He didn't have any speech prepared. The journalist and social media manager José Luis Rodríguez Novoa appeared on stage at the rally organized by Podemos in Pedro Zerolo Square, in the Chueca neighborhood, transformed into Lüüz. The alter ego with which he participates in the ballroom, the transformism competitions. He is the only Spaniard registered in the historic LaBella house. He is the anti-Chavista Venezuelan who put the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, the Minister of Social Rights and Agenda 2030, Ione Belarra, and the Secretary of State for Equality and Gender Violence, Ángela Rodríguez Pam, dancing, shaking the backstage of his adaptation of the chulapo suit before the disaster. "They were living," he gives a break to prudence. It downplays its performance. He does not want to be the protagonist, he already considers himself quite privileged for being white and having developed his personality without having been judged to be leading the movement of the uprooted, but he starred in one of the main campaign events of Pablo Iglesias' party, which has lost a substantial part of the votes after 28-M.
The organizers installed in the street a portion of the meetings prepared by the misunderstood collectives between the four walls of the Kiki House. The celebrities of the coalition government went to ground zero of the LGTBI movement in Spain to prop up their candidates for the elections of May 28. Chueca voted mostly for the Popular Party. Alejandra Jacinto (Community of Madrid) and Roberto Sotomayor (City Council) were left without representation.
The objective was to recreate the coexistence of the Kiki House, of the Kiki House of Delicious. "In 2016 we created this safe space." Lüüz, José Luis, improvised. It retained the attention of policies. "Spain has a lot of little towns where being gay, being a faggot is pretty fucked up." And the slogan Courage to transform paraded, becoming flesh, the soldiery organized in the spaces aimed at deactivating prejudices, "the chosen family" of the "safe spaces".
José Luis is 43 years old. He was born in Venezuela. He is of Asturian descent. Although he does not want to talk about politics, he confesses to having "voted for the right when I lived in Getafe". It is installed in the red bastion. "I live in Rivas. I liked that Podemos counted on us. Whether or not you agree with all the ideas of Podemos, there is something common on the left: they generate safe spaces for gays, lesbians or transsexuals. As I said, you do not have to wait for elections to offer us proposals. I am Venezuelan, anti-Chavista and, at the social level and collective rights, there are many things in which I feel more represented by Podemos. Only in language, in the way of speaking."
He prefers to run away from clichés. It has marked the common places reproduced when dissecting the Venezuelan context. "Chavismo is not the only thing in Venezuela, eh. When I lived in Venezuela I thought Spain was flamenco and bullfighting. In Spain it is thought that in Venezuela there are only Chavistas. Or you think all Venezuelans are right-wing. Just because I'm on the left doesn't mean I agree with all left-wing policies. It doesn't bother me to be associated with anything, knowing that it's a way to skew reality quite touchy."
He arrived in Spain at the age of 20. His family returned to Gijón. He had already pecked at the Asturian beaches. He had no problems for being gay. "My parents are good. From the first moment they adopted it naturally. I've suffered more discrimination for being fat than for being gay." Fatphobia is a priority for the Secretary of State for Equality. Pam called for more fatties in Congress. "It happens every day. You don't fit in a terrace chair. You don't fit on the plane. You don't fit in the subway. You go to a gym and they look at you badly. What do they want?" he quips. José Luis has a good mood. "I was a little pressured," he returns to the Podemos rally. "The father of our house asked me to speak. We did it in a particular way because operationally it suited us. There is no more," defuses a certain controversy propelled by jumping on Twitter his words.
Like Lüüz, he performed some songs in playback. Actually, through the lypsinc mode, a modality in which, transformed, the inhabitants of the Kiki House compete to dress the songs without singing. What is a Kiki House? What are you talking about when you talk about parents? Why did you reference Crystal Labella? The Kiki House movement emerged in the New York neighborhood of Harlem in the early 70s. It was a revolution: if the canons were not adapted to a portion of the population, it would be those people without references in the mainstream who founded, at least in privacy, their own canons. It was started by Crystal LaBella, "a black trans woman. She came to say not to judge her."
The ballroom is the olympiad of transformism or modeling, a cocktail of artistic expressions. They display all their skills camouflaged in the day to day. The houses host the contests. "The houses have designer names. The Balenciaga or the Versace". Lüüz has managed to gain a foothold in the original. "I am the only Spaniard in Labella. They are all places of experimentation. There we gain self-esteem so as not to beg for respect."
Lüüz started photographing the encounters and ended up submerged. The movement has a pulse in Europe. "My father is Polish, for example," he says of his host. Before entering Labella he won some awards and found his place in the core from which everything came. "And in 2016 we created the first one in Spain. The Kiki House of Delicious in Zaragoza. Crystal LaBella is the only one with recognition in the US, she is the pioneer of activism, a black trans woman with real problems." This current nourished the reality Drag Race. "Drag doesn't give me money or live off it, but it's not a hobby either. The ballroom is also not a competition. It serves to know other realities. Thanks to him , I put myself in other people's shoes and in myself", my ciela: this is how he alluded to the main policies of the country that danced around him.
- Articles Juan Diego Madueño
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