Art and resistance: The Drag Cali Movement
Being a woman in Colombia is not easy. In Cali, a city traditionally related to drug trafficking and violence, women are silenced daily. Last year the Gender Secretary of Santiago de Cali registered 22 feminicides, alarming numbers that increase every year. The situation is even worse for those who have chosen to be women, such as trans and drag queens. Violence against these women is more ruthless and bloodier. However, the story of the Drag Cali Movement is about art and resistance.
The dressing room of the Presagio Theater (“Teatro del Presagio)—a theater in the north of Cali—is full of spiral staircases and curtains that hide the faces of the spectators. It smells musty, and the only sound is that of the leaks that tick like clockwork, intermittently breaking the silence.
In the dressing room, the light changes and the silence becomes a song, accompanied by the voice of a pop diva. The room is huge, and it has a monumental mirror and a simple balcony. On the shelves, there are wigs, bras, shoes, loafers, and heels—men’s and women’s clothing belonging to the same person. Likewise, there are shadows, powders, illuminators, and eyelashes placed on a long white counter. They are the first pieces of a transformation over the next several hours.
The humidity sticks to the skin, often melting the layer of makeup that hides Darwin Ramirez’s masculine features. But this time the atmosphere is different: it has rained all day. Before sitting in front of the mirror, Ramirez removes his black jacket and his motorcycle vest. He leaves his helmet on the ground, showing an almost bald head, crowned by sweaty curls that will later be covered with a mesh cap serving as the basis for his wig. Ramirez is a sturdy and tall man, with unique manners that expose a mystic elegance.
The transformation
Transforming into Rosa, his stage persona, takes over four hours in a ritual of sacred steps to reach the divine grace of this character. The music, fan, makeup, wig, heels, and gloves are all essentials.
In Colombia, there are no temporary implants for hips and thighs, so the Presagio’s drag queens pad their bodies with foam, needles, thread, and tape. It’s arduous work: their fingers become callused under the manual labor. It’s also expensive: in Cali, there are no ideal wig shops or shoes of their sizes, so they must force their larger feet in size 40 heels. All for art and for the theater, in defense of diversity.
"The first time I dressed in drag was about a year ago for a party,” Ramirez says as he slowly slipped into his new persona. “It was very interesting to become another being, another character, and to be read from another view, relating to people as a woman, living a fantasy.” As he changes, so does his voice, its forced sharpness harmonizing with Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande.
“Rosa is an extension of my art, my way of transgressing the world, of exploration and self-love, with the idea of filling such a horrible world with beauty and confronting the macho/sexist and heteropatriarchal culture of this society,” he says as he gently applies false eyelashes and foundation to a face becoming ever softer and more feminine. “The drag lifestyle ends up being one more way of presenting myself to the world, shouting, ‘This is me, this is my body, this is what I like.’”
After his first transformations, Ramirez wanted to be part of the Drag Movement of his hometown. He went to the first meetings with the aim of supporting the group from the graphic and advertising side. In those days he met the professional classical dancer Gonzalo Basto—or, Byagra Atómica—who shares the dressing room with him.
Basto himself is a muscular man, with short height and toned arms. But Byagra is voluptuous, and she has felt the lascivious gaze of men. While walking down the Boulevard del Rio, one of the busiest areas of the city, these men have clawed at her foam buttocks as they catcall her. “In catcalling, there is a difference between ‘pussy,’ ‘clown’ and ‘mamacita.’ If they say you’re a clown, they do not recognize you for who you are. If they admire you and call you compliments like ‘mamacita,’ that’s fine because they’re seeing a woman. And when they say ‘pussy,’ they mean to insult you, but it does not really affect us.”
“For me to dress as a woman goes beyond my appearance, I seek to convey a positive message for people and I want to reclaim many things that historically have been wrong, so I think it's nice to go down the street like Byagra, seeking recognition of diversity in all its forms, and find families and children who I can talk about having bodies of men while feeling like a woman, says Basto.
These women proudly strip themselves of criticism and violence. The Drag Cali Movement has professional members who manage to transform society through art and culture, performing well-known plays adapted to gender themes.
"We are a movement of sisters, at one point we were 12, but circumstances in Cali are difficult and many leave the city in search of other cultural spaces." Affirms Byagra. The passion they feel for their art is transmitted on the stage, in search of educating the population on political and social issues, a complex task in a society that rejects diversity and change.
For this reason, Byagra Atómica and Rosa know that being a drag is to be resistant: "we do this so that new generations can learn about art, freedom, self-love and education because we believe that this are the only true weapons against any conflict."
