageant for trans people in the United States. It takes place in Chicago, but in those years the New York preliminary rounds were held at La Escuelita.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: People were pressed against the wall, packed in, it was so full you couldn’t move. 

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Lorena remembers a choreography she put together for her cousin for a pageant in which they were competing against one of the great divas of La Escuelita: Christina Piaget. And faced with such a rival, Lorena sought inspiration from the hottest thing of the moment, the film «Batman Returns,» which had just been released in 1992, directed by Tim Burton and with Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: Very sensual with the… «I don’t wanna be alone…» pretty, pretty. But then my cousin came out with all the dancers. I lifted her all the way up in a lift, and that place started to crumble. Then, when Batman came out and she grabbed him… When she threw him to the floor and jumped on top of him, and gave Batman pelvic thrusts, you couldn’t hear the music anymore. But when the Penguin came out with all his henchmen at the end of the song, the place just fell apart. So, in the end, the one who had to win won: Christina.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Christina Piaget, one of the divas alongside Jeannette Valentino and Lady Catiria. According to Lorena, no talent was enough to make a place for yourself among them. Without breasts, they would never give you a crown.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: Because the transsexuals dominated the scene and they didn’t allow anyone to enter that circle. It was a closed circle like this. You can be Baryshnikov from Russia and you’re not getting in here.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But Lorena was still a gay boy, short, skinny. Dressing up had never crossed her mind.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: For me, that meant going out to make a fool of myself, because I was a choreographer and I was known as a choreographer and I was known for dancing, but in this world, where you have to go out fully done up and… I felt like I was the ugly duckling, like I was a little circus clown.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: A little clown surrounded by women with incredible bodies. But of course, as competitive as Lorena was, the barrier the divas put up for her was nothing but a provocation.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: The thing is that, well, I started to gain some confidence. You develop a taste for it, I developed a taste for it.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The first night she dressed up was for a New Year’s show at La Escuelita. Raúl, the owner, needed a last-minute emcee and asked Lorena to do him the favor. She swallowed all her Christian guilt and showed up on 39th Street in an elegant black silk dress. She performed a song from the musical «A Chorus Line»:

[Lorena St. Cartier]: «Let me dance for you…» The most unbelievable thing is that I gave it my all. And one of the best entertainers there was in New York City at that time came up to me, her name is Ginger Valdés. And she was the only person who gave me a one-dollar tip.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And while giving her that dollar she leaned in to her ear and said:

[Lorena St. Cartier]: «You’re too much for them. They can’t handle you. But in here, what you’re left with is not even a dollar.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Not even a dollar. Meaning, she made it clear she wasn’t enough and didn’t belong.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: What is a little boy dressed as a woman with a laughable wig which looks horrible on him, doing performing a New Year’s show alongside women who come out with breasts and beaded gowns? They didn’t see talent. They didn’t care about talent. They were going to see a drag show and you had to give them drag.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: It was humiliating but Lorena wouldn’t be intimidated. She kept dancing, kept dressing up. And as an ally she had someone powerful: Raúl, the owner of La Escuelita himself. He died many years ago, but according to Lorena, he changed the course of her life. Because at one of the Miss Continental preliminaries at La Escuelita, Raúl managed to break through the barrier the trans divas had built around her, the one that kept you from winning a crown if your body didn’t meet the very strict beauty stereotypes.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: The owner said, «if you don’t give one of the crowns to the little one…»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Meaning, Lorena.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: «I’ll throw you all out.» If you ask me why, I don’t know. I don’t know. But, I won one of the crowns for the first time, and that put me on the map. It put me on the map in Queens, it put me on the map in Manhattan. The queen. Lorena St. Cartier. Lorena St. Cartier, Lorena St. Cartier.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And precisely when Lorena was beginning to make a name for herself as a queen, showcasing her own talent herself instead of choreographing other girls, news spread throughout the city: La Escuelita had suddenly closed.

We’ll be right back.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Well, La Escuelita closed in the summer of 1995. It was sudden. Word is that on the last night it was open, the divas gathered on stage and sang «America the Beautiful» with the American flag displayed upside down, a powerful act of protest.

According to Ángel Sheridan, the drag queen, the reason for the closure was simple: the owner of the building where La Escuelita was located wanted to turn the basement where the club was into a banquet hall. And for that reason he did not renew the rental contract with Raúl.

And just like that, overnight, the Latino LGBTQ+ community of New York was left without one of its main spaces for socializing and making culture. The shows ended, the pageants, the family gatherings, the Sunday dinners.

[Ángel Sheridan]: Imagine that out of nowhere, without you even expecting it, they take that away from you. Where do we go now? Where are we now? Who are we?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And here,an Israeli man named Savyon Zabar, better known as Big Ben, enters the story: A New York nightlife entrepreneur who built his name managing clubs in search of the next nighttime success.

Ángel had met him while performing in the Broadway show «An Evening at La Cage.» She had also shown him La Escuelita before it closed. And Big Ben had loved it. So much so that when La Escuelita closed, he approached Ángel with a proposal.

[Ángel Sheridan]: «Look, I want to open a place like La Escuelita.» I said, «Yes, OK!»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And they started looking for venues all over the city.

[Ángel Sheridan]: Many places. We went to many, many places.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And Ángel got excited about all of them.

[Ángel Sheridan]: «It’s great,» «look, here’s where we put the stage, here the dressing room.» He says, «yes, but there’s no access here.» I say, «what do you mean there’s no access?»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Access to the subway, the train, the bus. A place like La Escuelita, in the heart of Manhattan, near the Port Authority and Grand Central stations. A place you could get to without spending much money. Months went by…

[Ángel Sheridan]: Well, around 3 in the morning one day, I’m sleeping and the phone rings. And I say, «oh, who is calling me at 3 in the morning?» I don’t pay attention and keep sleeping, and it keeps ringing, keeps ringing. I pick up the phone and, «hello, hello,» and it’s him. «What I just found out: the old Escuelita, what it is… They want to rent it out again.» «What?» «Tomorrow at 9 in the morning we have to be there first thing.» Well, I get up, we head over there, this and that. And sure enough.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The building owner wanted to rent the basement to them again. But not only that. He had renovated the entire space: the bathrooms, the kitchen. They closed the deal. And Big Ben and Ángel asked themselves, what are we going to call the club?

[Ángel Sheridan]: Then he said, «how do you say ‘new’ in Spanish?» And I said, «‘new’ is ‘nueva.’ La Nueva Escuelita.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And so they began buying pages in the city’s gay newspapers and magazines, the Village Voice, the Hotspots.

[Ángel Sheridan]: And the first thing it said was, «a New York tradition comes back.» A New York tradition returns. So everyone was waiting, everyone was waiting. The next week we put: «La Nueva Escuelita at da da da da da da da, opens on such and such day,» and so on. You should have seen it. The line went around the block and all the way to the next block. And no, no more people could get in.

[Audio de archivo, HomoVisiones, Heriberto González]: Hi, friends, my name is Heriberto and this is another program of HomoVisiones. If you don’t know where we are today, follow me.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The one speaking is named Heriberto González, a Puerto Rican journalist who was at the opening night of La Nueva Escuelita in 1996. The place had a larger stage, private dressing rooms, air conditioning, professional lighting. That night, Heriberto interviewed the attendees for HomoVisiones, a community television program focused on the Latino gay scene in New York.

[Audio de archivo, HomoVisiones, Juan]: Look, my name is Juan. But I definitely have to tell you that this is something sensational, something we Latinos needed: an elegant gay place, classy, something to admire. This is incredible. I feel lost. I don’t know where I am. I don’t recognize absolutely anything.

[Audio de archivo, HomoVisiones, Heriberto González]: Hey, sir, and how do you compare it to the old place?

[Audio de archivo, HomoVisiones, Juan]: It’s been a change from night to day, from day to night. It is something beautiful for us. We deserve it. We deserve it, that’s why we have it.

[Audio de archivo, HomoVisiones, Heriberto González]: Have you seen old friends from the old Escuelita now at the new one?

[Audio de archivo, HomoVisiones, Amalia]: Yes, many. Many of us are still here, because there are many of us who are stronger than the four letters.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Meaning, AIDS.

[Audio de archivo, HomoVisiones, Heriberto González]: Hey, sounds like you’re a little drunk.

[Audio de archivo, HomoVisiones, Amalia]: No, honey. I’m half Puerto Rican and half Cuban, so I can do anything for you.

[Audio de archivo, HomoVisiones, Heriberto González]: What do you think of the new Escuelita?

[Audio de archivo, HomoVisiones, Betty]: Well, I had the experience of being able to work at the old one, and I am completely surprised because this place is fabulous. It is completely modern. Everything is fantastic, I tell you. I think we should thank the gay community because now we have a new place where we’ll be able to come together and bring La Escuelita back to what it was before: joy and warmth among all of us Latinos.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: It was clear that La Nueva Escuelita looked different. And so did many of its newer customers, attracted by Big Ben and Ángel’s advertising campaign.

[Ángel Sheridan]: Well, what happened was that word spread and suddenly it wasn’t only a Latino place. The Black folks started coming, the hip-hop crowd; white people started coming; serious people started coming. So we couldn’t even say it was a gay bar anymore, because there was a little of everything, everything, everyone.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Ángel told us that over time even ultra-orthodox Jews started showing up, who would take off their clothes at the entrance, put them in a backpack, and come in to dance.

[Ángel Sheridan]: And I would say, «, I never thought this was going to be such an international thing, Sir»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Salsa, cumbia, and merengue began to coexist with hip-hop and music in English. Here again is researcher Larry La Fountain-Stokes:

[Larry La Fountain-Stokes]: It stopped being an exclusively or primarily Latino space and became more of an African American, Afro-Latino, and Latino space. It shifted a little toward English and less toward Spanish.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And then the celebrities started arriving: Marc Anthony, Christina Aguilera, Madonna, Sarah Jessica Parker. And well, for those who had known the old Escuelita, it was clear that on that path toward fame, something was being lost.

[Larry La Fountain-Stokes]: I don’t know if nostalgia is dangerous. I mean, I’m glad it was nicer, but I would have liked La Nueva Escuelita to have stayed more faithful in terms of it being Hispanic, Latin, its Spanish-speaking…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: So yes, La Nueva Escuelita was changing, in appearance and in clientele. But as creative director, Ángel made sure that something of its essence remained. Starting with the community of drag queens, performers, and trans girls, both those who performed and those who were regular customers looking for a familiar place where they could feel safe. And Ángel took on the role of aunt.

[Ángel Sheridan]: The big aunt of all of them. So they would come, they’d tell me «look, I want to do this,» and so on. Then I’d tell them, «look, go to this place, go to this doctor, let’s do things right.» In my dressing room — I had a private dressing room — I had a refrigerator. At one point, I had like 15 little bottles of hormones with syringes, with all that stuff.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: All while working tirelessly to make sure the quality of the shows didn’t drop.

[Ángel Sheridan]: What put La Nueva Escuelita on the map, let’s say, were the productions, the money spent on sets, the money spent on decorating the place.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She hired the divas from the old Escuelita: Jeannette Alexander, Jeannette Valentino, and Lady Catiria. And they began doing a kind of cabaret, with a whole lot of different numbers. But she also opened the doors to other artists. Among them…

[Ángel Sheridan]: Lorena. The energy, the clothes, what she did, how she presented herself. Incredible.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Lorena St. Cartier.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: People paid $25 on Saturdays to come see me, because when the others came out the audience would say, «Lorena!» And when Lorena came out, it was completely different.

[Ángel Sheridan]: She was The Latin Diva, we called her, because she was working in Queens, in all the Latino venues, right? So she already had her fans and all of them, all those people came, started coming to La Escuelita, you know, to see her.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Of course, when La Escuelita closed, Lorena didn’t waste her time. She kept working in various Latino clubs in Queens that were also part of that golden era: El Llamarada, El Lucho’s, Krash. And she kept reaping crown after crown after crown.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: People were already saying: «if she’s competing, I’m not competing.» Or, «let’s go watch her win.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She even became the first Miss Escuelita in 1998. Without breasts, something she always likes to remember.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: All the pageants I won, I won over 30 pageants, without breasts.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She had earned her place, regardless of her appearance. Perhaps one of her greatest legacies is a choreography she created that has made history.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: It’s «Perfidia» by Linda Ronstadt with a mambo dance from  the end of the film «The Mambo Kings.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: It’s a dance number that begins with a very elegant and melancholic bolero, «Perfidia.» But that then jumps suddenly  into a very fast and very sensual mambo.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: And I have seen all the transsexuals do my number. Some change the choreography a little. Others try to get as close as possible to the original choreography. In the end it is an honor, because even though there are no reserved rights or any of that, because that’s not how it works with us, it’s my number. Everyone knows it. And it’s like a trademark.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And that trademark reached the pinnacle of trans beauty pageants in the United States through Lady Catiria. Because she used Lorena’s number when she won the Miss Continental pageant in 1995. It was an enormous honor. Because — we hadn’t said this before — but among all the divas of La Escuelita, old and new, Lady Catiria was the queen. A Puerto Rican woman who began her career as an impersonator in the Latino gay bars of Jackson Heights, like our queens. And just like them, Lady Catiria was one of a kind.

