World of Wonder (WOW) recently announced that three new spinoffs of RuPaul’s Drag Race would be coming soon to Paramount Plus, including Drag Race Mexico. As exciting as it may be to contemplate a Mexican version of Drag Race, Drag Race fans should know that there’s already a Mexican Drag competition series that just completed its fifth season, La Más Draga, which is available to watch on YouTube. La Más Draga has been wildly popular among queer people in Mexico, or, at any rate, that’s my impression. While traveling in Mexico in recent years, I have talked to many queer people in Mexico who are enthusiastic fans of the show, and queer Mexican publications are rife with articles about it.
A few months ago, around the time that WOW, the company that produces all the various versions of Drag Race, announced that Drag Race Mexico was in the works, all the previous episodes of La Más Draga suddenly disappeared from the show’s YouTube channel, prompting all kinds of rumors among the show’s fan base. ICON TV posted a video on YouTube speculating about what had happened. One rumor was that the showrunners, a sexy gay couple named Bruno and Carlo, were trying to sell LMD to WOW. Another was that WOW had tried to buy it but that Bruno and Carlo had refused to sell, and thus WOW was suing them for intellectual property infringement –basically for copying the format of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
But then La Más Draga suddenly reappeared, along with its 5th season, which has, for the first time, professionally done English subtitles. It also has some big-name guest judges, like Lila Downes, and seems to have a bigger budget (though like RuPaul’s Drag Race, the budgets for this show have been getting gradually bigger with each season).
I don’t know if any of the rumors about La Más Draga‘s conflicts with WOW have any basis in fact. Internet sleuths were certainly making a good case for all of their theories. And as many pointed out, it was pretty rich for RuPaul’s Drag Race to complain about its format being stolen when it is largely derived from Project Runway and America’s Next Top Model. More importantly, there are intriguing ways that La Más Draga is different from RuPaul’s Drag Race –and there are even ways in which RuPaul’s Drag Race seems to have been copying La Más Draga rather than the other way around. It’s a show that Drag Race fans should check out, especially this most recent season that is subtitled in English.
The following article contains some spoilers for earlier seasons of La Más Draga, so if you think you might want to watch the earlier seasons, you might want to stop reading here.
Things La Más Draga Did First
1. AFAB (assigned female at birth) queens
Long before Victoria Scone made her first appearance on Drag Race UK, becoming the first AFAB queen to appear on any of the franchise’s shows, Alexis 3XL, a Mexican AFAB queen, competed on (and won) the second season of La Más Draga. She is also a plus-size queen who won before any plus-size queens won on any of the many RuPaul’s Drag Race shows.
2. Drag Queens who are real life twins
In its promos for Season 15, RuPaul’s Drag Race is making much of the fact that two members of the cast are identical twins in real life. They are competing individually, a fact that has already led to predictions that, at some point, RuPaul will surely put them in the bottom and make them lip synch against each other. La Más Draga has already had real life twins competing: On Season 5 of La Más Draga, a set of identical twins from Southern California, Isabela and Catalina, competed as a team. It wasn’t the first time that two queens have competed as a duo on LMD. In season 2, two queens who perform together as Red Rabbit Duo finished 7th.
3. All Judges Have a Vote (and at times, so does the public)
Famously, on RuPaul’s Drag Race, RuPaul says before the lip synch for your life, “I have consulted with the judges, but the final decision is mine to make.” (Many fans think that the producers actually make the decisions–based not on the performances of the queens but on the stories they’re trying to tell.) On many of the international spinoffs, however, the judges make decisions together, sometimes voting, sometimes just talking privately before the decision is announced. La Más Draga has been around for longer than any of the international spinoffs of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and the judges have always voted on La Más Draga. In fact, each judge awards points to each contestant, and the the points are added up to determine who’s the week’s winner and which queens will be lip syncing. The guest judge’s vote is secret, and on some seasons, the guest judge has been asked to determine the winner of the lip sync on his/her/their own. Sometimes, points are awarded to the winners of mini challenges, something that on several occasions has saved contestants from the bottom. Just before the lip synch, we always see the point tally for each contestant. For all I know, producers are rigging this show in the same way that many believe RuPaul’s Drag Race is rigged, but the voting at least creates the impression of greater fairness.
The grand finales of La Más Draga are filmed before a live audience, as are those of RuPaul’s Drag Race. But on La Más Draga, members of the audience get to vote for the contestant they want to win, and these votes do help determine the winner.
4. International Casts
Before any of the international “All Stars” seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race (“UK vs. the World,” “Canada vs. the World”), La Más Draga had allowed queens from other countries to compete. This past season alone, there were contestants from Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, and the US. RuPaul’s Drag Race has had some contestants from other countries, but they were all longtime residents of the US when they competed. The international contestants on La Más Draga were invited to come to Mexico to compete. Nevertheless, they often seem to be at a disadvantage because the challenges always involve some aspect of Mexican culture that the queens are being asked to embody.
Things La Más Draga Has Done that RuPaul’s Drag Race Hasn’t
1. Drag Kings
Unfortunately, there have been no AFAB drag kings on La Más Draga, but there have been what Mexicans call “bio kings,” male performers who perform as male personas. Unlike most American drag kings, these Mexican bio kings tend to perform a kind of fem masculinity. My favorite of these drag kings is Paper Cut, who uses male pronouns in and out of drag and has been on two seasons of La Más Draga. His elimination on Season 4 was so controversial that the producers felt compelled to bring him back on Season 5. I love this kind of drag. Paper Cut (and other bio kings) play with gender signifiers in myriad fun ways, but by insisting that they are drag kings, not queens, they are redefining masculinity, celebrating non-stereotypical ways of being a man.
