Laura has spent her whole life hand in hand with Fernando. She was always one step behind, always waiting for her moment, one that came every February, in which Fernando disappeared so that Laura emerged as La Lecherita, that endearing character from the Carnival. For three years now, he no longer needs Milkmaid. She has stayed and it is Fernando who has disappeared.
“Three years ago I took early retirement, after 46 working at the Hotel Mencey. The following week, at home, depressed, I looked in the mirror and had a kind of revelation, and I told myself that I had to try to be happy, I have to be a woman, which is what makes me happy. This is what Laura Mendoza tells DIARY OF NOTICES. “I wanted everyone to know me as I would have liked to be in my life, not hiding, not suffering, living in a dark room, a life that was not for me.” So she told herself “so far, she’s finished” and she decided to show herself as she sees herself, “as a woman”. “Before I died I wanted to see myself and feel like a woman, like my mother should have brought me into the world,” says Laura.
The day after making that decision, she says that she went down to Santa Cruz and bought a bag, two blouses, a suit, and two pairs of ankle boots, “and to date.” “I’m happy, I feel good, I like to see myself, feel the way I am.”
And it is that he says that now he feels free to dress “in my own way, to my liking”, because he confesses, “I get out of bed wanting to go out and enjoy life, in the shoes I like to wear, after so many years getting up and wearing an outfit that did not go with me.
La Lecherita del Carnaval, the happiest years
Laura acknowledges that the 38 years she has played La Lecherita have been the happiest of her life. “It has been a great escape for me to be La Lecherita, because I had the illusion that February would arrive, the month of Carnival, in which I would dress up as the character and that would allow me to breathe, catch my breath,” she says. And it is that, he admits, “if it had not been for that character, I would have taken a great depression, since I was aware that I was living in a body that was not for me, living a wrong life, a life with which I never I felt identified. The character of La Lecherita for me has been almost one of the most beautiful things that has happened to me in my life”.
Lecherita del Carnaval remembers how as a child, “when she was 12 or 13 years old” she knew that there was something in her life that “was not going well”. She says that she was “a child who did not want to be a child.” She remembers that, studying in Somosierra, “only 40 meters away was the girls’ school and, when I saw them go by, I was disconsolate and looked at them and told me that I had to be with them, I didn’t understand why I couldn’t be like them”.
He believes that for that reason, because of that misunderstanding of his own nature, he became a lonely person. “I escaped from the world in which I lived, for social problems, also for my family, and psychological problems that I had because of this.”
That led her to separate herself from her family and friends. “I was living a life that was not mine, I wanted to be a woman, that has been my dream all my life, and I did not want to pretend anymore. They saw me as a boy, and I pretended that I was fine, and that was such a shock to my brain that I took a trauma that I still have for not being able to be a woman.
He assures that now, “my life has changed. There isn’t a day that I don’t thank heaven for giving me a second chance.”
When asked if he regrets not taking this step sooner, he says he can’t because it just wasn’t an option. “It never occurred to me to face it like this, it was very complicated. She couldn’t say anything like that. It was something deep inside of me. It was not easy to express it, it is not like today that it is something more common”.
Right now he is in the process of changing his name on his DNI, but going through the operating room, the next step, rules him out. “I feel fine as I am. At my age I am not to go through an operating room. I am satisfied and I am a happy person, to see myself like this, and to live my life as one more girl, without any problem”.
About how her environment has taken it, she says that she has found everything, who accepts her as she is now and who does not understand it and moves away. “There are those who are more open and understand that there are people who do not agree with the sex they have. Friends of mine for many years rejected me, told me that they did not understand, that they did not accept me. I told them that I wasn’t angry, because I understood that it was a very delicate step to take, and that either I took it or I died, I couldn’t live another day like this. I only wish that if they have children, that they do not have to go through this life as I have gone through.
In the world of Carnival, everything has also been found. “Some do understand it, others don’t, but I think there are more who support me than those who don’t,” he points out.
But Laura’s change has brought one more consequence. “Right now my health is the most important thing for me. He had two falls, and one forced me to have hip surgery, and they have told me that I must be very careful with falls, so I am thinking of stopping going out in Carnival.
“I have taken a very important step in my life, and I want to focus on fulfilling myself, and I am taking advantage of it,” he adds, although he admits that he is very sad to leave the party that has given him so much, “but now I have to think about my health ”.