[Ángel Sheridan]: Lady Catiria. Well, Lady… What can I tell you about Lady Catiria? I would watch her and I could never say, «ah, no, I didn’t like that number,» or «I didn’t like what she did,» because she had something that came from deep inside her.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: She had this charisma… A charm that was unique. She did a number called «Hot Shot»: «I need a hot shot. Hot, hot, hot, hot shot.» And the place would completely fall apart. Very sexual. She’d suck on her own breast in the middle of the number. She was unique.

[Larry La Fountain-Stokes]: My favorite, well, of all time, has always been Lady Catiria, who never spoke. She never spoke. So she danced, she lip-synced, she kissed, she hugged. But in all the years I went to La Escuelita I never heard her voice.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And well, so you can hear her, this is Lady Catiria speaking with HomoVisiones on that opening night of La Nueva Escuelita.

[Audio de archivo, HomoVisiones, Lady Catiria]: We want everyone, please, everyone who likes the show, the show business, whether they know us or not, come because you’re going to like it and you’re going to have a new place to be, to enjoy; gay, bisexual, straight, whoever wants to, because I adore you all.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: At the moment of speaking these words Lady Catiria already had AIDS, and was a spokesperson for the HIV community. But slowly her star began to fade. Until around 1999…

[Ángel Sheridan]: I remember, with a heavy heart, that the last time she performed at La Escuelita she came out to do a number, and at one point in the number she would lie down on the stage and do, you know, a whole bunch of things. People were throwing money at her, etc.. Then she would get up and, you know, walk off the stage. Well, she finished the number on the stage and she wasn’t getting up. And the audience stirred. And I told the DJ, «close the curtain, close the curtain.» And it was because she couldn’t get up. She no longer had the strength to stand up. And that was the last night she performed at La Escuelita, unfortunately. But she was there almost until the very end. That was what gave her life.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Lady Catiria died in 1999 at the age of 40 from complications related to AIDS. And La Escuelita was left without its queen of queens.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: There was no one to replace her because she was irreplaceable.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But someone had to take her place. And according to Lorena, there was only one person talented enough to do it.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: People say that I am her successor, that only she and I have been the entertainers of New York. Varied opinions. Many people say that I had the biggest career.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And the truth is that Lorena had all the talent and the track record to be Lady Catiria’s successor. In 2002 she became Miss Universo Latina USA, another very important pageant for trans women. And Ángel invited her to become one of La Escuelita’s divas. With a contract and all.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: That was my home. I would go to rehearsals from two until four in the afternoon. I’d go home to bathe, to change, to shave, and head over there at 9 PM. And I’d leave at 4 in the morning. And that was Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: That’s how she spent several years, going to Manhattan from her apartment in Queens. But around 2008, the atmosphere at La Escuelita began to sour.

The reasons are not clear. But both Ángel and Lorena agree that Big Ben, the Israeli entrepreneur, was responsible. According to Ángel, Big Ben took away the divas’ contracts to save money during the economic crisis of those years. And according to Lorena, he didn’t want to pay her the amount she was owed for performing at a New Year’s party. So she quit.

Big Ben died in 2017 so we cannot corroborate this. Ángel stayed at La Escuelita, but she no longer had creative control. And so, Big Ben began hiring for the shows very beautiful but untalented trans people.

[Ángel Sheridan]: They were all pretty. But you’d see four people doing a ballad in a thong. That’s not a show.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: That’s where the decline began. You have a show with girls with breasts, but no talent. Very beautiful, no talent. And people said, «this is not what we used to see, at all.»

[Ángel Sheridan]: Then he started hiring one who comes for $50; this one who comes for free because she wants to do a number at La Escuelita. So then you know the quality kept dropping, dropping, dropping. 

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: That was the last straw. Ángel said goodbye to La Escuelita in 2012.

That same year, the State Liquor Authority, the agency in charge of issuing alcohol sales licenses in the state of New York, revoked La Escuelita’s permit due to two minor altercations at the venue.

Big Ben filed a complaint. He argued that the authorities wanted to push La Escuelita out of the neighborhood because its customers, mostly people of color, were frightening the white tourists who were beginning to arrive at the new hotels in the area. He said, and I quote: «Minorities are no longer welcome because they don’t fit the city’s gentrification plans.» A judge ruled in Big Ben’s favor. But the liquor agency kept up the pressure. Until 2016, when La Escuelita closed for good.

Today, the nightlife of New York’s trans Latino community survives in the bars of Queens, in Jackson Heights, on Roosevelt Avenue. The ones we have visited so many times in this series.

Lorena continued her shows there, and also her transition. She finally got her breasts. Today she is also a house mother. She has her family, the St. Cartier family. She has taken it upon herself to train new generations, including her daughter Jennifer. She participates in beauty pageants around the country.

But Lorena opened up to us a little. She told us that today, the art of drag performance in New York City is not at its best. First, because there isn’t enough supply…

[Lorena St. Cartier]: I mean, if you ask me where you can find a good show, I don’t know what to recommend you.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Second, because in the bars where there are shows, some owners pay little.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: I am an artist, my work costs money. And I don’t need to be on a stage, but if I’m going to be on a stage, it’s going to be with dignity, it’s going to be with respect. And they are going to have to pay me what I deserve.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And third, because, according to her, the quality of the art is being neglected.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: If I’m not going to see a high-quality show, I don’t want to see it.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The subtlety and precision of lip-syncing, the playback, are being lost.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: What I find not so good is when they put a girl who doesn’t even know the lip-sync of the song. That’s our job! 

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And also the quality and creativity of the costumes.

[Lorena St. Cartier]: That’s the truth. And it’s sad that it has come to that, because this show has always been defined by   fantasy, creativity, feathers, and sparkle. 

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: All its life. Lorena has dedicated just that, her whole life, to this art. Perhaps that’s why she sounds so pessimistic when it comes to new generations.

Of course it hurts when time passes and so many names, so many places, that made the community what it was are lost. It’s natural that with all that past behind you, the future can only sound like decline. That’s why it’s necessary to look more closely at what the art of drag performance is today.

In the next episode we return to Roosevelt Avenue to experience, from beginning to end, one of these trans beauty pageants, where a new generation of queens will seek to lay the first stone of a new legacy.

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 from iHeart Radio.

This series was produced by Diego Senior and Pablo Argüelles with additional production and reporting by Nikol Pizarro, Joana Toro, and Andrés Sanin.

The 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 archival HomoVisiones material was provided by Gonzalo Aburto and Cándido Negrón.

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. Lina Rincón was in charge of the English translation.

Business development and strategic alliances were handled 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 «Expanding Gratitude» initiative, with the support of 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.

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.

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. 

Roosevelt Avenue. The main artery of the Jackson Heights neighborhood, in Queens. It’s a nearly straight, long avenue lined with low buildings, no more than two stories tall.

Above it run the elevated subway tracks. With their rattling and roar of steel, the trains on the 7 line set the pace  of life taking place below, on the street.

Roosevelt is a living inventory of immigrant life in Queens. Walking it is like getting lost in Quito, Caracas, Mexico City, Tegucigalpa, and Bogotá, all at once.

You have the clothing stores — «good, cute, and cheap»; the hair salons and shoe shops; the law offices: immigration lawyers, workers’ comp attorneys, tax preparers; and the international wire transfer banks and pawnshops. There are the street vendors: the ones selling weed, the ones selling corn arepas, encebollados, and birria.

And there are the more fragile traces of migrant life: small paper notices, taped to lampposts and fluttering in the wind: «woman shares room,» «rooms for rent, kids OK,» «woman looking for a responsible lady to share room rent.»

But when night falls, Roosevelt changes. The businesses close. Families head home. Restaurant lights dim, they become bars and clubs. The pulse of the music competes with the pulse of the train.

And the people who spent the day at home, resting, come out.

[Ale]: Well, I got all dressed up, you know? We were going to go dancing, have some fun.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: This is Ale, a Mexican trans woman. One night in May 2023, she went out to party on Roosevelt with her friend Jacqui.

[Jacqui]: «Get cute,» I told her, «because it’s Saturday and we’re going out so my friends can meet you.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Ale had just arrived in New York, and that night she wanted to celebrate.

[Ale]: We went into a club, we were there for a while dancing and drinking. 

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: They spent the night at True Colors, one of the most well-known bars on Roosevelt. They were there until four or five in the morning. They left and, dawn was already beginning to break, when on the corner by the club, a man approached them. And he went straight for Ale.

[Jacqui]: He starts pulling her away and she tells me, «baby,» she says, «the man wants to be with me.» I said, «OK, girl.»

[Ale]: Well mostly, it’s just that, I wasn’t working. I was just hanging out. I mean, I was really just there to have fun — working wasn’t my plan for the night.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Ale and Jacqui are sex workers. We’ve changed their names to protect their identities. And even though Ale wasn’t in the mood that night, what did it matter to spend a quick moment with a client who was offering her money?

[Ale]: It seemed easy enough to say yes. And so we ended up right there, in a corner.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: They stepped a few meters away into an alley. And the man began to touch Ale. And when he realized that Ale had a penis…

[Ale]: He got upset. I imagine that’s what happened, because that’s when he started insulting me, saying things, cursing me out.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The man demanded his money back: «My money, my money.» That’s about all she could understand.

[Ale]: I got scared. I was going to take out what he had offered me.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But the man grabbed her bag. Ale ran back to Jacqui.

[Jacqui]: She comes running. «Baby, the man took my bag.» I said, «no, pull it back,» I said, «and get over here.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The struggle continued.

[Jacqui]: But when I saw the guy yanking her bag, I saw him pull out a gun, and I scream at the girl, I said, «the man has a gun,» I said, «he’s going to kill us.»

[Ale]: And then I tried to pull my bag back and that’s when he shot me.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The shot hit Ale in the groin. Then the man fired again. He aimed at Ale’s stomach but missed. That second bullet nearly hit Jacqui and someone else who was nearby.

[Jacqui]: The second shot went right past me, by my ear — I heard it and it blew my hair back, pow.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Meanwhile, Ale was already on the ground, bleeding.

[Ale]: I just saw it like it was a dream — everything went red. I was really starting to see everything blurry, you know?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Lying on the sidewalk of Roosevelt, Ale’s dreams were beginning to slip away. All because she had come looking for refuge in New York.

From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, this is Las Reinas de Queens. I’m Rula Ávila Muñoz.

Episode 6. Three Queens, Two Shots.

So, this is the story of two bullets that wove together the lives of three women: Jacqui, Jessica, and Ale.

Let’s start with Jacqui.

[Jacqui]: I’m Mexican, 100% from Guerrero, from Acapulco, actually — from the coast. I want to be the first trans female barber in the whole world, known internationally. If it’s possible to go beyond planets, that’s my dream.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Jacqui was successful in Acapulco. She had her barbershop, and a fruit shop too. But in 2021 she left for Tijuana, the border, to cross into the United States and apply for asylum.

[Jacqui]: I was fleeing mainly from the attacks by criminal organizations that run extortion rackets. Drug traffickers who, just because they see you cutting the hair of a rival cartel member, will come after you to kill you for that alone.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Jacqui was afraid. And that’s exactly why she couldn’t wait months at the border while her asylum claim was processed, the way most applicants have to. She needed to cross now. In Tijuana she went to a shelter for LGBTQ+ people, and they told her that if she was in that much of a hurry, the fastest way across was to run — through the lanes where the cars pass. And that the best time was Sunday nights at midnight, during the border guards’ shift change.

And so Sunday came. Jacqui did her makeup, put on jeans and a t-shirt. And as midnight struck she walked up toward the line. She pretended she’d stepped out of a car to grab a last-minute burrito before crossing into the United States. That’s what she told one of the guards:

[Jacqui]: «No, I’m so hungry, papi.» «Oh, well, burritos are right over there.» «Oh, thank you, papi.» «Oh, no…» But my heart was going boom boom boom.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She made it to the burrito stand. She was about twenty meters from the border. And when she saw the border guards get distracted…

[Jacqui]: Two, three. I take off running. Ta, ta, ta.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She takes off running to the other side of the line.

