Five days a week, you’ll find drag queen and self-described “Queerdo” Carmen Monoxide performing in packed venues in Mexico City. She’ll often be wearing sexy pink bodysuits with cutouts, or more futuristic patent leather harnesses. “It’s Pride [Month] right now, so this is our busiest season,” Monoxide tells Vogue, adding that there’s a burgeoning drag scene forming in the city. “Here in Mexico City, drag queens have their own way that they see drag. There’s something about Latinos—they just have this fiery energy and stage presence.” Originally from Guatemala, the fashion-focused queen moved to Mexico in August last year, and she’s since parlayed her love of the art form into a full-time career. While the 29-year-old has developed her own following and steady gigs in the bustling city, her career hasn’t always been so seamless.
Born in Montpellier, France but raised in Guatemala City, Monoxide first became interested in drag in high school. “I didn’t develop a character or anything, I was just mostly having fun with friends,” she says. In 2017, she moved to Napanee, Canada with her then-boyfriend for around 10 months. That was where she truly fell in love with the art. “It was my first winter ever, so I was stuck at home and not really knowing what to do,” says Monoxide. As a fan of RuPaul’s Drag Race, she started experimenting at home, then eventually performed her first show for the public in nearby Toronto. “It was a viewing party for RuPaul’s Drag Race. A girl I met on Grindr asked me to do a little show,” says Monoxide. She performed a dance to Whitney Houston’s “So Emotional.” “I wore this Audrey Hepburn look. It didn’t make any sense, but I just wanted to get on stage and try to do it in front of people.”
In 2018, Monoxide moved back to Guatemala City and was inspired to pursue drag in her native country. She quickly realized, however, that there was not a big scene there. “Drag mostly lives in this one club called Genetic,” says Monoxide. The club hosted “Miss Gay” pageants, one of which Monoxide competed in. It wasn’t a drag ball, which embraces artistry and creative liberty, but was rather a competition for female impersonators. “It was kind of misogynist; girls had to wear heels to [compete],” says Monoxide. “I decided to enter because it was the only thing to do [similar to drag.] There’s no alternative drag—and for me, I was always more interested in the creative side of it.” After Monoxide won the pageant, she began meeting fellow queens in the city. A group of eight of them ended up forming a collective called the “Drag Besties,” which aimed to foster a more creative and accepting drag community in the city. “That started the idea of having parties outside of clubs that are more alternative and super queer—less beauty pageant, more weirdos,” says Monoxide. “There was a need for people to have those safe spaces to be queer and do drag.”
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