And these are the most dramatic drag queens known to humankind." Back then, it had a real sense of danger to it. "I was experimenting with sexuality at the time, and this place had all the elements that would really draw me somewhere," recalls Obejas. It took off, and when it outgrew the space, the owner, Juan "Juanita Banana" Alanis, moved it to another club he owned-La Cueva.Īchy Obejas, a well-known Cuban-American author and journalist based in Chicago, remembers going to La Cueva as a teenager in the 1980s. Teanga moved to Chicago in the 1970s, began surgery and hormone treatments, and asked the owner of a popular La Villita night club called El Infierno to take a chance on letting her host a show. "But we showed them how much talent we have." "There used to be no acceptance of us in the Spanish community," she says. There were not many clubs where openly gay men were welcomed in the 1960s.īut that's different now, obviously, and at least in Chicago, Teanga thinks she and her show have played a major role in changing attitudes in the Latino community. When she went to clubs as a patron rather than a dancer, she had to pass as either a straight man or a woman (something she was able to pull off even pre-surgery) or risk getting thrown out. "The police would always bother us, stop us and ask for our IDs." "If they found out you were a female impersonator they would be really mad," she reports. In both Puerto Rico and New York, she was adored inside the clubs but had to be constantly vigilant on the street because of harassment from police and bigots. Teanga returned to New York and danced in clubs including La Escuelita, the Jukebox Revue and the 82 Club several years later, bringing her Latin flavor to American drag shows. "We suffered so much." She really found her stride around age 16 in Puerto Rico, where she (he at the time) started dancing salsa in drag at a club called The Little Parrot. "At the time it was so hard for young boys" to come out, she recalls. Teanga, now 59, grew up as a young man between Puerto Rico and New York, with parents who were factory workers on Coney Island. "You couldn't even walk around in a wig, or you'd be asking for trouble. "It was a taboo thing then," agrees Willie Gaitan, who has been with the show for 18 years and is known for wearing the skimpiest outfits. "We used to have to run from the cab to the club" because of intimidation and violence from homophobic gang members on 26th Street, says Teanga. La Cueva is right in the heart of the city's working-class Mexican community, and the wild popularity of the show demonstrates how things have changed over the past two decades, how many Latinos from all walks of life have dropped macho and homophobic attitudes toward transgender and gay Latinos and embraced scenes like that at La Cueva. But in Chicago, most of them are on the whiter, wealthier north side of the city and draw an audience of that type. Latino drag and transgender revues like Miss Ketty's are now popular throughout Chicago and other cities around the country.
The crowd, mostly Latino, is a mix of slickly-dressed young professionals, older straight couples cuddling at tables, groups of lesbians on their weekly night out, gay couples who make out on the dance floor and some of the city's top salsa and cumbia dancers.
The room is packed late at night every Thursday through Sunday for Miss Ketty's shows. And the show "Miss Ketty's Latina Review," hosted by Puerto Rican transgender diva Ketty Teanga, is known as one of the genre's pioneering acts. La Cueva, a signless, inconspicuous club on a vibrant but gritty stretch of 26th Street-the main drag of Chicago's Mexican community La Villita-is by many accounts the oldest existing Latino drag club in the country. Lines form at the sides of the stage as adoring gay and straight men and women wait their chance to stuff bills in the gold-spangled bikini of a shapely transgender dancer gyrating and lipsyncing joyously to salsa music. on a Saturday night, and the crowd at La Cueva is going wild.
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