[Jacqui]: And when I saw I’d crossed that checkpoint I said, «well, I’m going to run just a little bit more,» I said, «just in case, I’m not quite there yet,» right? And once I crossed, I raised my hands. 

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She raised her hands and let drop the only thing she had brought with her, a folder with all the evidence she needed to apply for asylum in the United States: photos of physical attacks against her, extortion messages, psychiatric evaluations. A few seconds after crossing, the border agents caught up to her.

[Jacqui]: They handcuffed me. I said, «no, well, it’s all right there,» I said, «I’m here to ask for help.» I could barely breathe from all the running. And then they brought me an oxygen tank, a wheelchair…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The protocol was set in motion for Jacqui to apply for asylum. They took nail, hair, and saliva samples. They photographed her and took her fingerprints. And they asked her for an address in the United States — a requirement for applying for asylum. Jacqui gave them the information from a friend of hers who lived in the Bronx.

At that moment, everything felt unreal. Just a few years earlier she had been in prison, accused of assaulting a client while doing sex work. She’d spent 8 years locked up. And there, in her cell, she had often had a dream that now, flying toward New York, was coming true:

[Jacqui]: I always saw New York on TV. And one day there was a story about Jenni Rivera and Jennifer López — how they started out, how they made it, the Diva de la Banda, the queen of the Bronx. I was with my boyfriend because I had a boyfriend there. We were lying down and I said, «look, one day I’m going to be in New York too.» And I said, «I’m going to be the queen of Queens» — the queen of Queens, right?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: When Jacqui arrived in New York, her friend connected her with a lawyer and with a clinic called Betances Health Center.

There she received psychological support and HIV treatment. Jacqui is HIV-positive. And they also found her a place to sleep at a shelter for trans people. New York was truly a refuge. There, Jacqui was finding all the help she had never received in Mexico. And perhaps for the first time, she could think about her future without being afraid. She had big plans. First she wanted to sharpen her skills as a barber.

[Jacqui]: I consider myself an expert with scissors, with a straight razor, don’t even get me started, because in prison I started doing lines all by hand with a razor and nothing else, because inside there are no clippers, there’s nothing.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She dreamed of competing in the barber competitions held across the United States. And she also wanted to prove people wrong.

[Jacqui]: Like killing stereotypes: one, age — that there are mature people out there with real experience, quality, and passion. And the other: she’s a trans woman, and you’re not going to find her on a street corner or an escort page; you’re going to see her on barber pages, you’re going to see her in lifestyle pages.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But all these dreams came at a cost, especially in a city as expensive as New York. And even though Jacqui did have access to many services for trans people, she didn’t speak English. And very soon she discovered that transphobia existed in that city too.

[Jacqui]: So you go to ask for work and the moment they see you, even if the sign says «now hiring»: «oh no, the job isn’t available anymore.» Or, «call that number.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Not long after arriving at the trans shelter, Jacqui had barely $5 to her name. And she said to a friend she’d made there:

[Jacqui]: They say there’s a place called Roosevelt.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Roosevelt Avenue.

[Jacqui]: Let’s go check it out. And she said, «okay, let’s go.» And we went with those $5 to stand there. And that’s how we started. That night we made enough to eat. The next day we went back, and we just kept going to work.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: To do sex work. And even though Jacqui had been doing it since she was 14 in Mexico, going back to the street and putting up with all kinds of clients…

[Jacqui]: Do you think one feels like doing that? Do you think I enjoy it?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: It’s never easy.

[Jacqui]: We, we trans women. I’m going to speak specifically about us. We lack affection. We lack empathy, and we lack people’s trust. That’s why the first thing we turn to is prostitution.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Jacqui knew sex work was illegal in New York. But she didn’t care.

[Jacqui]: My hunger was illegal too. I have to make money to feed myself.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: With that hunger, Jacqui stood on Roosevelt over the following weeks. Well dressed, made up, a forced smile on her face.

[Jacqui]: Because we’re tired of showing people our sad face. We’re tired of showing people that, that, that… That exhaustion. Prostitution isn’t what people make it out to be. Prostitution is the living hell you go through. How many of my friends have ended up dead in the middle of a street, in a hotel — dismembered, strangled? How many has this happened to inside a car? How many are in prison? It’s your word against a system that is also against you. The justice system, the police system. All of it is against you because you’re a prostitute.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The months went by. And Jacqui managed to settle down in New York. With each client, she could make between $150 and $200 dollars. She moved into an apartment. Then she found work at a barbershop.

And one day she got a call from the shelter where she had stayed in Tijuana. They asked if she could lend her New York address to other trans asylum seekers who were HIV-positive. And Jacqui said yes. She felt the obligation to help.

The girls started arriving from Tijuana. Some of them stayed with Jacqui. And they started calling her «mother.»

[Jacqui]: Because I gave them a roof, I gave them food, I gave them a place to sleep. I gave them all of that.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And among them was Ale, a friend of Jacqui’s. Years earlier, they had crossed paths as sex workers in Mexico City.

To celebrate her arrival in New York, they went out one night to Roosevelt. And that’s where Ale was shot. In the chaos that followed — Ale on the ground, bleeding, bystanders gathering, screaming — Jacqui started recording with her phone.

[Bystander]: They just shot at us.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: In the video, there’s a police officer, trying to make sense of what happened.

[Bystander]: It just grazed me, but her — they got her…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And then Jacqui calls an ambulance.

[Jacqui]: Hey, ambulance…

[Officer]: It’s on the way…

[Jacqui]: I lost it. I mean, she lived at my place, can you imagine? I lost it and started screaming at everyone: please, someone help me call an ambulance, the police. While a guy helped me revive her, because I could see Ale was bleeding a lot.

[Officer]: Can you back up?

[Jacqui]: No, she’s my friend, she stays in my home.

[Officer]: Ok, the ambulance is right here.

[Jacqui]: I went into shock, shock, shock. Because we came fleeing from over there and then to get here to live the same thing…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: In an instant, so many things she’d lived through in Mexico came flooding back: when she was kidnapped in Acapulco, when they pointed a machine gun at her.

[Jacqui]: They’re here for you. Easy, baby.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The ambulance arrived and they took Ale.

[Jacqui]: She went to the hospital, I wanted to get in the patrol car. They wouldn’t let me, they pushed me away. I said, «where are they taking her?» «I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know…»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: So Jacqui did the only thing she could: she started asking for help on social media and called every trans organization she’d come across since arriving in New York.

And like that, not knowing  what had happened to Ale, she went home.

[Jacqui]: I felt guilty about everything.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She couldn’t stop thinking: one, what she would tell Ale’s family.

[Jacqui]: Two, why did I take her out? Because she got shot. Three, why couldn’t I have taken her somewhere else?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She tried to sleep.

[Jacqui]: When I came out of my shock, it was around eight in the morning, nine in the morning, and Jessica called me.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And she — Jessica — had found Ale.

We’ll take a break and be right back.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We’re back on Las Reinas de Queens.

Alright, two shots fired on Roosevelt Avenue, and three trans women bound together by that moment. We’ve already met the first one, Jacqui. Now it’s her turn:

[Jessica Guamán]: Well, my name is Jessica Guamán, I’m from Ecuador.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Jessica belongs to an indigenous community in southern Ecuador: the Cañari.

[Jessica Guamán]: Who are very Catholic. Obviously they were never going to accept me there.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She arrived in New York in 1995, at 14 years old. And soon she was already going to the bars on Roosevelt.

[Jessica Guamán]: When I walked into the club, I I said, «oh, there are so many people. So many gay guys kissing each other. Lesbians. So many beautiful trans girls.» I’d look at them and think, «ah, I want to be like her.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: That’s when she began her transition.

[Jessica Guamán]: It was a beautiful experience, I can say that, because you really think, «oh my god, I’m taking hormones, my nipples are growing. My skin is changing. It feels different. My hair grows faster.» And all the changes you notice every day… I’m more feminine.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She went through the process slowly, to avoid criticism from her family and also out of caution. She didn’t want to draw too much attention at work. Until she decided to get breast implants. It was around 2002. Jessica was a waitress at a restaurant in Central Park. She knew she was good at her job, so when the time came to get the implants, she didn’t think anyone would have a problem with it.

[Jessica Guamán]: I thought they were going to accept me, you know? Because it didn’t make me less, or my breasts weren’t getting in the way, and I also don’t think it changed anything, me working there as a trans woman, right? Because I was still going to work, because I’ve always done that, right?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And yes, the owner told her she was a good waitress…

[Jessica Guamán]: But that I couldn’t work like that. Obviously, he was transphobic. So, well, he told me I was fired. And obviously, since I didn’t know my rights or any of that, I just said, «okay.» For six months I didn’t work. I already had my breast implants. Then a friend tells me, «you know what? Let’s go look for a job.» I applied to a lot of places. I had experience working in the kitchen and everything. But they never hired me, obviously, because I was now a trans woman. Nobody wanted to take me on. They always said they were going to call and they never called.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And that discrimination, and the lack of money, pushed her into sex work.

[Jessica Guamán]: I was inexperienced. Sometimes, for example, I didn’t know how to do the job. And at the end of the day, feeling dirty, or feeling like you had to do things you didn’t want to do — out of obligation or necessity — yeah, it’s really hard.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She started walking Roosevelt Avenue, like other Latin trans sex workers. Jessica remembers that back then, around 2007, she knew about 20 or 30 of them.

[Jessica Guamán]: There were very few of us Ecuadorians. We were really only about four. Most of the trans population was from Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Many of them had also run into transphobia when they arrived in the city, and that had pushed them onto the streets of Jackson Heights. But those streets were already occupied by women who had come much earlier: the Puerto Ricans.

[Jessica Guamán]: A lot of the Puerto Rican women would always tell us we didn’t have papers. I mean, back then, for example, they were the ones who treated us badly.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: They mocked their appearances. Jessica says the Puerto Rican women did have papers. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory. So they would call immigration to have the newcomers deported.

[Jessica Guamán]: We were the undocumented ones. We were the ones who weren’t supposed to be there. So there was always an attack. There were always fights among us.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But these territorial conflicts were nothing compared to the harassment from the police.

[Jessica Guamán]: The police never left us alone. The moment you were arrested, they already knew your legal name. They would shine flashlights, spotlights on us. «You know what? Alberto, Luis, Juan, go home.» Or they would humiliate us in the street.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The history between the Latin trans sex worker community and the NYPD, the New York City Police Department, is full of episodes of abuse. From calling the women by their deadnames — that is, their birth names — to detaining them, beating them, and sexually abusing them.

In such a hostile environment, Jessica and her friends looked out for each other in different ways. First, none of them would undercut the others.

[Jessica Guamán]: We had a rule that we all charge the same rate. So, for example, no one could charge less.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And when it came to the police, the first rule was to keep moving. Back then there was a law in New York aimed specifically at sex workers that prohibited them from standing still.

[Jessica Guamán]: Because if we stood on a corner, we obviously knew we were going to get hassled. So I think all of us — all of us — knew we had to keep moving.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Moving through the street with their eyes wide open in case there was a patrol car. And to communicate with each other…

[Jessica Guamán]: [Whistle]

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: They would whistle to each other.

[Jessica Guamán]: For example, we already knew that if someone whistled three times, there was a problem. And if it was just once, we had to leave. So obviously everyone would pass it along, right? And we’d all go. «No, the police are here. Let’s go.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: When a client approached, they couldn’t let their guard down either, because it could always be an undercover cop. So they’d size the person up carefully: their clothes, their eyes, their words. And one of the first things they’d do was try to touch the client, for the simple reason that an officer couldn’t allow himself to be touched while on duty.

Another rule: if they were arrested, the best thing was not to resist, because in court that could be used against them.

Jessica worked like this for nearly five years. At first on the street, and over time from home. She advertised in newspapers and on websites: «sexy trans girl, new in the neighborhood.» It was more comfortable and safer than going out.

And so, one night in 2010, a client called. He wanted to see her.

[Jessica Guamán]: So I was already waiting. He came, came in. He didn’t let himself be touched. And then over the radio he said, «it’s on the third floor.» At first I thought he was a robber, right? So then when seven police officers walked in, I thought, «oh!»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: It all happened in seconds. One of them threw her to the ground.

[Jessica Guamán]: He pushed my head into the floor four times. So, of course, my lip got split open.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: They handcuffed her hands and feet and took her to jail, to the men’s section.

[Jessica Guamán]: Well, imagine. I had my implants, my long hair. And a row of cots, in one big room…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She spent four days cut off from the world, thinking she could be deported at any moment. Meanwhile, her family couldn’t find her. They were searching under her name, Jessica, but in jail she was registered under her deadname. Until they finally found her. And her partner managed to pay her bail, around $700.

