MOMENTS OF

TRUTH

This project spotlights people in Texas who experienced turning points that reshaped the course of their lives.

ILLUSTRATION BY LAUREN IBAÑEZ

(Editorial note: We are using Moroni DeAnda/ La Dede Camacho’s preferred names to correspond with their different gender identities.)

Cheers spilled from Cavas 3, a club in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on a warm Saturday night in August. Inside, two drag queens impersonated two famous Mexican singers, Amanda Miguel and Laura León. Their bedazzled dresses, big wigs and tall heels mesmerized the crowd, inviting them to sing along.

“It’s like a formula: you have a good wig, you have a good outfit, you have good makeup and you have a good show, and then you have a great, positive review,” said La Dede Camacho, the drag queen who impersonated Laura León that night.

Despite a drag career consisting of 7,000 shows so far, La Dede said she felt especially validated by the Cavas 3 crowd after her performance as the famous singer. Once she donned her full-length sequined gown and walked onto the stage, her confidence took the wheel.

That confidence is something that La Dede has cultivated since childhood. 

La Dede, a self-described “funny, sexy, Latina,” is now a prominent LGTBQ+ figure in the El Paso and Ciudad Juárez region. The drag queen hosts events such as Drag Story Hour, in addition to performing at nightclubs, as a way to promote inclusivity amid a political climate that’s increasingly hostile toward the LGTBQ+ community.

When she’s not on stage, La Dede goes by her birth name, Moroni DeAnda, a 35-year-old man who grew up on the South Side of Chicago.

The figure who most shaped DeAnda’s early years was his grandmother.

“My grandmother was always a hardcore woman,” DeAnda said. “She didn’t want us to be lazy” 

He said she ran the household like the U.S. Navy, and part of that discipline was attending the local Mormon church, a faith that DeAnda’s uncle introduced to the family. But religion never stuck with DeAnda. He would question everything. 

“I was like, ‘Why are we praying?’” DeAnda said. “Why are we here? Why are we dressed?… How come some people get special privileges and other people don’t?”

He stopped going to church during his freshman year of high school, and it was during this time when DeAnda started to notice he was “different.”

At first, he identified as bisexual, then later as gay. 

But even before he started high school, DeAnda had to deal with a significant challenge: His mom was deported to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. 

“I used to come from Chicago and took the Greyhound to come [to Juárez] just to see her for my summers throughout high school.”

Those visits began DeAnda’s lifelong relationship to El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, two sister cities that have grown and intertwined along the border.

Another pivotal change DeAnda experienced was joining the military, starting with his high school’s ROTC program.

Moroni DeAnda served in the 205th Medical Battalion with the U.S. Army National Guard in Missouri.

COURTESY OF MORONI DEANDA

DeAnda got a scholarship to attend Wentworth Military Academy in Missouri. When he graduated from the academy, he was automatically commissioned into the army. DeAnda was a part of the U.S. Army’s 205th Medical Battalion, also in Missouri.

While he was in the military, DeAnda tapped into drag.

A friend in Chicago, George Ortiz (Venus Carangi on stage), introduced him to drag. For Venus’ shows, DeAnda would carry bags for her and help her get dressed. 

“Venus was like, ‘Can you get my zippers?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know how to do a bra,’” DeAnda said. “Like, come on. I’m a guy.”

DeAnda fell in love with drag so much, he carried the passion to the military base, but in secret.

“I used to have my Walmart duffle bag just because I had my clothes in there,” DeAnda said. “I used to put the pinkest, sparkly heels all the way in the bottom with the wig.”

During the day, DeAnda would carry out his military duties like cleaning equipment and counting uniforms. But on weekend nights, he transformed into La Dede and performed at a local bar in Missouri called Missie B’s.

Moroni DeAnda transforms into La Dede Camacho at the Borderland Rainbow Center in El Paso, Texas on Aug. 25, 2025. Lashes, eyeshadow, and wigs are all essential to the drag queen’s ensemble.

SOFIA SIERRA / NEXTGENRADIO

Even though he was the ideal soldier “with my back straight, stomach and chest out, shoulders back,” he found his femininity and the beginnings of La Dede. 

La Dede would sporadically do shows in the U.S., but she made an official debut in Ciudad Juárez at El Closet Bar. 

“I went to Juárez because nobody knew me,” DeAnda said. “I just wanted to do [drag].”

After leaving the military, DeAnda eventually moved to Ciudad Juárez to be with his mother and continues to live there today. La Dede now does shows and events on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border.

In El Paso, La Dede is the coordinator of Drag Story Hour, a program where drag queens read books about inclusivity to children and adults. The El Paso group has been offering story hours since 2018 and is the only official chapter available in Texas. 

DeAnda said that the Borderland Rainbow Center, a local community center that connects the LGTBQ+ community, has funded the Drag Story Hour.

Moroni DeAnda, who also performs as La Dede Camacho, explains the craftiness of drag queens at the Borderland Rainbow Center in El Paso, Texas, on Aug. 25, 2025. He holds a cloth with a splash of aceite de rosas, or rose oil, as an unconventional makeup remover.

SOFIA SIERRA / NEXTGENRADIO

This year national efforts have tried to stop the program. In Texas, Senate Bill 18 tried to ban public libraries from hosting drag story hours but didn’t make it out of the Senate during the 2025 legislative session.

DeAnda became El Paso’s story hour coordinator in late 2019, a moment in his drag career that he describes as pivotal. He said it’s helped him refine his craft as a drag queen and has helped create a new resource and education for kids, both queer and not.

“I’m taking [drag] more even more seriously than what I used to do before,” DeAnda said. 

“What’s the harm in somebody dressing up and reading to a child? You don’t have to come, but there is somebody that needs it.”