[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Hello, a warning before we begin: this series contains sensitive content including violence, drugs, and sexual language. We recommend discretion.
In the days and weeks following the death of Lorena Borjas, one word that was used over and over to define her: “mother.” “The mother of the entire Latin trans community of Queens.” That’s what they called her in obituaries, and articles, and tributes. And this way of referring to her was not a coincidence, because mothers are extremely important in the world of Las Reinas de Queens.
They are the backbone, the glue. And they are the leaders of the various families that make up the Latin trans community of Queens. Chosen families, because they have often been rejected by their own. These families live together and support each other and also compete in bars along Roosevelt Avenue, in impersonation shows and beauty pageants and trans organizations in New York.
Mothers define the rules and traditions of those families. But, whats more: they give them their last names.
[Laura Martínez]: So, of the two last names I remember from before, when I had just arrived, I say that it’s the Duval family and the St. Cartier family. Later on, after the Martínez, new families were born..
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And those last names are legendary.
[Laura Martínez]: The Santa María family began, for example. There were families like Las Chacalosas. There was also the family of the newer ones, the Rosemberg. Maybe for other people it’s different, but for me, a last name, in the family, is protection. It is help, it is support. It says: you are not alone.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She is Laura Martínez. And what we’re going to tell you today is how she formed her own family, one of the most emblematic of Las Reinas de Queens. A family forged in the clubs of Roosevelt Avenue.
There, in impersonation shows and beauty pageants, among sequined dresses, 4-inch heels, cascades of glitter, lots of tequila, to the sound of Gloria Trevi, Laura León, and Alejandra Guzmán, girls newly arrived from all over Latin America began to ask Laura for advice. They wanted to be performers like her, to look good on stage, to begin their transitions.
[Laura Martínez]: So I can help the kids by giving them a wig, an outfit. The outfits I no longer used I would give to them or lend to them. Shoes I no longer used, I would give to them.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura helped them: to shape their bodies with padding and foam; she gave them advice; she lent them her address for bureaucratic procedures; and she even mediated with their biological families.
[Laura Martínez]: I talk to their mothers when they don’t want to accept them. And I start telling their moms: “you have to help, you are hurting your daughter.”
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She also welcomed the girls into her rococo apartment, decorated with gold-framed mirrors, imitation tapestries, portraits of the virgin in fake gold. That is her sanctuary. And there she has been a host for years.
[Laura Martínez]: We would get together every week at the house to eat together, to cook food for them, some tamales. And that’s how I showed the others what it means to live together. It wasn’t just part of the show, or part of the clubs, or part of pageants or part… Everything was material. But it wasn’t integration.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And when the girls had nowhere else to stay, Laura invited them to sleep at the apartment.
[Laura Martínez]: The living room was full at night. You would see them there, all piled up sleeping on the rug.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Over time, the girls sheltered by Laura began to see her not only as a protector and an inspiration, but as a mother. And they began to shed their old last names.
[Laura Martínez]: They would say to me, “hey, can I take your last name? It’s to thank you. If you would do me the honor.” I say, “yes, of course.” They start taking the last name Martínez. And that’s when I understood that the family would start there. That’s how my family began.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The Martínez family.
[Fonsi Martínez]: Fonsi Martínez, 37.
[Romina Martínez]: Romina Martínez, 27 years old.
[Quintanil Martínez]: Quintanil Martínez, 21 years old.
[Carolina Martínez]: Carolina Martínez, 24 years old.
[Cari Martínez]: Cari Martínez, 31 years old.
[Carolina Martínez]: Well, in the family I am a new member. I’m the new one, the new one. I am very grateful to mother Laura because she opened the doors for me. When I arrived here…
[Romina Martínez]: So I asked for help and they recommended who is now my mother that I have here, where I feel very much at ease. Very happy, content. Like a family that I have very far away and well nothing here…
[Cari Martínez]: But the best thing that ever happened to me is having arrived here to the United States and meeting my mother, Laura, whom I’ve been telling you about, since I knew of her, from the country where I lived, in Chile, I would see her events, her shows, because she is very famous. And now being here is fulfilling a dream.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura says she has had more than 50 daughters, who have come in and out of her home, over the decades she has been working in Queens.