[Jessica Guamán]: Then the trial began. With terrible charges against me. Obviously that I had attacked them, that I had broken their phone, that I had resisted arrest.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Something that, let’s remember, Jessica and the other women knew they should never do. The trial lasted six months. With help from an organization called Make The Road, which provides legal support to migrants, Jessica managed to be acquitted of almost all the charges, including prostitution. She was only sentenced for «disorderly conduct,» and had to complete 72 hours of community service.

But, in turn, she decided to sue the city of New York and the officers who arrested her.

[Jessica Guamán]: I sued them for the violence I experienced. Then they started trying to mediate, asking if I wanted money. I said no. «I don’t want money,» I said, «because nothing — nothing makes up,» I said, «for the suffering I went through.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: There was a second trial. In the courtroom were Jessica and all the officers who had detained her that night, including the one who threw her to the ground and beat her. The judge began to examine the NYPD’s claims that Jessica had attacked them.

[Jessica Guamán]: «Ok, she attacked you. Were you hurt? Bring me the medical record. Where is it?» «Well. I didn’t go to the hospital.» «Ok. Leave the room.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: He questioned them one by one. It was clear there was no evidence against Jessica.

[Jessica Guamán]: And that’s it, that’s how I was acquitted of everything.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But after going through two lengthy trials, Jessica was exhausted.

[Jessica Guamán]: That’s when my life changes, when I start to see the reality of what we live through, we trans women; how hard it was for all sex workers to endure the police’s persecution.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Jessica left sex work and turned her life toward her community. Around 2009 she began volunteering for Make The Road, the organization that had supported her through the trials. Then in 2012 she started working at Betances Health Center, the clinic that supports trans people with HIV. And in 2018 Jessica founded Hope TGNC Latinx, an organization that helps newly arrived Latin trans people in New York.

[Jessica Guamán]: We have brought… We have helped many sisters who were in Texas, in Arizona, living on the streets.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And she has connected them with various services and supported them in legally changing their names and continuing their transition processes.

All of this has led many of those people to call her mother, and a family has formed around her. Jessica has a WhatsApp group chat with more than 350 trans people in New York. And it was in that chat that, one early morning in 2023, a piece of news began to circulate: a trans girl had been shot on Roosevelt. Ale.

[Jessica Guamán]: It was very hard, because a lot of the girls saw it.  They were all calling me: «what happened, Jessica?»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Speculation about why Ale had been shot spread quickly.

[Jessica Guamán]: Was it because she was feisty, or what could she have been doing..

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Jessica started calling the hospitals near Roosevelt. But she didn’t have Ale’s legal name. She decided the best thing would be to go to each one in person and ask if there was a trans girl there with gunshot wounds. First she went to Elmhurst Hospital, the closest one to her home and just a couple of blocks from where Ale was attacked. She walked into the emergency room and said she was a worker from Betances Health Center.

[Jessica Guamán]: I said, «I’m from Betances. We have a patient who was shot this morning and I need information.» So they started checking and said that yes, there was a gunshot victim, and asked me, «what was her name?» I didn’t know her first or last name. Then, when they let me through, I could see it was a trans girl.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: It was Ale. She was lying down, conscious, with a look of deep pain on her face. But when she saw Jessica, she smiled.

After the break, her story.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Hello again. I think it’s time we really get to know Ale. She told us her story in scattered fragments, across several interviews over the course of a few months.

[Ale]: I’m a girl from Guerrero. From Tijuana they helped me cross over here…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The first time we met her was at Betances Health Center, the community clinic where Jessica works. She helped her get health insurance to cover the emergency room costs. And at Betances she received full medical and psychological support in the days following the attack.

A few weeks had passed. Ale still looked fragile. She told us almost right away that she had already been a sex worker back in Mexico.

[Ale]: Because they don’t offer us any other kind of work. They don’t let us be free.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But from the start she made two things clear. First:

[Ale]: Honestly, prostitution, for me, is not something shameful. On the contrary, it fills me with… We are strong women, because not just anyone can face that world.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And second:

[Ale]: I really love painting. I’ve been painting since I was little.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Ale arrived in the United States seeking asylum. First she went to Atlanta, in the state of Georgia, because a niece of hers lived there — also trans.

[Ale]: But in Atlanta there are really no opportunities for us. All the girls I met there told me the laws there are very transphobic.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: As if that weren’t enough, five months after Ale arrived in Atlanta, a piece of news shook the city’s trans community: two sex workers had been murdered. Around that time, a lawyer told her she’d be better off applying for asylum in New York, a sanctuary city. And so she did.

She arrived in New York, stayed with Jacqui… And just days later, she was attacked on Roosevelt Avenue. It was the worst possible welcome.

But even so, the first time we saw her she didn’t seem to want to leave.

[Ale]: Honestly, it’s wonderful. I don’t know — being here. It’s like another life, another world. And with everything they’ve given me, the support they’ve shown me, I really have felt very loved.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We saw Ale a second time, a month after the attack. She told us more about her life in Guerrero. She comes from an indigenous family. She had 10 siblings. And even though they were poor, Ale remembers being happy.

[Ale]: I used to draw in the dirt because back then there was no money for a notebook or anything like that.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She drew the sea, ships, birds… Sometimes her mother would hit her and tell her to act like a man. But Ale never hid who she was.

[Ale]: I never hid inside a shell. In that sense I was always brave, because even though they hit me and all of that, I didn’t care. I kept on being myself. Until one day I just couldn’t take it anymore.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She fled her hometown at 13. She ended up in Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero, where she cleaned bathrooms at a cantina, and then moved to Mexico City. That’s where she met Jacqui, doing sex work. Sometimes she’d go back to her hometown but she could never last long there. And that wandering life brought her all the way to New York.

[Ale]: It’s a lot of transition, honestly. Right now it’s really hard, going from one place to another and not having — like, not being settled… I feel kind of lost right now, I don’t know. Hopefully, I don’t know, maybe my life will take root somewhere, right? Like my shoes will finally stop walking, because honestly I’m tired too.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The third time we saw her was three months after the attack. Sometimes the fear would wash over her — that the man who attacked her would find her again and kill her. With Jessica’s help, she was receiving psychological treatment.

[Ale]: I really do need it quite a bit, because I have been feeling a little off in my head. I don’t know. I’ve been a little sad. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I feel like screaming. And honestly, sometimes now… Like, I was scared to go out on the street much, even during the day. I don’t know. I kind of want to shut myself in here, stay locked away. I have honestly thought about going back to my country, right? That too. And at the same time, no. But that’s where I am right now — at a kind of crossroads. Whatever has to happen will happen. I mean, it doesn’t worry me as much anymore — whether I go or stay. I don’t know. I really just don’t care anymore.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But despite everything, she knew that in New York she had found a community that had given her legal, medical, and psychological support…

[Ale]: In my country there’s no help like that. None of it. And here, well, there are various groups where you can meet up, talk about your things… Where you can find something like sisterhood.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Our last interview was five months after the attack.

[Ale]: Winter is coming now, it’s getting really cold. You have to pull out the warmest coats, or buy them, because you know how it is…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Ale had moved to the Bronx and sounded much better. She opened up more with us. She had gone back to doing sex work on the street.

[Ale]: During the day I have to rest. I have to rest a lot before going out, get myself mentally ready, but also be strong; kind of clear my head. Sometimes I have a little tequila, right? To work up the courage and head out. To get to it.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But beyond the work on the street, Ale was also returning to her true passion: painting. She told us Jessica had invited her to make a piece for a group exhibition, in commemoration of the trans community members who had died from HIV-related complications.

She showed us the painting. It was small. On a beach full of palm trees stood a figure, without a mouth. She told us it represented her earlier life, in Acapulco. And her brother, who died from HIV.

At the end of the interview we asked her how she imagined her future now. And she told Diego, our reporter:

[Ale]: Well, I’ll tell you: with lots of children. With lots of children, married to a lumberjack. But no, no. Let’s try again… Okay, my future, I imagine it… Being a great artist, having lots of art exhibitions, having a separate job. If it’s possible, being in a loving relationship. Having a permanent home, not wandering back and forth. And having good health, more than anything.

[Diego]: Dear Jessica, we’re here with music in the background today on a very important day. What day is it, what are we doing today? What’s happening?

[Jessica]: Well, today, December 1st, is International Day Against HIV/AIDS, and also…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: In December 2023, Diego attended the group exhibition we mentioned earlier. There he found Jessica, wearing a light blue sequined dress. And he asked her about Ale’s painting.

[Diego]: You’ve been there from day one. What have you seen? What has she told you? And is it a real process, seeing her painting exhibited here today in front of everyone?

[Jessica]: It absolutely is. It really is something so big, right? Because when we immigrate, we start from scratch. And I’m truly happy that she is part of us, and that now she’s also showing her painting here at our event.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Then Diego found Ale, and finally she looked radiant.

[Ale]: Everyone has art in them. Everyone knows how to make art. You just have to pull it out from your heart, and that the  eyes… You can see it with your eyes and paint it with your hands, and that’s all.

[Diego]: You’ve been living in New York for a while now. It’s been a strange experience: ups and downs, changes. How has it been, and now seeing your art exhibited here?

[Ale]: Well, living in New York for me has honestly been up one moment, down the next. Everything that’s happened to me feels like a movie. I feel like the main character of my own film, because I’ve really lived it so fast in the time I’ve been here. Good things have happened to me. Really good things. Bad things too. But here we are, alive, and that’s what matters.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The attack Ale suffered on Roosevelt was an extreme case of the dangers trans sex workers face in Queens: robberies, beatings, assaults, and territorial conflicts. These are the things that can most often happen to them during their working hours. All while others debate the future of that work from desks, homes, and podiums.

On the next episode…

[Monserrate]: No one should think that the only work they can do is sex work.

[Protesters]: We’re not intruders. We are trans women and we are furious!

[Liaam]: But the problem isn’t the sex workers. The problem is the inequality that exists in a city that tells you, «yes, we are here to protect all New Yorkers.» But, what about us? Are sex workers not part of that plan? Or are we simply the problem you’re trying to eradicate? Do you forget that we also have rights?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: 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.

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 graphics and art direction for the series are by Diego Corzo.

Product development for Las Reinas de Queens was led 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 «Spreading Love Through the 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’m Rula Ávila Muñoz. Thank you for listening.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Hello, a warning before we begin: this series contains sensitive content including violence, drugs, and sexual language. We recommend discretion.

After the funeral of Cecilia Gentili at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral; after the Archdiocese of New York said the event was an insult to the Catholic faith and that the audience’s behavior was «scandalous»; after a «reparation mass» was held… On a rainy day in February 2024, the whores returned to Saint Patrick’s to protest. But this time, the doors weren’t opened for them.

[Liaam Winslet]: We are not going to stay silent, and even if it’s hard, even if they try to silence us, we will not back down. This is the moment to make history, my friends. Sex workers deserve the same rights. Sex work…!

[Protesters]: …Is work!

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The one speaking and shouting is Liaam Winslet, director of the Intercultural Collective Transgrediendo. We’ve met her before. She was Lorena Borjas’s right hand and the one who called Cecilia «Saint Cecilia, mother of all whores.» Liaam led the protest in front of Saint Patrick’s.

[Liaam Winslet]: I, as a community leader, see every day how a hypocritical and moralistic society is scandalized by the word «whore.» But the word «whore» means powerful, unique, transcendent, and authentic. That is how we sex workers define ourselves.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But, as so often happens in New York, the scandal came and went. The echo of the voices that shouted «Cecilia, Cecilia, Cecilia» that day at the funeral dissolved into the hum of the city.

But if we turn our backs to Saint Patrick’s and walk a few blocks towards southeast Manhattan, we’ll reach Grand Central, the station where several subway lines converge: the S, the 4, the 5, the 6, and the 7. If we get on a train on this line toward Queens, we’ll reach the second-to-last stop, Mets–Willets Point. There, in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, near the Mets baseball stadium and the US Open tennis courts, we’ll find the Queens Museum.

There, on Tuesday, April 7th of this year, we gathered with the community of trans Latina sex workers from Queens to celebrate the launch of the series we are listening to. And to honor their legacy.

That is why, in this special episode marking the halfway point of Las Reinas de Queens, we want to share with you what we experienced that night in front of more than 100 people.

We will hear from Liaam, heir to Lorena Borjas’s collective; from Cecilia Gentili’s children who continue to expand the theatrical legacy of this queen. Also, a new story about Cecilia, and a speech from the mother of a house that continues to thrive despite the decades.

We will hear, in short, a celebration at the living heart of our kingdom.

From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, this is Las Reinas de Queens. I’m Rula Ávila Muñoz.

