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Indecency in the open
A story about Honduras' drag world! Our reporter Daniel Fonseca follows Alexis, a Mexican drag performer as he prepares Gallery for the first edition of Miss and Mister Universe!
Read some of it here:
Alexis Carrasco is sculpting Gallery, his other self. He has been doing it for ten years and is already an expert craftsman of the exhausting and painful work of momentarily transforming himself into a woman. First is the structure: foam rubber breasts, hips, and buttocks. That is the marble on which he sculpts his work.
He looks in the mirror and evaluates the work. Drops of sweat trickle down his temples, dragging the makeup, and peeling the eyelashes. The sound of industrial-strength duct tape being ripped off cuts through the thin walls of room 405 at the Hotel Guanacaste. The smell of sweat mixed with Old Spice fills the room. It's a warm, humid room; inside you could harvest orchids, but the only thing growing is mold, which creeps into the corners and crawls up the walls. It's 30 degrees, but it feels like 40.
Outside, Tegucigalpa waits, also transformed. Gutemberg Avenue is illuminated only by streetlights and traffic lights, which cast sharp shadows like teeth on the pavement. A group of workers seek to satiate their hunger in small street food stalls and some drunks begin to fall asleep on the sidewalks.
This is Alexis' first time out of Mexico. He was born in Cuernavaca, "The city of eternal spring" and that is also where Gallery was born. One day she wanted to find out what it was like to see herself in the mirror with long hair and since then, every chance she gets, Gallery is reborn in all the glory of her colorful wigs and sequined dresses.
A meeting with friends led her to a party, a party to a drag pageant, and from one pageant to the next. Now, she is getting ready to represent her country in the first edition of the Miss and Mister Universal pageant, to be held in Tegucigalpa, at the Excelsior Hotel, a few blocks away from the Guanacaste Hotel, where she is staying.
... Check out the full story here!
🏆 The note was nominated for the Gabo Award, one of Latin Americans' most prestigious journalistic awards! Making Daniel the first Honduran to be nominated for the category.
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