The Martínez family is famous for its impersonation and singing shows. Performances that also heal wounds. The connection between Laura Martínez and her chosen daughters was not the result of chance.
It was born from a vital need: to let go of the families that were imposed on them and create another one, their own. Because her story is not just hers. It is the reflection of many—perhaps all—undocumented Latina trans women who arrive in New York searching for much more than a refuge. Laura has turned her last name, the Martínez last name, into a way to radically fight back pain.
From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, this is Las Reinas de Queens. I’m Rula Ávila Muñoz. Episode 2. Welcome to Casa Martínez.
When she was a child, Laura helped her mother clean the house and prepare food for her siblings. And while they did it, her mother would turn on a yellow and silver radio that she had bought in installments.
[Laura Martínez]: Well, you know that she really liked all that romantic-trio music she had. She loved it. She loved the trio Los Panchos. She loved to listen to Sonia López.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And Laura did too. The voices that came out of the radio seemed to lift her up as if she were an artist on a small stage.
[Laura Martínez]: I would grab one of my mom’s scarves, I would put it on my head, I would wrap it around and grab a brush, a comb. And that was my microphone. And I would start lip syncing the song. I would grab my broom, I would dance and give myself to it and I liked it. And life felt lighter.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The world around her disappeared: her little body, her old and patched clothes, her house with dirt floors. And for a second she would also forget that little town where she was born in 1963: Papantla.
[Laura Martínez]: That’s where vanilla is cultivated. That’s why they say: the city that scents the world is Papantla, Veracruz.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But for people like her, that tropical, mountainous place, so close to the sea was, above all, hostile.
[Laura Martínez]: Families were traditional, provincial; a man is a man, a woman is a woman. So Papantla was always a marginalization.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura’s parents gave her a boy’s name. But she never felt comfortable either with that name or with her body.
[Laura Martínez]: I felt like a girl, completely.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura was the odd one out. And because of that they mistreated her, at school, at home. Especially her older brother.
[Laura Martínez]: He would hit me and marginalize me and point at me and yell at me and whisper to my ear: “Shut up, you faggot, joto.”
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The only one capable of standing up to these abuses was Laura’s father. A loving man who —something unusual for the time— was able to understand that Laura was different. But he died when Laura was six years old. From that moment she hardly had anyone else who understood her. Until at 11 years old she met Juana.
[Laura Martínez]: Everyone called her Juana La Loca. That’s the nickname they had given her in the neighborhood. It was forbidden. My mom would say, “don’t go, don’t talk to her.” But secretly, I’d do it.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Juana was a trans girl. She was in her twenties, and worked in a cantina.
[Laura Martínez]: I started getting close and she would ask if I liked dresses, wigs, or I liked makeup, I said “I would like to.” Then she says, “do you want to become a woman? Take a pill.” And she would give me a pill.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She gave her Premarin, a medicine to restore estrogen levels during menopause. Juana didn’t seem to care about treating a minor like that. Today, Laura justifies her like this:
[Laura Martínez]: She wanted me to be like her, because it was a rejection that she had and needed… It’s like when you have a team and you need someone to join so you’re not so alone too.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Juana also started dressing Laura as a girl. She would do her makeup, put a wig on her, put foam on her hips and padding on her chest. And like that she would take her to the cantinas on the outskirts of Papantla. There Laura danced for the ranchers for a few pesos that she would then bring home.
[Laura Martínez]: My mom would say to me: where is this money coming from? So I would make up that…
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: That she had earned those coins shining shoes, selling gum, newspapers and lemons. That went on for almost a year. Until one afternoon, Juana and Laura ran late at a ranch. And they couldn’t miss the last bus back to Papantla.