Episode 5. Another Tuesday in Queens.

[Rula, live]: And now I’d like to invite to the stage…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We began that evening by talking with Liaam, director of the Intercultural Collective Transgrediendo, founded by Lorena Borjas.

[Rula, live]: Welcome, Liaam. Thank you so much for being here. We are very, very happy to have you here, and to have another space where we can chat for a bit. 

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We had just heard the trailer for this series, where Lorena is heard saying this:

[Lorena Borjas]: I’m going to get wherever I need to get to like a bitch — fight with claws and nails…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: So we started there.

[Rula, live]: What do you feel when you hear Lorena say these iconic words of hers? «I’m going to fight like a bitch.»

[Liaam Winslet]: Well, that we’re all bitches. No, I think one of the things that causes me a lot of nostalgia, really… Talking about Lorena is hard for me, it’s still hard for the community, truly, because you ask yourself, like, why does it keep happening to us — to women and trans people and sex workers — that we lose our sisters? On top of the loss of another friend like Cecilia, right? These are things where you say, like, why one thing after another, why do we keep losing people from our movement? But it also leads us to a reflection, right? As a community, to understand that this is the moment to know that resistance depends on all of us — trans people, queer people, non-binary people. To value more the struggle of those who paved that way, right?

[Rula, live]: Speaking of that, I’d like to know — beyond the work done with the Collective and with the collectives and forms of activism that Cecilia and Lorena started — in what other ways can we keep their legacy alive?

[Liaam Winslet]: By supporting those who are paving the way, right? It makes me very happy to know when, for example, a trans woman is at a spot that for years we were told trans women couldn’t occupy, right? It has made me very happy to see how many friends from our community who have been and are sex workers have evolved. Many of us. And knowing that they are in those places to raise their voices for us also allows us to have an impact on those others who have always believed they won’t be able to achieve what they’ve been told: you can’t do this, you can’t accomplish that. Many times people told me, «trans women and immigrant sex workers will never be able to lead an organization.» And when someone tells you that, it’s harsh, because that’s when you say, «but why wouldn’t I be able to?» Why? Maybe because I don’t have a college degree, maybe because people don’t understand that trans women don’t drop out because they want to, but because doors are closed to them. Keeping Lorena’s legacy alive is not only about fighting against the system, it’s also about fighting against all those people who always told us we’re not capable. And it has been hard. It has been very hard. Just as I have known stories of trans friends, for example, who have been removed, who have been… How do I put it? Fired from a job, simply because maybe the project ended, maybe you don’t meet our expectations, or maybe we just put you there so people can see we have a trans person here. But that is not the goal; it’s about maintaining and providing opportunities to the community because they deserve it, because it’s a right. But it doesn’t always happen. Sometimes we have to beg after having survived so many difficult situations.

[Rula, live]: Is there any advice that Lorena gave you at some point that you carry with you today?

[Liaam Winslet]: I never forgot when Lorena wrote to us and said something like, «pájara, I don’t know what’s going to happen. These girls are going to be left alone. We’re going to have to figure out how to help them.» I’ll never forget the image from the call I had with her when she was in the hospital, and she was saying, «we have to figure out how to help the girls and find food and do…» And I was like, «Lorena, first recover fully and then we’ll figure out what to do.» But I never thought it would be the last call. But there are endless things I still remember about her. Sometimes I watch a lot of her documentaries and the things she says. Sometimes I listen to her voice messages. I still have her voice messages — WhatsApp messages, text messages. So I listen to them. It’s like… It’s like this moment to, I don’t know, connect with her too.

[Rula, live]: And… because you were also close to Ceci, in one way or another, being activists and everything. But for the people who didn’t get to know her, who didn’t get to know Cecilia personally — can you tell us a little about Cecilia Gentili?

[Liaam Winslet]: Look, Cecilia was a perfect complement. This was like a gang, honestly. The whores’ gang, truly. And I remember when I joined Lorena and Cecilia’s gang, it was exciting. I remember that when… In 2014, when we started talking about wanting to create an organization for the immigrant community in Jackson Heights, in Queens, to be led by Lorena, it was something unthinkable. But when we talked about it with Cecilia, Cecilia was like, «no, yes you can, let’s do it.» And Lorena and I were like, «ah, yes, let’s do it, we have to write…» Cecilia always told us: «take note of everything, make copies of everything, don’t just leave things like that because later we have to review all that happens.» And so it was that in 2015 the Collective was established. Cecilia was one of our driving forces along with Lorena so that we could maintain this space, right? Lorena’s dream was to have a space, a community center like the one we have now — but she never got to see it — because she always used to say, «imagine having a space like this. Imagine the girls coming to get food.» I mean, these were things that trans experience and most of us as immigrants live through, right? We know how hard it is to access food. We know how hard it is to not have a safe space. Many trans women still have to be out on the streets during the day because they don’t know where to go. There are no safe places, where they can provide you with that space, where you can go and talk and meet other trans people who maybe have the same stories. So the Collective has become that — a space that began as a dream with Lorena, Cecilia, who helped us so much. I remember so well that after her death, well, everything was going to just stop there, and Cecilia was the one who told us: «no, we’re going to keep going. We’re going to keep going. We have to keep doing it. Let’s keep alive the legacy of this old whore, Lorena.» And that was it. That is how we keep this legacy alive.

[Rula, live]: What was it like going out with Lorena? And I don’t know if Cecilia would join you at night when you went to hand out condoms and visit the girls to check in on them. 

[Liaam Winslet]: Going out with Lorena meant helping her carry her car. Who here that knew Lorena ever lifted Lorena’s car? That was her office. I used to tell her, «Lorena, that’s a desk, a filing cabinet.» It was everything. But walking with Lorena in the street and distributing condoms was an adventure. It was a story where time… You’d look at the time and it was already four or five in the morning, and you’d say, «we’re still out here,» because Lorena would take you along for the ride, right? And it was exciting because she always looked for ways to connect us with the community, but also so that others out there would know we were there for them, that they would feel accompanied, right? I remember that Lorena was one of the driving forces behind getting organizations to go out to the streets to do HIV testing, because for many of our sisters it felt complicated and difficult… One of her phrases was: «Liaam, they have to understand that for whores, day is night and night is day. So you can’t expect a comrade to go get an HIV test between  9am and 5pm. It’s impossible, she’s never going to go.» So what Lorena did was exactly that — bring the syringes to where they already were, bring the HIV tests, connect the girls to set a clear date to go to their hormone treatment or see the doctor.

[Rula, live]: Is there any memory that stays with you, something specific about Lorena and Ceci, something that comes to mind right now?

[Liaam Winslet]: That you must not give up. That despite the circumstances and adversities, we have to stay alive. And for me that is also important: seeing new generations, seeing new sisters, because at some point I was there too. At some point I also fought, but there comes a moment when you say, «we have to make room, we have to allow… We have to let them also face the battles we are still seeing.» I mean, there are many situations that still keep us here, resisting and showing resilience in the face of all these difficult situations.

[Rula, live]: How beautiful. Thank you so much, Liaam. A big round of applause for Liaam Winslet, please!

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We’ll be right back.

[Viento]: Good evening everyone. I am Viento.

[Oscar]: My name is Oscar, Cecilia’s daughter, and we are here to share a little about her, about her legacy…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: After the conversation with Liaam, it was time to hear from two people we met in the previous episode: Oscar and Viento, Cecilia Gentili’s children. She is Oscar.

[Oscar]: Cecilia was a matriarch and architect of a constellation of much love, support, and resistance.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: They remembered her beyond her activism and beyond being Saint Cecilia, the mother of all whores.

[Oscar]: And she would want people to remember that she was very sexy. Very sexy. And to recognize her not only as this concept, this idea. She was very human, complicated.

[Viento]: Funny. Yes, very funny. I feel like she also used humor a lot to get through everything that happens to us, right?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And they introduced another of Cecilia’s children and an incredibly talented artist who in recent years has been in charge of keeping her legacy alive in theater: Chiquitita.

[Oscar]: Chiquitita was born and raised in Queens.

[Viento]: She is an incredible artist. And we leave the stage here for her to come and dazzle you. Thank you very much. Good night.

[Oscar]: Good night.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And she, Chiquitita, presented us with a fragment of the play «Red Ink.»  

[Chiquitita]: I am an atheist, but I have received calls from God many, many times…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: «Red Ink» was written in English, and Chiquitita’s performance was in that language. But we thought it would be nice to use this space to get to know Cecilia better, during one of her darkest times.

To tell this story, here’s our producer Pablo.

[Pablo Argüelles]: I visited Estrellita because I was told she had a letter from Cecilia Gentili. And I wanted her to read it to me.

Estrellita and Cecilia were friends for many years — the kind of friends who have been through the good times and the bad. Who built and broke their relationship several times since they met in Miami in 1999.

When I asked Estrellita if she had the letter she said yes, of course. But that she didn’t know where it was. All of this with a smile. Half anxious, half mischievous. The thing is, Estrellita has a thousand diaries and notebooks and photos and videos from her past. And she started rummaging through all of them in search of the letter.

[Estrellita]: How lovely souvenirs are, right? They show so much history. Don’t you think?

[Pablo Argüelles]: She is a collector of memories.

[Estrellita]: Look at this…

[Pablo Argüelles]: What is it?

[Estrellita]: It’s one of the flyers from the show «Red Ink.» Look how beautiful.

[Pablo Argüelles]: But the letter wasn’t turning up…

[Estrellita]: I’ll find it, I swear, I’ll find it for you…

[Pablo Argüelles]: While she searched, Estrellita told me about her life. She’s from Buenos Aires. Today she lives on the 15th floor of an apartment building in Queens. In the living room of her apartment there is a small table with the image of the Virgin Mary, creams, perfumes, paper towels, and condoms, for her clients. Because since the early 1990s she has been a sex worker and drag queen.

[Estrellita]: I took the stage drag queen to Palermo, to work from 11 pm until 6 in the morning.

[Pablo Argüelles]: Palermo is a Buenos Aires neighborhood full of bars and clubs. Estrellita made her life there, dressed as a woman, receiving her clients on the streets, in cars, on the train tracks, wherever.

[Estrellita]: You have to be courageous. You have to feel confident. And you have to like it.

[Pablo Argüelles]: And in 1998, with the money she earned on the streets of Buenos Aires she bought herself a plane ticket to Miami. She wanted — and she told me this before we started recording — a loud life, full of scandal, lots of drag queens, lots of shows and stiletto heels and wigs.

And of course, she continued with sex work, always on the street. Not like some of her friends who would only stand in bars, well dressed, drinking champagne.

[Estrellita]: Ah, and the glamour, and the perfume, and the earrings, and the dress. Look. Look at the dress: $200 dollars. Sequins and glitter. Oh, let someone buy you a drink. Not me. I walked around. And well, really completely, a whore. Super super slutty. Tight skirts. High heels. Well shaved, all, all, all over. Heels, but really high heels. Lots of wigs, lots of makeup, my keys, a little purse with condoms and everything, and that’s it.

[Pablo Argüelles]: And it was there, on the streets of Miami, that she met Cecilia, who had just arrived from Argentina.

[Estrellita]: And it was super funny because before even saying hello, I said to her, «and do you also go around like this looking for little clients every now and then?» «Of course, obviously, absolutely.» «So be careful,» I tell her, «because I got arrested three days ago.» And she says, «oh, really?» «Yes.» And she gets arrested four or five days later, and she runs into me again somewhere, and says, «you bitch, what bad luck you brought me. I got arrested too, you faggot.» «Oh! Welcome to Miami!»

[Pablo Argüelles]: They started hanging out with a little group of Argentine trans and drag girls united by the night. And one day, just as they had met, they fell apart, each taking her own path.

Estrellita moved to New York. And there, in the early 2000s, she reconnected with Cecilia. But Cecilia was no longer the newly arrived immigrant. She was doing very well. She had an apartment in Nolita, a very expensive and fashionable neighborhood in Manhattan. She also wore luxury clothes. And she met many of her clients at private parties. Estrellita would see her there frequently.

[Estrellita]: The parties were super fabulous with girls who had incredible bodies and these dolls, all fabulously dressed: Louis Vuitton, one in Chanel, another in Prada, another in Versace. And full of men, full of admirers. And those men would spend the whole night there. One drink, $25 dollars. They’d buy you a drink. Then you could go into a little booth, a tiny little box with a small curtain. And there you would show them your things, your tricks of the trade. In one night you’d leave with an average of $4,000, $6,000, $7,000 dollars. In one night!

[Pablo Argüelles]: But of course, that lifestyle had a price.

[Estrellita]: Each of us had our tricks to feel better or maybe to accompany a client. 

