An LGBTQ group in Ecuador tapped into a $25,000 grant from the Biden State Department to produce a two-day drag workshop intended to promote diversity and inclusion abroad.
Footage obtained by The Post showed drag queens donning makeup, strutting around topless wearing nothing but pasties and crowing about how the displays could be used as a “political tool.”
Fundacion Dialogo Diverso, a nongovernmental organization that aims to promote democracy and the “LGBTIQ+ population” of the South American country, organized the drag show and published footage of it last July.
The State Department footed some of the bill for the show through its Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration, for which the nonprofit thanked the department.
“Funds provided by the US government,” a disclaimer at the end of the video read near an American flag, per a translation.
In a July 23, 2024, Facebook post, Dialogo Diverso announced that HIAS [Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society] Ecuador, another State Department grantee, had helped provide funding for the program as well.
Records indicate that Fundacion Dialogo Diverso, which was founded in 2018, received about $75,000 in funding since 2022, including a $25,000 grant last year.
The “two-day, intensive workshop,” titled “Primer Heel,” was created for participants to learn “about the art and history of Drag,” the Facebook post shows.
“Here we’ll show you how we learned about drag, its art and its history,” a narrator said in the video, per a translation. “A safe space that teaches us to be authentic and challenge gender norms.”
A drag instructor featured in the video boasted about how drag can be used as a “way of protesting” but didn’t delve too deep into the specifics of what type of activism he had in mind.
“We share political visions, personal stories,” the instructor explained. “It is an opportunity to strengthen our own communities.
Fundacion Dialogo Diverso was founded in 2018 and lists the State Department’s Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration as one of its “allies.”
The Post has contacted the State Department and Fundacion Dialogo Diverso for specifics on how much money in total was used to put on the drag show.
Revelations about US taxpayer dollars flowing to the drag show in Ecuador come as the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are cracking down on government bloat.
Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) boss Elon Musk and his team have been combing through federal expenses and targeting perceived waste.
Recently, the Trump administration has moved to downsize the US Agency for International Development, which oversaw billions of dollars’ worth of foreign aid, and merge it into the State Department.