[Laura Martínez]: So we ran. I didn’t have time to undress, remove my makeup, take off my wig and my little pads that I had on my body.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The bus dropped her off near home. Laura ran and went in through the kitchen, quietly.
[Laura Martínez]: But I didn’t know that my mom was there waiting for me, because it was already late. And she looks at me and is shocked and starts to cry. And she says, “what is this? Why are you doing this to me?” And I said, “to earn money, to help you.” And she says, “no, no, no, no, no, it can’t be.”
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: It was the first time her mother had seen her dressed as a woman.
[Laura Martínez]: She didn’t want to touch me. I tried to hold her and she rejected me. She could see in her mind the path I had chosen and the suffering that lay ahead, because later I understood that when someone hurt me, she was the one who suffered most. But at 11, at 12 years old, I didn’t understand that.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura didn’t understand either the decision her mother made at that moment: she put her on a bus and sent her to live with her uncle Juan Ignacio in Mexico City.
[Laura Martínez]: He turned out to be the monster, right? But for me it was good at first. Mexico helped me psychologically because people didn’t point at you or judge you.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The anonymity of the city protected her. At her new school no one hit her. Her brothers weren’t there. And on top of that, her uncle, who loved the arts, opened up a whole new world for her.
[Laura Martínez]: I would go to the Palacio de Bellas Artes, which I loved. He taught me what a zarzuela was, what an opera was, an operetta. All that glamour fascinated me, I loved it. He rented a private box. Can you imagine? He had money.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Juan Ignacio gave her gifts. He was the father Laura had lost, the one who took care of her. Until he wasn’t.
[Laura Martínez]: It was in the early morning that he would rape me. At first I resisted, I tried to resist, but he would beat me badly with a belt.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura didn’t speak about this with anyone, not even with her mother. The resentment Laura felt toward her for having sent her to Mexico was deep, and the relationship between the two was broken. On top of that, Laura also thought that if she told her mother anything, she wouldn’t believe her. After all, Juan Ignacio was family. So she endured it until she was 17, and with some saved pesos, she escaped.
[Laura Martínez]: So I go to the border. I want to change my life. And you always think it’s going to be beautiful.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: A short break and we’ll be back.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We’re back on Las Reinas de Queens.
After fleeing Mexico City, Laura lived a couple of years in Matamoros, a city on the border with Texas. There she worked as a taco vendor to survive.
She also began her transition. But at first it was very hard for her to show herself as she truly was.
[Laura Martínez]: I was very self-conscious. I was afraid of people.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She didn’t speak much, she hid her voice.
[Laura Martínez]: My little mustache still showed. I was ashamed to go out on the street without makeup.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But opposing that shame was a desire she had carried since childhood: to be an artist. So, in a club in Matamoros, she began putting on impersonation shows — lip-syncing to songs.
[Laura Martínez]: When you’re an impersonator, you watch the artist on television. I would learn their hand movements, their mouth movements, their body movements.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura didn’t only imitate the movements of the artists. She also began building herself a new body.
[Laura Martínez]: It looked super natural on me, but it wasn’t. It was a fake body.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura would pad her hips, calves, buttocks, and chest.
[Laura Martínez]: It was material used for upholstering furniture or cushions.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And on top of that she wore five pairs of stockings. She called that fake body «the doll.»
[Laura Martínez]: And I longed to have a natural body, that was your dream, it was your goal, it was the hopes you built up in your head.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But she also longed to leave the artistic world of Matamoros behind, because she had outgrown it. Until a colleague told her about the ideal place to really grow:
[Laura Martínez]: So she tells me, «come over, there are more places to work here where you can develop more artistically and spread your wings.» So I go to Guadalajara. In 1989, at La Malinche, which was a very well-known club, I made my debut as the one and only Manoella Torres.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Manoella Torres, an American singer of Puerto Rican origin. Laura performed her song «Ahora que soy libre» — «Now That I Am Free.»