[Pablo Argüelles]: Tricks like using substances: alcohol, in Estrellita’s case…

[Estrellita]: Expensive wines, reds and whites and sparkling. I’ve always been so refined, totally refined. I’d rather be dead than be uncouth, right?

[Pablo Argüelles]: And Cecilia, heroin and cocaine. She entered that labyrinth we mentioned in the previous episode, and in which she began to lose everything: her income, her apartment in Manhattan, her health, her friends… So much so that she would go off radar frequently. Until one day, around 2009, she called Estrellita.

[Estrellita]: «Estrellita, I’m doing really badly and I have nowhere to sleep. And I’m very worried. Could you give me a few days to stay with you?» I said, «yes, of course, come over.»

[Pablo Argüelles]: She arrived with plastic bags, and inside she carried the few clothes she had left. 

[Estrellita]: So I could see the decline, right? How badly off she already was.

[Pablo Argüelles]: They started living together and, of course, they had a great deal of fun. They collected a thousand anecdotes. But both of them were deep in their addictions. And over the months, friction overshadowed the good moments: that Cecilia was smoking in the house, that she was taking up too much space in the apartment…

[Estrellita]: I didn’t like it when she’d ask me if she could bring a client over to party. But she did it out of the great need of her addiction. I understand that.

[Pablo Argüelles]: Estrellita recounts that Cecilia ended up receiving clients who didn’t pay her with money, but just with drugs. It was a sign that Cecilia had hit rock bottom, that she no longer valued herself. And then, at night, Estrellita would hear her pacing back and forth in her room, as if tormented, making strange noises. Today she thinks it was probably because Cecilia was trying to quit the drugs and that the withdrawal pangs made her suffer enormously. And on they went. Until about six months in…

[Estrellita]: We had a very serious fight. I think it was over a client or something she did in the house. I don’t quite remember. I was furious, absolutely beside myself, and I confronted her, I said, «I’ve told you a thousand times not to do this and you keep doing it. I am exhausted. I can’t take it anymore.»

[Pablo Argüelles]: Estrellita told Cecilia to leave.

[Estrellita]: But I said it to her in a harsh way, right? And what I do remember is that she then says, «then keep those bags stored for me. I’ll come get them another time, because I can’t right now.» «No, take them now, take them now.» And I ended up throwing them down the staircase. How awful.

[Pablo Argüelles]: They lost track of each other again. And Cecilia continued with drugs and sex work, in an increasingly precarious way. She was a victim of a human trafficking network. She was arrested several times and locked up in the men’s section of Rikers Island, a prison with a terrible reputation for the violence that occurs inside. From there she was sent to an immigration detention center. She was saved from deportation, but was released with an ankle monitor, like the ones you see in movies. And that is how she entered a rehabilitation center in Queens.

[Estrellita]: Let me see, let’s find this famous letter. It’s around here somewhere…

[Pablo Argüelles]: And this is where the letter enters the story.

[Estrellita]: Here it is! Here it is! Oh, my God. I told you. I told you. I found it. I found it. I found it. I found it. Okay. Done. Everything else is secondary now. Here it is.

[Pablo Argüelles]: Can you read it?

[Estrellita]: Would you like me to read it?

[Pablo Argüelles]: Yes, please.

[Estrellita]: «April 16, 2010. Dear Estrellita…» I have to stop. Forgive me, I have to stop. It’s just that I, I don’t know if I can remember. I will never know if I replied to her. Even though we saw each other afterward, but this was very important to her. I will never know if I replied.

«April 16, 2010. Dear Estrellita. I hope that when you receive this you are well. As for me, I can tell you that I am very happy. In a couple of days I will be two months into my recovery. I am in an in-patient program that lasts a year. At first, I thought it would be too much, but today I think that perhaps it is not enough and I may need more time. Many things, deep, internal things, are coming to light and I have a great deal to work on. Among other news, I can tell you that they have already removed the ankle monitor from my leg, and I continue working on my legal status in the country. This letter has two purposes. First, to apologize to you for the inconveniences caused. I am infinitely grateful for all the help you gave me. My behavior truly left much to be desired. And second, due to a mistake of mine, my benefit card has your address. You may receive some letters for me. I know how much that bothers you. Sorry. On the envelope is the address where I am in treatment. I would love to hear from you. A big kiss. Cecilia.»

During the six years I lived in the home of my godmother, my father’s sister in Salta in northern Argentina, we communicated with my father by letter. My sister and I. Phones didn’t exist. I mean, in poor homes like ours with dirt floors. It was letters. So I have a great deal, a very great deal of experience in how to write, in how to respond. And sometimes you can feel all the emotions of the person in the letters. That’s why it bothers me not to know. It bothers me not to know if at some point I was able to respond to her, knowing that I am so good at that, at being reciprocal in a reply. No, I don’t remember, I don’t remember. Only time and space and the universe will know that.

[Pablo Argüelles]: And if you could respond to her now, what would you say?

[Estrellita]: If I had to respond to this letter I would say: «I am so glad, Ceci, that you are in a rehabilitation program and I want you to know that when you come out of there you will have my home again so you can stay here until you recover and until you get back on your feet and can reintegrate into society in a good way, and find a job, and get all that sorted out with your legal status. I will always be here. Even with the differences we had. And it’s okay, don’t worry, I won’t be angry anymore if some letters arrive in your name here at my house.» That’s all. Silly, right?

[Pablo Argüelles]: Silly, right?

This phrase caught me off guard a little. I thought Estrellita’s response would be, I don’t know, more emotional. But it was so simple and ordinary, so full of resignation too. I felt Estrellita’s pain. And at the same time I understood that perhaps she didn’t need to convey that pain with grand words. She knew, in exactly the right measure, how to respond to her friend, even though so many years had passed. She knew that one way or another, Cecilia was listening to her, and that she forgave her. Silly, right?

A break, and we’ll be back.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Well, we are back at the Queens Museum for the last act of the evening.

[Rula, live]: So now we are going to welcome to the stage the one and only, the incomparable Queen, Laura Martínez. Please give her a big round of applause…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura Martínez — we met her in episode 2. Before presenting us with her most famous number, the «Suavecito suavecito» by Laura León, she surprised us with a speech that I think is worth listening to.

[Rula, live]: Comadrita, how are you?

[Laura Martínez]: Thank you so much, darlings. Good Lord, how wonderful. Thank you. Happy, so happy to be here with all of you, truly.

[Rula, live]: Welcome to your home. I’d like you to tell us… Queen, exactly! Let’s hear it!! Let’s hear it! I’d like you to tell us, before you delight us with a musical number, if you remember when the first time you performed this musical number was and what it was like.

[Laura Martínez]: Well, this was when I began my career in 1989, and it was in Guadalajara, Jalisco. The club was called La Malinche. I was just starting out working in clubs and it was my very first steps in performing as Laura León, who opened doors for me in Mexico and in many places, and especially here in the United States. And I truly thank you all infinitely because we have a full house. That reminds us — us, because I am part of all of this — and our warrior, who was Lorena Borjas, who has already left us, and the second warrior was Cecilia. I understood that they truly are two very great figures of New York. Those struggles. And we must not forget it, because sometimes the new people forget where rights come from, where privileges come from. That is going to be a legacy for us, the Latinas, for the queens. The mother dies and the queens are born. They can be queens of the street, those queens who earn their living, who are criticized, who are pointed at. Because there is so much history. From the 80s, 90s, 2000s, and discrimination continues to this day. We criticize the alcoholics, we criticize the drug addicts. Do you know why they become drug addicts, why they are alcoholics, why they end up in a psychiatric clinic? No! Because every trans person has a book, has a story, that many don’t publish, because they don’t even have the energy to do so. Just like  this government, so is the entire society with us. I am 62 years old, and when we, trans women, started out we were trampled on, literally, but that didn’t hurt us. Do you know what hurt us? Our emotions, our hearts, our feelings, and our thoughts. That is why you can look at your sister, your friend, whoever is beside you. Never criticize her because you don’t know what has happened in her life. Your own biological family rejects you, the very family that gave you life kicks you out. But when you make the decision to be a trans woman, it is very hard. And I urge the new generations: don’t stop working. Perhaps we will go, but we are leaving behind that legacy, those ideas, and that work that must keep moving forward, truly. I am going to keep on going, fighting alongside each and every one of you, because when we unify, we will progress. And to all these people behind the scenes who made this happen — my deepest respect. And thank you for being here, for this…

[Rula, live]: Thank you…

[Laura Martínez]: …this production. Thank you so much!

[Rula, live]: Thank you, Laurita. Now let’s go!

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And well, what came after is truly impossible to describe here. Laura giving herself completely, looking stunning, with tremendous energy. Cecilia’s children offering her bills as if she were a goddess… And then the rest of the audience, adoring her just the same.

[Laura Martínez]: Thank you, darlings!

[Rula, live]: A round of applause for Laura Martínez!

[Laura Martínez]: Thank you so much, my love! I carry this applause in my heart. My community, my people…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And so we reached the end of the night, and of this episode.

In the coming weeks, we return to our story to go deeper into that world that Cecilia — and Lorena Borjas — defended with claws and nails: the world of the street. And there we will meet a group of women who are often criticized and misunderstood: the sex workers, the whores, of Roosevelt Avenue.

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, and Andrés Sanín.

The editors were Daniel Alarcón, Silvia Viñas, and myself.

Fact-checking is by Bruno Scelza and Nikol Pizarro.

Dmitri Barcomi was the event manager at the Queens Museum. Gianina Enriquez, community organizer at the museum, was our liaison with the Queens Museum. Thank you, Gianina.

Thanks also to Liaam Winslet, Oscar Díaz, Viento Izquierdo, Nic Cory, Chiquitita, and Laura Martínez for being part of the program. And to the Intercultural Collective Transgrediendo, HOPE, and Transmission for helping us spread the word about the event.

On the night of the show, simultaneous English translation was provided by Nayra Pacheco Guzmán and Jennifer Salgado from Rooted Language Justice.

María Linares did the sound design and mixing, as well as the original music. And Pablo Diez assisted with the live event recording.

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 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.

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 their «Expanding Gratitude Through Media» initiative, with the support of 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.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Hello, a warning before we begin: this series contains sensitive content including violence, drugs, and sexual language. We recommend discretion.

The story begins in a large van, on a street in Brooklyn, New York. It’s February 2024.

Inside the vehicle, a dozen young trans people. They’re from different countries: Mexico, Colombia, Peru.

[Viento]: The dress code is red, right? Red. And showing some body.

[Edua]: I did my hair and put a ton of red flowers in it.

[Viento]: I was wearing a dress with these great sleeves and a giant red hat and heels that I would never wear now, but they were like those stiletto ones.

[Rio]: I showed up in a long dress with feathers, a red one.

[Edua]: Wow. A super glamorous red dress with red feathers.

[Rio]: And I also had a boa made out of hundred-dollar bills.

[Viento]: It looked like it was made of dollars, it was incredible. For me it’s a really beautiful memory. And also a very sad one.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Sad, because despite appearances, they are all in mourning. The van is taking them to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, for the funeral of their mother, a queen among queens: Cecilia Gentili.

[Rio]: We were all in there watching and watching the clock. 

[Viento]: And around halfway there, we’re like, «why are we still in Brooklyn?»

[Rio]: And that was when we said, «hey, where are you going?»

[Viento]: And we tell him like, «hey, why are you taking this route?» And he says, «oh, because I’m going to 51st and whatever,» like, I don’t know what address he said. And we’re like, «what?! But we are going to Manhattan!»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: They exchange looks and think the same thing: if they want to make it to the funeral on time…

[Rio]: I think we’re going to have to take the subway.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The subway, at rush hour, in winter.

[Rio]: Very, very stressful because it wasn’t just a matter of taking the train. It was running to the train, switching trains, and then running the three or four blocks we had to run, and I was in stripper heels.

[Viento]: So, picture like 10, 12 trans people, very queened up, in heels, running from the van…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Flying to the station.

[Rio]: We were completely insane.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laughing, screaming.

[Viento]: Like, if anyone had seen us on the street, they would have thought we were filming a movie.

[Edua]: It was… Yeah, it was like total drama, comedy, beauty. Very Cecilia the whole time. Like, wow, this is so fucking Cecilia, because we all got off very glamourous. We got on the train…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And there’s a preacher reading out loud from the Bible. 

[Viento]: And you ignore him because, well, if he wants to read the Bible, let him read the Bible. But out of nowhere he started kind of going at us, right?

[Rio]: Saying we were going to hell and that we needed to repent and all that stuff.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Transphobic things I won’t repeat here.