2. A queen has won the competition without ever winning a challenge.
Deborah La Grande, the winner of the first season of LMD, never won a challenge during the season, but her performance on the grand finale was so strong that she won the crown.
3. A queen who was brought back has won the crown.
On RuPaul’s Drag Race, it’s fairly common for an eliminated queen to be brought back into the competition, but usually, that queen is eliminated again almost as soon as she is brought back. Fans speculate that bringing back a queen is just a publicity stunt, one intended to improve ratings. Few people believe that an eliminated queen has any chance of winning the crown (and so far, none has). But on the second season of La Mas Draga, Aviesc Who? was brought back and then won the whole thing.
4. Body Diversity on the “Pit Crew”
Like RuPaul’s Drag Race, La Más Draga has a group of hunky men who assist the competitors in various ways and provide eye candy for viewers. I’ve never heard them referred to as the “pit crew” (or any Spanish equivalent), but clearly, they serve the same purpose as the pit crew. They tend to wear skimpy leather outfits, and their names are always versions of Veneno (poison) and Toxico (toxic). These names (and variations on these names) have been used by several different men over the past five years.
On Drag Race, pit crew members are voiceless; they are generally seen but not heard. On La Más Draga, the various Venenos and Toxicos always get a chance to speak. When judges are being introduced, pit crew members are also introduced and get a chance to say a few words. Even more importantly, at the end of every episode, one of the pit crew members will pay tribute to the eliminated queen while placing a photo of this queen on the “drag altar.” (More on this later.) The tributes they pay are often quite emotional, creating the impression that the “pit crew” members form close friendships with the contestants during the filming of the show.
Most members of La Más Draga‘s pit crew, like those on RuPaul’s Drag Race, are young men whose bodies were clearly sculpted in a gym, but there have been some exceptions. One member, VenenOso (whose name plays with the Spanish words for “poisonous” and “bear”) was what is known in the gay world as a bear, and on this most recent season of La Más Draga, a pit crew member called Venenito is a little person, or persona de estatura baja in Spanish. (On the makeover challenge this season, the contestants made over several little people, and while they were being made over, conversation in the work room focused on their struggles in Mexican society. Just as little people in the English-speaking world object to being called “midgets,” these little people said that they found the Spanish equivalent, enano–or enana–offensive. These little women said their own experience with discrimination and social prejudice helped them relate to queer people.)
There’s plenty of talk on Drag Race about loving one’s body, and there have always been queens of various body types over the years who talk about their own struggles with body positivity. But WOW clearly thinks that only one type of body belongs on the pit crew. La Más Draga seems to take its “body positivity” message more seriously.
WHAT REALLY MAKES LA MAS DRAGA SO SPECIAL
What I love most about LMD is its celebration of Mexican culture. The challenge each week is for the contestants to prove themselves la más (the most) in some category that is usually taken from Mexican history or culture. Categories have included la más rosa mexicana (in honor of the hot pink color that is so important in Mexican culture), la más piñata (inspired, as you no doubt guessed, by piñatas), la más legendaria ( inspired by Mexican legends), la más pintada (inspired by Mexican muralism), la más revolucionara (inspired by the Mexican Revolution), la mas luchona (inspired by Mexican wrestling, la lucha libre), la mas alebrije, (inspired by the fantastical creatures of Mexican folk art), la más diva (inspired by the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema), la más dramatica and la más villana (both inspired by telenovlas), etc. The title of the show itself has been translated as “the draggiest.” Its Snatch Game equivalent is always la más famosa, and while this category might seem be an exception to the show’s celebration of Mexican culture, the contestants tend to impersonate Mexican celebrities whom very few Americans will recognize. There was even an episode this past season called “La más del Toro,” in honor of the great Mexican film director.
As I mentioned earlier, at the end of each episode, the eliminated queen’s photo is placed on the “drag altar,” a giant Day of the Dead altar. The episode immediately prior to the grand finale, usually called the “reunion” episode on RuPaul’s Drag Race, one in which the eliminated queens get to discuss their experience on the show, is called “Día de Muertas.”
A couple of other interesting ways that the show’s structure incorporates Mexican culture: The judges sit in what appear to be their own private trajineras, the colorful boats that are used for transportation (and tourism) in Xochimilco, a neighborhood in the south of Mexico City that still has the kind of canals that were used in Tenochtitlan (and in the entire Valley of Mexico) in precolonial times. And the show’s energetic, infectious music is written and performed by Mexican artists. No doubt Drag Race Mexico will employ RuPaul songs, as most of the international franchises have, and will feel less authentically Mexican as a result. I hope we haven’t seen the last of La Más Draga, that it won’t be completely supplanted by Drag Race Mexico. Drag Race Mexico might be excellent, and it will certainly provide an even bigger platform for queer Mexican culture. But that platform might come with some unfortunate gringo interference. Anyone interested in a home-grown Mexican drag competition show should head to YouTube and watch a few episodes of La Más Draga.