[Laura Martínez]: I cry when I perform that song. I feel it, I live it, and I make the audience feel it too. So I truly won the crowd over.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura’s career began that night. They hired her at La Malinche. She was inspired. And she began impersonating other artists. But one night at La Malinche, just as the show was getting started…
[Laura Martínez]: The manager came running in, very excited, and told me, «hey, you look a lot like Laura León.»
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura León, a very famous Mexican actress and singer.
[Laura Martínez]: Her music was very catchy, very danceable, and people liked her, they loved her. She was always the one who livened up the shows.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And for exactly that reason, the manager of La Malinche asked Laura to impersonate her and lip-sync to her songs.
[Laura Martínez]: And when I did Laura León, I brought the house down. It was a total success. And that is when I decided to take the name Laura.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: So great was Laura’s success — our Laura — that a club in Tijuana, in Baja California, offered her her own show for twice the money.
[Laura Martínez]: And that’s how I arrived in Tijuana. I opened with the song «Suavecito,» which was already a hit. I got to open wearing a red dress with mittens — I’ll never forget it, it was my debut. I remember I started with my back turned to the audience. Then I turned around… And the crowd just went, «wow.» I mean, people wouldn’t even let me sing or dance, because they were lining up to give me tips. And I was like, «oh my God.» My dress filled up so much that there was no more room for all the tips they were giving me.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura’s life changed completely. She had the admiration of the public, a big house, enough money to start investing in her transition therapy. And she also had a new family. Accompanying her in her shows was a small company of dancers and backup singers, most of them trans. They were called las fenómenos — the phenomena.
[Laura Martínez]: We all lived in the same house, and when we went to work, they rode in my car. The van was packed full. All of us together, and we all came back home together. I mean, it was a group, but it was also more like family, you know? Because we were together every single day.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: But she also found something invaluable that she had been searching for for a long time. After years of having barely any relationship with her mother, Laura convinced her to fly to Tijuana from Veracruz. And it was from her most natural state — the stage — that Laura was able to show herself to her mother in full shine, being her true self, as she had never been able to do so before.
[Laura Martínez]: When I walked out onto the stage, she stood up and hugged me. And it was very moving, very moving, because the whole audience stood up too, and I felt this beautiful warmth. And my mother said to me, «I love you, you are my pride. And I’d always want to be by your side to protect you, because,» she told me, «if there was ever a day you felt rejected, I always wanted to protect you and be with you always.»
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: The reconciliation with her mother brought Laura an immense sense of peace. Perhaps for the first time in her life, she felt whole. But between 2000 and 2001, Laura suffered several blows that destabilized her. She lost her mother to a heart attack. She fell into a depression. She began to neglect herself. And on top of that, three girls from her company were accused of assaulting a minor — something that turned out to be false. But the damage was already done.
[Laura Martínez]: I start losing my shelter. After having a big house, we move into a small, ugly place, and we all crowd in together. And I didn’t want to give up the show.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura had to complement her income some other way. Fear and the responsibility she felt toward her group — her family — pushed her to seek a drastic solution. Something she perhaps never would have dared to do if her mother were still alive.
[Laura Martínez]: I start doing sex work because I no longer have money to pay my employees, my girls, my dancers.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: During the week Laura worked on the street and at a hotel, and on weekends she performed her show. Until, soon after, an offer came her way that could change her situation: one of her dancers told her that a woman named Argelia was looking for impersonators to perform shows in New York.
[Laura Martínez]: So I tell her, «honey, tell her to give me a chance. Tell her to take me for just a couple of months, as long as she can. I need to save up money. I’m never going to save money here.» So she talks to her and she sets one condition: «I want her tomorrow.» Okay. It was my birthday and I decided to leave the next day. We had a farewell dinner celebrating my birthday, and on August 21st, 2003, I was off to New York.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura flew on a tourist visa. When she arrived in New York, nobody picked her up at the airport. She took a taxi and showed the driver the address Argelia had given her.