[Rio]: You don’t know what he’s going to do, but you also know there are 12 of us, and I’m wearing heels, sharp ones…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: So they started defending themselves.

[Rio]: Because we had no time or energy for that nonsense.

[Viento]: Like, we’re going to our mother’s funeral, just shut up, right? Like, shut up. And the man just kept going on and on. So, I don’t know if it was in a moment of… It’s like when grief becomes so strong it turns into strength or something, and Rio just started singing…

[Rio]: «First I was afraid, I was petrified»…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: «I Will Survive» by Gloria Gaynor.

[Rio]: Starting from the very beginning of the song, because we didn’t know how long that person was going to keep bothering us.

[Viento]: We started singing along with her, and then the whole train started singing with us.

[Rio]: They were laughing, singing with us. It was one of those New York moments where you can feel there’s really like a connection with all these people you don’t know.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The entire train car drove the preacher out at the next stop. And so, running again toward the cathedral — a little late perhaps, but in style — they couldn’t stop thinking that they were living out one of the stories their mother Cecilia would have told them.

[Rio]: It was a very Cecilia experience, because it was a moment where we were really feeling mortality, the trauma of losing Cecilia — which for me was the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to me in my life. And just like the way she wrote and told her stories, we found the humor in it.

[Viento]: Like, we all felt so strongly that sense of: «Ceci did this,» like, «Ceci orchestrated the universe to make this happen.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Among all the queens of Queens, Cecilia Gentili left a unique legacy. Not only of activism and protecting the community, but also an entire catalog of stories that are still being told today.

And her funeral was perhaps her masterpiece.

From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, this is Las Reinas de Queens. I’m Rula Ávila Muñoz.

Episode 4. The Holy Whore.

Surrounded by skyscrapers, St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan stands out for its white walls, its stained glass windows, and its two neo-Gothic towers. It’s one of the world’s most important Catholic churches. It has been the setting for funerals of athletes, politicians, and artists. And also for LGBTQ community protests against Catholic Church discrimination during the HIV epidemic in the 1980s. A historic landmark.

Cecilia Gentili’s funeral was held there on February 15, 2024. The church was packed, with more than a thousand people — something unusual.

[Priest]: Well, welcome to St. Patrick’s Cathedral…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: So much so that the priest himself points it out as he extends his greeting. 

[Priest]: Except on Easter Sunday we don’t really have a crowd that is, that is this well turned out, you know?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: He says the cathedral only fills up like this on Easter Sunday. And that applause, that howl, is the first sign that this funeral will be like no other.

[Priest]: Let us pray…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Let’s move from the cathedral to the theater:

[Cecilia Gentili]: I am an atheist…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: This is Cecilia Gentili in her theater piece «Red Ink,» which she staged in New York in 2023. It was a monologue in which she told stories about her childhood and youth in Argentina and about her deeply conflicted and contradictory relationship with religion.

[Cecilia Gentili]: I am an atheist, but I have had many, many calls from God…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: «I am an atheist,» she says. «But I have had many, many calls from God.»

[Cecilia Gentili]: In Rosario, the most important thing that happened to me is that I met the first trans person that I ever met in my life.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And in that piece, Cecilia said that the most important call from God in her life came at age 17, when, in the city of Rosario, she met trans people for the first time in her life. Among them was a woman known as La Correntina.

[Norma]: La Correntina was a drag performer with a long history. She was a prominent figure here in Rosario — she took her under her wing and taught her everything she knew about putting together costumes, making feather pieces, doing makeup. And they began putting on shows at a bar that no longer exists, called Inizio, which was right across from a plaza where the girls worked in sex work.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: This is Norma, Cecilia’s lifelong friend. They were born and grew up in a small town called Gálvez. And what bound them from the start was their desire to live against the customs and prejudices of their neighbors.

[Norma]: The only thing that unproductive, forked-tongue society did…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: That is, snake-tongued…

[Norma]: Was to trap people within their own demons and refuse to let them simply be or move forward.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Cecilia came from a poor family of Indigenous descent. That, according to Norma, left her with a feeling of inferiority for a long time. But the town’s rejection manifested in a far more violent way, one impossible to forget. For years, Cecilia was the victim of sexual abuse by a neighbor. And for years, no one knew.

[Norma]: This story of the abuse she suffered as a girl is the dark cloud she fought with every day in search of answers.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Cecilia escaped at 17 to the city of Rosario. And there, guided by La Correntina, she began performing in “transformismo” shows — as that type of entertainment is typically called in Argentina. But Cecilia’s numbers had a twist. While others dressed up and put on makeup chasing an unattainable ideal of feminine beauty…

[Norma]: When Cecilia came on, she was the girl next door, you know? It became a more theatrical event. She always went toward the everyday and toward the reality of bodies worn by time, you know?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She dressed like an ordinary woman — sagging breasts, flat behind, invisible hips…

[Norma]: She made herself look plain, she was scrawny, her hair was a mess, you know? And with that she hooked and charmed snakes out of her audience, you know?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And while others lip-synced to Madonna or Whitney Houston, Cecilia lip-synced to Argentine artists from the seventies, like Violeta Rivas.

[Norma]: Which was very cliché, very, very bizarre music.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Or well, she tried to lip-sync. Because she could never manage to memorize the songs. But instead of trying to hide the problem, she made it part of the act.

[Norma]: The music would go one way and her mouth would go another — then every so often she’d remember, you know, that she was supposed to be lip-syncing. So she satirized her own weaknesses.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And over time she also started adding little monologues and telling stories about the people she knew.

[Norma]: She broke the fourth wall constantly to talk to the audience, you know? Skills the other girls simply didn’t have.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: From that point on, Cecilia began to challenge what was expected of her as a trans woman. And that was how she started teaching herself — and her community — that there were other ways to represent their experience.

[Priest]: Could the person who is going to read the second reading, please come forward?

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: LaLa Zannell, Cecilia’s sister, comes up to the altar to read the Psalm prayer. And as she reaches the last step, she raises her right foot ever so slightly — very flirtatiously. The priest laughs, and she approaches the microphone.

[LaLa]: We still gonna show up as us.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: «We’re going to show up exactly as we are,» she says. And she begins:

[LaLa]: A reading from the first letter of St. John.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: A reading from the first letter of St. John: «See what love the Father has for us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him…»

[LaLa]: The word of the Lord.

[Priest]: Thanks be to God.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Cecilia used to say that when she was little she didn’t feel like she was a part of this world. As if she were an extraterrestrial. As if people didn’t truly know her.

That feeling of discomfort made her flee — first from Gálvez, and then, around the year 2000, from Rosario. There, the drag scene had declined. The police harassed trans people. And the gravitational pull of her hometown was still too strong. On top of that, Cecilia needed to earn more money to continue her transition. So she went further. To Miami.

There she began working as an unlicensed hairdresser. She had no papers, there were no opportunities and that pushed her into sex work. And into drug use. She entered a great labyrinth. And there, a prophecy began to come true — one that, according to her stories, a trans woman from Rosario had once made to her: «if you want to be trans,» she told her…

[Cecilia Gentili]: You’re gonna be a whore…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: You will be a whore.

[Cecilia Gentili]: You are gonna get high…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: You will get high.

[Cecilia Gentili]: And you’re gonna die young.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And you will die young.

[Cecilia Gentili]: And I said, «fine, fine. How young?»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: «Ok, ok, but how young?» Cecilia asked. But then she realized she didn’t care about her age. She preferred to live a short, authentic life over a long, false one.

[Cecilia Gentili]: And I said, «this is for me. I want to do this. Let’s start.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And so she began her transition.

[Cecilia Gentili]: And that’s how I started my transition.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Cecilia died at 52, after taking a dose of heroin not knowing it had been laced with fentanyl.

[Priest]: Death is not the end, nor does it break the bonds forged in life.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: At the funeral, the priest gives his homily. He says that the Church intercedes for the dead, out of its conviction that death is not the end, nor does it break the bonds formed in life.

[Priest]: Death is an enemy, but death is now an enemy defeated.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Death is an enemy, but now it is a defeated enemy.

[Priest]: Amen.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We’ll be right back.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We’re back on Las Reinas de Queens.

Cecilia navigated the labyrinth of drugs and sex work during the first ten years of her life in the United States.

Along that road — which took her from Miami to San Francisco and then to New York — sex work gave her enough money to have surgeries, get a nice apartment, expensive clothes… And also heroin. Her struggle with addiction led her to lose everything. She fell into homelessness. She became a victim of human trafficking. She ended up in prison.

But then, with the help of several strangers who were part of the trans community, she found her way out of the labyrinth. When she was on the verge of being deported, a social worker managed to transfer her to a rehabilitation center. And during the 17 months she spent there, a lawyer helped her obtain asylum in the United States. And later, another lawyer handled her name change.

It was at that point, around 2010, that Cecilia began to reinvent herself as a storyteller.

Behind that reinvention were two key steps. The first was beginning to work for the city’s trans community. With her papers in order, she found work at a community health center in lower Manhattan called APICHA. There she accompanied some six hundred and fifty people through their transition processes — six hundred and fifty people she listened to and offered her own story to as a guide. Here’s Norma again.

[Norma]: Her story serves a purpose. It serves precisely as a testimony for the people she had — what were called «her cases» at the time. They were her cases, like little folders they would hand her. And I think that’s where her storytelling begins, in this therapeutic narrative she creates with each of her cases — building a bond, the bond of a mother.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But that role was heavy. After four years, Cecilia quit APICHA.

[Norma]: She told me: I can’t keep working here at APICHA because it means listening to my own story every day. 

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She had been listening to and telling trauma for years — first to her lawyers and immigration officials, and then to her patients. The world seemed to ask of her only pain and sadness. But Cecilia knew that her story — and trans stories — were so much more than tragedy. And this is where the second key step comes in.

[Cecilia Gentili]: This dude is perfect. God… God has sent him to me. About time.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: At night, Cecilia began telling her stories at some of the city’s trans bars. And there she gave a new purpose to what was perhaps her greatest gift.

[Norma]: She understood that humor is a weapon, and she understood that it can also transform difficult stories into stories that can make you laugh.

[Katia]: It was what she could do: «hey, I’m going to talk about this thing that is a huge and horrible tragedy. And I’m going to make you laugh.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: This is Katia Perea, a friend of Cecilia’s.

[Katia]: When she spoke and told these stories, she was in that moment teaching you that it was possible to survive the things that many of us have suffered, you know, being queer and trans from a young age. And so, how we can have joy today, right now.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And so, to help you better understand all of this, Katia is going to tell us one of Cecilia’s most iconic stories. The story of Jesus’s penis.

Ok, the 1980s in Rosario, Argentina. Cecilia is a young trans woman, naive, romantic, full of hormones, who spends her time at the city’s trans bar.

[Katia]: So, she’s there on a Monday, a Tuesday afternoon, into the evening, and a man shows up.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: A strikingly handsome man with a Polaroid camera hanging over his pecs.

[Katia]: And he says to her: «you are so beautiful.» And she’s like, «oh, thank you.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But Cecilia, so innocent at the time, feels the need to give him fair warning…

[Katia]: «Just so you know, I’m trans»… And he goes, «No, I can’t believe it!»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: «How is that possible!? God… Well, I don’t care, you are too beautiful. You’re going to be my first trans woman!»

[Katia]: Right away she’s in the fantasy that he is in love with her. He’s going to marry her. They’re going to have a family.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But the man offers her something less romantic.

[Katia]: He tells her, “let’s have sex in the bathroom.”

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Cecilia calculates: he could be the man of her life.

[Katia]: So she says, «okay.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And in the bar’s dirty little bathroom, the man gets straight to the point. He pulls down his pants, and Cecilia sees that he has a dark mark on his penis.

[Katia]: And she said, «I got a little worried because it’s the AIDS season, so I didn’t know what it was.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: It was the time of the AIDS epidemic, after all.

[Katia]: «But when I start the blowjob, I realize as it starts to grow, that it was a tattoo… of Jesus Christ.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Jesus!

[Katia]: Oh Jesus! Yes! Here comes Jesus!

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: They get going. But then Cecilia hears a click.

[Katia]: He takes a photo of her with the Polaroid…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The man has just taken a photo of her with the Polaroid!

[Katia]: The photo comes out and he says, «okay, I’m going to step out. You clean yourself up.» And so she’s so young, you know, and naive. She’s thinking, «oh, now I have a boyfriend and we’re going to get married and…» Okay, so she comes out and goes to find him at the bar — which is empty because it’s Tuesday — and she looks around and doesn’t see him.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The guy isn’t in the bar, or outside on the street either. Cecilia goes back to the counter and confesses to the bartender: something very strange just happened to her.

