Shading U.S. Empire in Puerto Rico’s Ballroom Scene

“READING” ABOUT HER FASHION

I look at my face in the mirror to check the status of my matte red lipstick, blush, and foundation. As host of tonight’s ball, I do not want to be one of the folks dragged onto the floor to be “read” for their aesthetic choices. From the stage where I sit, the old, renovated church-turned-café in San Juan, Puerto Rico, gives off a similar ambiance to the multifloor grandiose venues of Ballroom’s start in 1970s Harlem, New York.

Confident in my own face, I turn my attention toward the audience. People explode around me, spilling between the lines of chairs delineating the green and white mosaic-tiled runway space. I wait for folks to pick up the microphone and start reading the spectators in the crowd for filth.

“Reading” is a game of wit and word aimed at exaggerating a flaw in someone and delivering an insult with a sharp quip that leaves them stunned. “Shade” is related to reading but has an indirect form where the insult or social commentary may go over the head of the listener or the directed reference—at least at the moment it’s delivered. Both reading and shade were formulated in the early years of Harlem’s Ballroom scene to help Black/Latinx queer and trans folks learn how to build tougher skin to face the outside world’s normative understandings of gender, sex, and sexuality.

Today we are gathered on the floor for a category called “Reading About Her Fashion,” which asks performers to drag one another for their sartorial choices. Categories function almost like prompts that give Ballroom artists cues on how to prepare for an event. They give you an idea of how to dress, how to dance, and how to curate your performance to a specific set of genres common to the scene.

Sensing hesitation in the crowd about being the first to grab someone and start critiquing their looks, Father E storms around with a mic and gives a few demonstrations. “Déjate de ir a Forever 21,” [1] [1] Translation: “Stop going to Forever 21.” Forever 21 was a fast-fashion retailer operating in the United States until May 2025. he says, critiquing a ponka [2] [2] Translation: A term referring to gay men, nonbinary people, or otherwise gender nonconforming femme figures. in the crowd who is wearing a fast-fashion shirt that you could probably find at any mall on the island. Someone points to a sign that states “cunt—la esencia del ballroom boricua,” reminding them of the fierce confidence they are supposed to bring to this category.

As a linguistic anthropologist, I research how people put verbal art forms into practice. As part of my fieldwork, in October 2023, I co-curated and hosted the Kiki Ball del Palabreo with the Puerto Rican Ballroom collective Laborivogue. The event in Miramar, San Juan, celebrated the history of the Puerto Rican diaspora in shaping Ballroom culture, with a focus on how Ballroom artists play creatively with language. My main collaborator, Father E, served as a commentator for the night, managing the crowd’s energy and pulse, and ensuring everyone stayed engaged and knew which category was coming next.

In many ways, the Kiki Ball del Palabreo felt like an homage to the early days of Ballroom. I was inspired by early archival clips on YouTube of Puerto Rican transcestors like Alyssa LaPerla, a fierce femme queen prominent at the height of the New York City scene in the 1990s and 2000s. Her legendary set of reads and tit for tat with fellow performer Onjanae Milan made waves in Ballroom history as an example of the ruthless wit of femme queens. I wanted to draw attention to the intimate connections linking San Juan with New York in the performance and celebration of this particular art form.

But the Kiki Ball del Palabreo also revealed some of the tensions between these Ballroom scenes. Participants called attention to the United States government’s colonial relationship with Puerto Rico, using the language and art of Ballroom to question and shift these power dynamics—in both subtle and direct ways.

“NO QUIERO ESCUCHAR INGLÉS”

At the ball, I sit next to the judges on a slightly raised stage. From there, we can see the performers, the DJ, the commentator, and how the crowd is reacting and vibing. The panel represents different Ballroom houses, 007s [3] [3] A Ballroom House refers to a family-like structure that helps prepare performers for balls and fosters a sense of kinship. 007s are those in the Ballroom scene who perform and participate without an affiliation with a House. , and members of Puerto Rico’s queer performance scene—poets, DJs, and commentators. One of the judges is the mother of House of G, a femme and nonbinary Afrodescendiente-centered house.

Inspired by Father E’s prompting, I watch as folks start to creep toward the center of the room to try delivering a read. TRE (a pseudonym), a Black boricua nonbinary femme and member of the House of G, walks up to the mic. They’re wearing black tights, a ruffled skirt, a mini sleeveless crop top, long silver pantallas [4] [4] Translation: “earrings” , and a fiery-print hair wrap. TRE picks someone out of the crowd who is wearing a white button-down top and long athletic socks paired with black heels.