On the way into Manhattan, the city she saw through the window didn’t surprise her. Not the big highways, not the bridges over the river. Not even the skyscrapers. New York was simply a means to an end. Laura’s plan was to perform for two or three months, earn a lot of money, and then go back to Mexico to put her show together.
With that mindset, she walked into Argelia’s apartment.
[Laura Martínez]: And it was a very beautiful place, carpeted. Lots of things, antiques. And I meet Argelia for the first time. Heavy-set, with enormous, huge breasts, and she leads me into the living room. And the first thing she says to me: «Take your clothes off.» And I just… «Yes, take your clothes off.» And she made me take off all my clothes.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Strange, uncomfortable, yes. But not enough to discourage her. By then, Laura already felt much more at ease with her body. So she took off her clothes, Argelia looked her over and said:
[Laura Martínez]: «Oh, you have a beautiful body. Perfect. Get dressed.» And she says, «we’re going to take you. You’re going to start working right now.» «Right now?» I said. «What about my costumes?» «No! Just grab two changes of clothes. We’re taking you to apartment 530 on 47th Street, apartment 4B, on the West Side.»
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: On the West Side, on the other side of Manhattan. Argelia’s helpers took her to that apartment. It was elegant too. Everything was red: the furniture, the curtains, the rugs. There were other women and trans girls there, about 20 of them.
[Laura Martínez]: And they told me, «take your clothes off because they’re going to sell you.» «They’re going to sell me?» «Yes, they’re going to sell you.» And then I realized this wasn’t about a show. I felt so small. I wanted to run. I was left speechless. But my mind kept asking: what am I doing here? What is happening?
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura had become a victim of a human trafficking network. They took her passport and her visa. And they began sexually exploiting her immediately, with exhausting schedules. Always in the apartment. There, she and the other women would see clients.
Argelia did pay her, but the money didn’t go far. They wouldn’t let her go out anywhere except the Mexican corner store next to the building. Asking for help wasn’t an option either. Her captors watched her constantly. And on top of that, they frightened her: they told her the police could throw her in jail.
[Laura Martínez]: It was traumatic, you know? Because I thought, «well, we’re prisoners here, locked up.»
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura spent several months like that, always thinking about how to escape. The first thing she did was bribe one of her captors with a thousand dollars to get her passport and visa back. Then, with her documents in hand, she waited.
Laura remembers that the chance to escape came one afternoon in July 2004, eleven months after arriving in New York. Her captors came rushing into the apartment and told them:
[Laura Martínez]: «Grab your stuff and let’s go. Now.»
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Someone had reported them to the police.
[Laura Martínez]: I mean, everything happened so fast. There was fear, dread, anguish.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And chaos. And Laura took advantage of it.
[Laura Martínez]: The first thing I said: my papers, my things, my money, because I had money.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And while all the other girls were running downstairs and out into the street…
[Laura Martínez]: «Hurry up, hurry up.» I quickly ran inside…
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She ducked into the Mexican corner store. And there she asked the man in charge for help. De was Mexican too.
[Laura Martínez]: And I said to the man, «please,» I told him, «I am being held captive,» I said. And he helped me, and said, «this way.» And he led me through a courtyard, through a garden where the trash is thrown out, behind the buildings. He took me in and said, «don’t make a sound.»
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: A short break and we’ll be back.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: We’re back on Las Reinas de Queens.
Laura hid for hours. That night the Mexican store owner came and told her everything was quiet. The captors had gone and the police hadn’t shown up either. After 11 months of suffering, Laura was free.
[Laura Martínez]: And to help my family, I decided to stay.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And she set out to find what she had really come to New York for.
[Laura Martínez]: Where can I find a show? So the Mexican guy says, «head to Queens, that’s where the Mexican community is.»
