In January 2022, Erick Martínez, often referred to as Turbulence Queen, offered a visitor on his YouTube channel: Ivan “Momo” Guzmán, with the level title Burrita Burrona, a drag performer dressed in a cartoonish donkey dress crowned via a wig.
Prior to Burrita’s first look, Turbulence’s YouTube channel had fewer than 5,000 subscribers. Now, after the rebranding of the display to incorporate Burrita’s title, their channel has about 375,000. Greater than 2 million subscribe to them on TikTok – Turbulence, with 600,000 fans and 16 million likes; Burrita with 1.5 million fans and 28 million likes. Their “El Podcast del Momento” has greater than 225,000 subscribers.
The 2 proved so common that company sponsors began going in at the motion. Soriana, a big grocery store chain in Mexico, splashed their photographs on a line of truffles. Netflix Latin The usa had them webhosting a chain of movies selling its new South Korean dramas. The media massive Televisa integrated Turbulence and Burrita as a part of their comedic protection of the 2024 Paris Olympics.
During the last 3 ½ years, the YouTube display has added some new characters, together with Burrita’s mother and an on-and-off love pastime, a butch lesbian wolf. Along side the interviews, the characters do comedic cooking segments and sketches. Even in lately’s fragmented and cluttered media setting, this system incessantly will get round 250,000 perspectives, with some episodes attaining greater than 1 million.
Whilst drag performers don’t seem to be new in Mexico, Burrita is one thing of a novelty: a drag mascot. Even though lengthy part of Mexico’s industrial tradition – mascots advertise the whole lot from football groups to pharmacies and are a staple at youngsters’s birthday events – Burrita is the primary to do it in drag.
A clip from an episode of ‘El Podcast del Momento.’
Discrimination and violence
As a Mexican pupil who makes a speciality of the find out about of gender and sexuality, I’m struck via how those LGBTQ+ characters have grow to be drastically common in what I believe a reasonably conservative and deeply non secular nation. On the other hand, that too is converting: These days’s Mexico is also known as a conservative nation with liberal rules. Nonetheless, in a rustic the place about 5% of the inhabitants self-identify as LGBTQ+, the fight for inclusion – and extra various illustration of gender and sexuality – is a long way from over.
In 2023, conservative teams careworn the Global E book Honest of Monterrey to cancel a public short-story studying via drag queens. In 2024, a social media influencer’s misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic remarks ran live to tell the tale nationwide tv. Additionally in 2024, San Nicolás de los Garza, a town of greater than 400,000 folks, banned public performances via drag queens. Satirically, San Nicolás is within the state of Nuevo Leon, which has probably the most biggest LGBTQ+ populations in Mexico.
Certainly, nationwide insurance policies protective the LGBTQ+ neighborhood don’t all the time observe similarly; some states are extra restrictive than others. For instance, despite the fact that Mexico’s Ideal Court docket legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, 3 states have not begun to ratify it of their state constitutions.
Turbulence Queen is interviewed on native TV at a 2023 pink carpet match in Mexico.
Jaime Nogales/Medios y Media by the use of Getty Pictures Leisure
In Might 2025, Mexico’s Nationwide Institute of Statistics and Geography reported those findings: 60% of the LGBTQ+ neighborhood say they’ve been subjected to a few type of violence. Just about 30% have had suicidal ideas or have tried suicide. Simply over 37% say they skilled some type of discrimination all through the previous 12 months. From 2020 to 2025, 25% mentioned they had been denied get admission to to well being care, schooling or social reinforce. Hate crimes are on the upward push, with 672 reported over a five-year duration, together with 141 in 2024, an important leap from the 92 reported in 2023. The 2024 statistic comprises 55 murders of transgender girls.
Commencing the masks
Turbulence and Burrita’s swift luck is spectacular, however no longer all LGBTQ+ voters in Mexico experience the similar stage of popularity and privilege. And because the battle for equivalent remedy continues, the rustic’s politics over the last decade has shifted. In 2018, leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador was once elected president. His successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, a local weather scientist and an in depth best friend of López Obrador’s, was once elected in 2024.
However despite the fact that each López Obrador and Sheinbaum are extra revolutionary than earlier administrations, neither has been specifically vocal about their reinforce for the LGBTQ+ neighborhood. For example: Even though Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first feminine and Jewish president, discussed her reinforce for the LGBTQ+ neighborhood all through her marketing campaign, she has in large part unnoticed LGBTQ+ problems since taking workplace.
Till just lately, there have been few brazenly LGBTQ+ folks pitching merchandise or showing on tv. However Guzmán, who’s the primary mascot to accomplish in drag, isn’t hiding his sexuality, regardless of the dress. Slightly, he can also be learn as a logo of Mexico’s ongoing pursuit of equality. And possibly his personality’s visibility will permit extra locally so that you can shed their mask and are available out.