TRE draws them to the mic in front of a bunch of curious onlookers and says in Spanish, “Cual es el look, profesore o atleta con esas medias de Nike?” [5] [5] Translation: “What’s the look, professor or athlete with those Nike socks?”

White Top, as I’m calling them, responds in English with, “This is fashion. What are you wearing?”

To this, TRE puts one hand on their hip and lifts the other hand softened at the wrist with sass. “Se llama estética que tu no tienes,” [6] [6] Translation: “It’s called aesthetics, which you don’t have.” they say. Then, switching to English, TRE adds, “THIS is fashion!”

At this point, Mother G—TRE’s Ballroom mother—rises from the judge’s panel. Frustrated, she cocks her head, grabs the mic on the table, and says in Spanglish, “No quiero escuchar inglés, I don’t wanna hear English. Hablen español!”

Father E looks down at me, and we exchange confused looks about what to say next. We’re a little perplexed by her call to hear less English in the reads, especially because we often go across the boundaries of English and Spanish in the Puerto Rican Ballroom scene.

Father E rather shadily turns to Mother G and says in Spanish, “Que? Tu no entiendes inglés?” [7] [7] Translation: “What? You don’t understand English?”

Mother G whips her hair and head back around to face him and says in Spanglish, “I understand English, but estamos en el Caribe y quiero escuchar español.” [8] [8] Translation: “We are in the Caribbean, and I want to hear Spanish.”

TOO “CHACHA” FOR BALLROOM

I understood Mother G’s subtle critique as a form of shade. She wasn’t being petty about her daughter’s language choice; she was shading the valorization of English in the Puerto Rican Ballroom scene.

The comment about wanting to hear more Spanish was wrapped up in conversations we had earlier that night. At the opening of the ball, I hosted a kikitorio (kiki + conversatorio) where we chatted about our Puerto Rican transcestors and their role in shaping the subculture we now see celebrated globally. Father E stepped in to remind the room of the prejudice that also accompanied some of these exchanges. In the past three years, the Puerto Rican Ballroom scene organized trips to walk mainstream events like the Latex Ball in New York. Some encountered strange looks and dismissal for speaking Spanish in these spaces.

Afro-Boricuas, who make up a large part of the leadership and creative production in Puerto Rican Ballroom, swapped stories of how their accents in English and their Puerto Rican Spanish became points of contention rather than celebration. These stories reminded me of a community conversation I participated in with Felix Rodriguez, a digital archivist and historian of the Ballroom scene who curates an Instagram and YouTube account called Old School Ballroom. As an Afro-Boricua himself, he mentioned that in the early days of Ballroom, recent arrivals to New York from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic were often called “chacha” by those who had been in the U.S. longer. The term was used to make fun of newcomers who were seen as speaking too much Spanish, signaling that they were too “fresh off the boat.”

Mother G’s shade of English use at the ball was a reminder of these tensions—and of the broader economic and political inequalities that shape life on the archipelago. Since 1952, Puerto Rico has held special status as an unincorporated commonwealth of the United States, known as the “Estado Libre Asociado” in Spanish. Puerto Ricans do not have federal voting rights or full economic authority over their own budget (a situation worsened by the implementation of federal austerity measures under the PROMESA Act of 2016).

In 2017, the economic and political gridlock created by Puerto Rico’s unique territorial status was exacerbated by one of the worst hurricanes in history, Hurricane María. Participants in the Puerto Rican Ballroom scene have critiqued the long-standing effects of U.S. colonialism and the federal government’s wholly inadequate response to this disaster, which has led to increasing gentrification and displacement in the archipelago. Ballroom performers have also called for Puerto Rico’s political independence by incorporating anticolonial themes into ball categories.

Within this context, I saw Mother G’s call to speak Spanish as a consejo [9] [9] Translation: piece of advice from Ballroom mother to Ballroom daughter and the broader crowd to recognize the baggage of speaking English in Puerto Rico. The symbolic weight of using English marks a difference between Puerto Ricanness and Americanness that has become a source of tension for those who have experienced mistreatment for being perceived as having accents, including ridicule from others in the Puerto Rican diaspora whose English carries less of an accent.

Seen from this perspective, shading English on the Ballroom floor is part of the anticolonial politics of the scene, where performers put their creative linguistic repertoire in action to draw attention to the colonial mechanisms that affect the everyday lives of queer and trans Puerto Ricans.

FACING THE FUTURE

At the opening of the ball, Father E calls out the description for one of my favorite categories in Ballroom: face. It’s also the category that I love and have walked the most during my time in the scene.