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Laura took the subway to Queens. She arrived at Roosevelt Avenue.
[Laura Martínez]: I started walking, looking around, seeing that there was food, there were street vendors, shops, and everyone was speaking Spanish, and I felt right at home. And there I started asking around where there were drag shows, you know? And I started knocking on doors. It wasn’t easy. It took months of asking for auditions.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: She did it at the Music Box, at Lucho’s, at the Atlantis. It was at those clubs where she got her first opportunity to impersonate Laura León. It was there where she began to be a mentor to so many girls, as we heard at the beginning of this episode. And it was also there where she crossed paths for the first time with Lorena Borjas, the mother of all mothers.
[Laura Martínez]: I saw her for the first time standing there with her little bag full of condoms to hand out. She said to me, «I just love your show, how admirable, you look so much like Laura.» And she started telling me, «I need you. You have that voice. You have that charisma. People follow you. I can’t speak in public. I get embarrassed. The microphone scares me. I want you to help me.»
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Lorena asked Laura to invite the audience during her shows to pick up condoms and get tested for HIV. And she agreed.
[Laura Martínez]: Our first HIV tests at a club were at Atlantis, in my dressing room, with nothing but black curtains. First we did one, one little module, then it became two and then three.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: There, immersed in the nightlife of Queens, between art and solidarity, Laura finally noticed what had been obvious all along: she had found her family.
More than twenty years after arriving in New York, Laura has today shaped a family based on her own experience. And she has welcomed so many daughters into her home that over the years she has watched them build their own lives.
And they all proudly carry the last name Martínez.
[Romina Martínez]: Romina Martínez, 27 years old.
[Quintanil Martínez]: Quintanil Martínez, 21 years old.
[Carolina Martínez]: Carolina Martínez, 24 years old.
[Cari Martínez]: Cari Martínez, 31 years old.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: They have all also experienced one of Laura’s shows firsthand. And well, to give you a better sense of it — one night in 2024, Diego, our producer and reporter, accompanied Laura to one of her shows. Laura picked him up in her Toyota SUV.
In the car were some of the materials Laura uses to work her magic: a huge mirror, a lone pink shoe, a plastic crown on the back seat, and a pair of sheer stockings, already worn.
[Diego Senior]: Dear Laura, where are you performing tonight, where is your show tonight?
[Laura Martínez]: Tonight I’m heading to El Trio Bar. That’s where I work on Mondays. I’m celebrating 20 years of my Spicy Mondays. And the shows are at two in the morning in Queens. The venues close at four in the morning. That time was set because before they were starting at one in the morning. But here’s the thing — venues in Manhattan close at midnight, so a lot of people from the LGBTQ community work as waiters, as bartenders in Manhattan, in restaurants. So those working people come to Queens, to the clubs, to have fun.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: They tend to be migrants who offer crumpled dollar bills — probably the tips they earned during the day.
[Laura Martínez]: That’s why a lot of people think it’s late, but the people coming from Manhattan are just getting off work, and they’re the ones who, uh—
[Diego Senior]: Brenda is calling you. Brenda is calling, answer.
[Laura Martínez]: Hello!
[Brenda]: Hi, beautiful sister. Sorry to bother you with this. Is La Patrona on Friday and My Second House on Saturday, or are they both on the same day?
[Laura Martínez]: No, no, no, no, no. Friday — I told you, La Patrona is Friday, and Saturday is…
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Brenda is a friend of Laura’s; they’ve known each other for about twenty years. She also has her own shows and is one of the few who doesn’t lip-sync — she actually sings. Diego took the chance to ask her for a sample of her talent. He asked Brenda if she knew the song «Hacer el amor con otro» by Alejandra Guzmán.
[Brenda]: “Amanecer con él a mi costado no es igual que estar contigo…”
[Diego Senior]: Oh, bravo!