[Katia]: He goes, «strange, that a man took you back there and had sex with you?» “Yes…” «And that he had a tattoo of Jesus Christ on his penis?» “Yes…” At that moment she sees that behind the bartender, there in the bar, are all the photos of the girls that man had taken in the bathroom. And she realized that she was now part of that group. And then she says: «and that’s the last time I ever had sex for free.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And that was the last time Cecilia gave sex away for free. She had found her profession: sex work. But of course, Cecilia knew how to modulate her stories depending on the audience in front of her.

[Oscar]: Yes, I think she had already noticed how people responded over years of telling those stories.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: This is Oscar, one of Cecilia’s daughters, who worked with her for many years.

[Oscar]: She knew how to inject charisma from different angles into the story to highlight different things. So every time you got to hear a story, whether you’d already heard it or it was your first time, something different always stood out.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Cecilia read her audiences. And I say that in the plural, because throughout the 2010s she was building a dual career — as an activist and as a storyteller. And she reached more and more audiences. On one hand, she moved from bars to off-Broadway theaters. And on the other, she went from working for other LGBTQ organizations to founding her own company in 2018: Trans Equity Consulting.

[Viento]: It was an organization that did consulting on trans issues, by trans people, from a trans perspective.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: This is Viento, one of Cecilia’s children — one we heard singing «I Will Survive» on the subway.

[Viento]: And Ceci really advocated for trans people to speak only from their own experience, and that that experience itself was like our school, you could say.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Viento worked with Cecilia at Trans Equity. And they were something like a commando unit. A trans commando unit, ready to move into cis-heteronormative territory. Cecilia knew that there were countless companies and organizations that had no idea how to treat trans employees or clients. And that’s where Trans Equity came in with training sessions.

[Viento]: What gender is, what it means to be trans, what pronouns are, and so on — like, starting from zero: what the trans experience is and how to treat and provide services to trans people in your organization.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And the secret weapon of those training sessions was, of course, Cecilia’s stories.

[Viento]: You’d just put up a slide about… it could be anything… Pronouns. And she’d spend like half an hour on that slide, just talking about something that had happened to her. She always connected it back to her own life.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And that connection — so strategic — always had a different purpose depending on the audience. Because, as we’ve already heard, with her stories Cecilia could heal and comfort and entertain, but also educate, persuade, and move people.

[Norma]: Never with bitterness, always with humor.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Back to Norma.

[Norma]: She had told me: «I discovered…» Oh, I don’t know if it’s okay for me to say this, but anyway… «I actually discovered how to get money out of rich people for my community, because I found a gap. I found a gray area in the system. Not stealing from them, right? No. But how to ask them and how to make them feel guilty.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Cecilia frequented many fundraising galas for New York’s trans community. There she rubbed shoulders with wealthy people, always willing to donate to a good cause. And to benefit from tax deductions. Cecilia knew this. So she told stories that placed the audience before a dilemma.

[Norma]: She put you in a bind with your sense of emotional responsibility toward others, to give those people the chance to be the saviors, right? She cast them in that role.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She was like Robin Hood. And her stories were like arrows aimed straight at the hearts of the wealthy. And their wallets. And politicians — well, she charmed them too.

Cecilia led an entire movement that managed to give sex workers greater legal protections in New York. She helped the state legislature pass a law so that police could no longer detain sex workers simply for being on the street. And at the time of her death she was supporting a bill aimed at decriminalizing sex work in the state — which, let’s not forget, is still a crime in New York.

In short: Cecilia seemed to be everywhere at once. And in each of those spaces, the applause was vital.

[Norma]: The applause was vital — but not for the sake of the applause itself, but for the communion that existed between the audience and what she was telling. I think without that, yes, she could not have lived.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Because that communion was her ultimate purpose. And precisely for that reason, Cecilia sometimes didn’t hold back when it came to embellishing her stories or changing their content to sharpen the meaning she was after.

The man with the Polaroid camera, for example, didn’t actually have a tattoo of Jesus — it was of the Virgin Mary. But what we might consider a deception could also be seen as a way of taking ownership of her past and the story she told about her life. Shaping herself beyond the trauma, the abuse, and the pain.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: In her journey as a storyteller, fiction and reality always went hand in hand. In 2018 she had a role in one of the first television series to address the trans experience with trans characters and trans actors: POSE.

[Cecilia en POSE]: But Miss Orlando is here to make things right.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: There she played Miss Orlando, a Latin trans woman from New York who in the 1980s sold hormones to low-income trans people.

And so, over the course of a decade, Cecilia’s stories touched more and more people. And the wider her reach grew, the more she became her own myth. But that myth was still missing its final chapter. We’ll be right back.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We’re back on Las Reinas de Queens.

After the priest’s homily — in which he spoke of conquering death — the funeral continues. And every evocation of Cecilia’s life fills the cathedral audience with life. Katia Perea, Cecilia’s friend who told us the Polaroid man story, comes up to the altar…

[Katia]: And may Cecilia’s community be loved and received and seen by each other…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And she prays for the community’s access to gender-affirming healthcare. Or, as Katia puts it, «life-affirming.»

[Katia]: We pray to our Lord Jesus Christ, who is full of love. Lord, hear our prayer.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And then three people share memories of Cecilia.

[Peter]: How many times our phone would ring in the middle of the night…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Peter, her partner of more than 10 years, speaks about how Cecilia would get up in the middle of the night to help her APICHA children…

[Peter]: And she’d always be there and always answer that call.

[Ceyenne Doroshow]: But this lady worked so hard, to make sure…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And Ceyenne Doroshow, one of the leaders of the Black trans community, recalls that Cecilia did everything in her power to protect sex workers.

[Ceyenne Doroshow]: That sex workers are free. I don’t know, y’all may have heard the story that Jesus ministered to all. Cecilia ministered to all.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Cecilia, like Jesus, took care of everyone.

There’s an archival recording of Cecilia’s voice I want you to hear.

[Cecilia Gentili]: Hi, hi, hi. Hola, hola, hola. Hello to everyone. Thank you all for being here…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: It’s from March 31, 2021, a year after the death of Lorena Borjas, the queen of queens, whom we met in our first episode. A group of her friends and members of the Latin trans sex worker community had gathered to celebrate a small street near Roosevelt Avenue receiving a new name: Lorena Borjas Way.

[Cecilia Gentili]: I have sort of mixed feelings. Because there’s no point in having a street named after Lorena if there’s no commitment, no desire to do what the community needs. There’s no point in having a street named after Lorena if there are girls who have nothing to eat. There’s no point in having a street named after Lorena if there are girls who can’t pay rent, who have no doctor, who have nowhere to go when they’re at their lowest. All these tears we can shed mean nothing if we don’t all come together to do what the community needs — because that’s what Lorena wanted. And that’s what would make Lorena happy. I’m going to cry, because why not, right? But at the same time I commit to keep working. And I want everyone here to do the same — for all of us here to have a desire to work for the community.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The greatest reason Cecilia’s stories reached so many people is that Cecilia worked without rest, day and night. That is the same reason thousands attended her funeral.

[Liaam]: May new generations learn about her, about the constant struggle of this woman, this warrior…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And that is the same reason that on that day, Liaam Winslet — director of the Colectivo Transgrediendo, right-hand woman to Lorena Borjas, and the third person tasked with honoring Cecilia — calls her this:

[Liaam]: This whore, this great whore, Saint Cecilia, the mother of all whores, today we say see you soon…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Oscar, Cecilia’s daughter, stands beside Liaam, translating into English.

[Oscar]: This whore, this great whore, Saint Cecilia, mother of all whores…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And in that moment something clicks in the community. In Katia…

[Katia]: That moment alone left us in shock.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And in Norma, watching the funeral online from Argentina.

[Norma]: It was overwhelming — I burst into tears, and even now as I remember it I get emotional…

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And in Cecilia’s children who sang «I Will Survive» on the subway.

[Rio]: Yeah, I said «oh, shit» — in that moment I said ok, now we are being real. Now we’re really being honest.

[Monte]: The atmosphere just shifted. For us in that moment, oh, it was like the most beautiful, most incredible, most powerful thing to say about Cecilia…

[Viento]: Like she named something that was maybe on many people’s minds, but they hadn’t known how to put into words like that.

[Rio]: Because that was Cecilia’s reality — she was the holy mother of whores. That was her work, the work of her life.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Liaam’s words charge the audience with energy. And so, when the hymn preceding communion begins…

[Katia]: The cantor sings «Ave María» and someone we didn’t know stood up. They started singing «Ave Cecilia» over the «Ave María.»

[Oscar]: And at a certain moment that person was inspired, filled with feeling, and started dancing, and moved all the way down the aisle. It’s a large cathedral. That is not a small aisle.

[Katia]: And then they were about to reach the altar and it was like, wow, what’s going on — a shock.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But just as they reach the steps, they stop and dance back.

[Katia]: But I think in that moment it really bothered the person assisting the monsignor, and he said something to them.

[Monte]: I noticed how they were talking to each other. And I was like, what? What was going to happen now? The plan was for me to sing my song.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Monte, Cecilia’s son and an artist, was going to perform one of his songs after the «Ave María,» during communion — you know, when people can come forward to receive the host that symbolizes the body of Christ. But when the «Ave María» ends, amid the audience’s applause, another priest approaches the officiating priest and asks him to say the Lord’s prayer and dismiss the congregation. That is, without taking communion.

[Monte]: I noticed they were already cutting the Mass short. They were like taking away time. We were like, okay, let’s do this faster.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And so, Cecilia’s casket begins to leave the Cathedral in silence.

[Monte]: So I thought: «oh, maybe I’m not going to sing after all.»

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But at that moment, Cayenne, Cecilia’s sister, says to Monte:

[Monte]: «Go up right now and sing.» And I was like, okay.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Monte runs up to the altar, where the microphone is, and sings.

Everyone begins shouting Cecilia’s name, over and over. And thousands of kilometers away, Norma speaks to her, as if she were right there.

[Norma]: «Girl, look at what you did.» That was my expression. My words were like a way of conveying to Cecilia what was happening. «Girl, look at how many people are here. Girl, look at what the cathedral looks like outside. Look at the flowers.» In that moment, for me, she transcended. I couldn’t say, «girl, look, they’re calling you a saint.» No. She was no longer herself. She had become a saint.

[Monte]: She is now a saint — not metaphorically, not as a joke, not as an exaggeration, but truly.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And Cecilia’s story reaches its final chapter.

[Norma]: It had the touch of St. Patrick’s magnificency, right? And it had the wildness of people going absolutely crazy, screaming, uninhibited. It was a synthesis of the dramaturgy she had built.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But the interpretations continue. Because what happens to a person’s story when their community elevates them to sainthood?

[Rio]: I find it very complicated, because when you canonize someone, you’re also separating them from the community. You’re making them into a kind of person that Ceci wasn’t.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Some of Cecilia’s children fear that over time the less heroic sides of their mother will be forgotten: the lazy Cecilia, the critical and gossipy and resentful Cecilia, the romantic and hot-blooded Cecilia, the Cecilia from that speech on Roosevelt Avenue — the one asking her community for help, the one who was tired.

[Norma]: Maybe by making her a saint, that earthly vision of her gets lost — the daily struggle, all of that. But then again, that is also the work of those who remained on earth.

[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: A few days after the funeral, the Archdiocese of New York issued a statement.

In it, the Cathedral’s pastor said he had agreed to hold the funeral at St. Patrick’s without knowing Cecilia’s story. The Archdiocese added that the event was an insult to the Catholic faith and that the behavior of the audience was, and I quote, «scandalous.»

In the media and on social networks, the controversy erupted. And at the center of that controversy were the words Liaam spoke in the cathedral: «This whore, this great whore, Saint Cecilia, mother of all whores.» It seemed to imply that those two words — «saint» and «whore» — cannot go together.

And so, under pressure from various conservative Catholic groups, the cathedral’s pastor held a «Mass of Reparations» to atone for the supposed harm caused to the Church by the funeral.

The message was clear: the community was not welcome. It was a reminder that all of Cecilia’s work for the trans community and for sex workers could not be taken for granted.

And that is why in the next episode we will return to Queens for a night of trans remembrance. Because sometimes remembering is the best way to keep a story going.

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, Andrés Sanín, 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 song «Una Casita, Pt. 2» was courtesy of the artist Monte Marin, also known as STEFA*.

Archival material from the show Red Ink was courtesy of Nic Cory. Trans Equity Consulting provided the recording of Cecilia’s funeral.

The graphic design and art direction for 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» initiative, with support from the John Templeton Foundation.

You can follow us on social media at centralseriesRA and subscribe to our newsletter at centralpodcast.audio.

I’m Rula Ávila Muñoz. Thank you for listening.