[Brenda]: “No es que esté mal, ni hablar. Pero le falta madurar, es casi un niño…”
[Diego Senior]: Wow. Bravo! Spot on!
[Laura Martínez, at El Trio]: We’re going to have a great time tonight, aren’t we? So welcome, enjoy your evening, have a wonderful time. Let’s have fun!
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: El Trio is on the second floor of a Mexican restaurant next to a forgotten auto repair shop, near Roosevelt Avenue in Queens. The bar is dark, with a damp smell, a sticky counter from all the spilled tequila and beer, mirrors and lights, rickety chairs and torn cushions.
Laura already knows by heart how to execute each of her shows — from impersonating Laura León to being the host, the one who welcomes the audience and entertains them between other performers’ numbers. Because that is what Laura is: a hostess. With a spicy touch.
[Laura Martínez]: I bring in Mexican cheekiness, double meanings… You have to have the grace to do it so the person doesn’t take offense. So, calling a heavy-set woman heavy, but without making her feel bad — like saying, «oh honey, who did you eat?» I mean. And people laugh. Little things like that. Or to some skinny guy over there I’ll say, «and you, sweetheart, you haven’t eaten, have you? Someone’s going to eat you up. Come here, I’ll feed you. Come on, I’ve got my girls.»
[Laura Martínez, at El Trio]: Hey cousin, Is the cousin hot or is she not? She’s delicious, she’s tasty. To hell with it. It doesn’t count if you’re related
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: That night the celebration was flawless. But as we said at the beginning of this episode, Laura’s is not the only family among the Queens of Queens. One night, some time later, Diego was at another party.
[Diego Senior]: Excuse me, who is she?
[Rosemberg daughter]: Kylie Rosemberg.
[Diego Senior]: And she is…?
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: A party where other daughters support other mothers.
[Rosemberg daughter]: She does activism with us at the Collective. She joins us in the activities and everything. She’s very well known in the celebrity scene, in the shows, in the bars and all that. And she’s the matriarch of a group, a family. You know that within our community we do what’s called chosen families. Because our…
[Diego Senior]: Like the house…
[Rosemberg daughter]: Because our families sometimes reject us, so we seek out our own group. And she is the mother of… Well, she would be my mother in the scene and the mother of Zuleyka Rosemberg.
[Diego Senior]: From her house, Rosemberg.
[Rosemberg daughter]: Yes, I mean she has supported us. At one point I was in need and she reached out and helped me…
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: And indeed, Casa Rosemberg and Casa Martínez are part of a long list of last names and families: St. Cartier, Duval, Lafontaine, Chacalosas… Each last name, each family, is a kingdom, with its own laws and traditions. And its battles.
[Laura Martínez]: That has always been, is, and always will be — the competition. I can tell you: Kylie Rosemberg and I say today that we are sisters. But if our daughters are going to compete, then we forget about being friends or sisters. May the best one win. Whether I’m talking about a St. Cartier or a Martínez Cabrera, or Smith or other families — if you don’t go in with the mindset to win, you won’t do anything right.
[Rula Ávila Muñoz]: Because in this world divided between the shows and the street, standing out is an unstoppable desire. And every step, always forward, is a reaffirmation of the right to exist in the face of rejection.
We are entering a fierce and brilliant universe. That is where the Queens of Queens live.
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 iHeartRadio.
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 me.
Fact-checking by Bruno Scelza and Nikol Pizarro.
María Linares did the sound design and mixing, as well as the original music.
The series’ graphic design and art direction are by Diego Corzo.
Product development for Las Reinas de Queens was led by Natalia Ramírez. Digital production was carried out by Ana María Betancourt and Óscar Luna.
Business development and strategic partnerships were led by Camilo Jiménez Santofimio. 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, our CEO, Carolina Guerrero.
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 «Spreading Love Through Media» 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.
This podcast is the property of Radio Ambulante Studios. Any copy, distribution, or adaptation is expressly prohibited without prior authorization.
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.