Were you the black sheep of your Latine family? You know, the brujita or rarita who wore all-black outfits, chunky boots, and different makeup from the other primas? After years of goth Latinas being the odd one out, it looks like the mainstream is finally losing the overplayed sexy Latina number, and including the more alternative representation on the big screen and in our every day lives.
“For the longest time, we were seen as the weirdos and the freaks,” queer Latina Yvette Aragon of clothing/accessory horror shop Backstitch Bruja recalls. “So it is cool to normalize this subculture.” Thanks to scream queens like actress Melissa Barrera in the Scream franchise, and more recently, Jenna Ortega in the highly anticipated sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, spooky Latinas are finally getting the Hollywood treatment.
But it’s not just in film, Latine goths are winning in all corners. Let’s just say the “niñas raritas” are using that fuel to open doors for the next generation – weirdos welcomed with arms wide open.
Beyond Aragon’s Backstitch Bruja, we’re also taking up spaces on the dancefloor and podcast realm. For niche goth en español music events, we are summoned by alternative Mexican-American content creators like Tina “Hauntina” Estrella, who promotes Latine goth clubs to thousands of followers. In the podcast industry, Latines are being represented in Spanglish by Denise and Aly’s crime podcast So Violento So Macabro Podcast.
Although these three alt-Latinas have lived different experiences, they are all passionate about representing their heritage and goth culture in their line of work. Below, we celebrate each chingona on their accomplishments, what it means to be a goth Latina, and how they hope to reshape their respective community.
Yvette Aragon, Founder of Backstitch Bruja
Representing Latinas in the fashion horror space helped 35-year-old Aragon with self-identity. “Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of representation and always had that feeling of ‘What’s wrong with me?’” she recalls over a Zoom interview. After creating DIY pieces and seeing people compliment her work, she decided to pivot from being a Chicano Studies professor to opening a shop that would represent Latinas who love horror – just like her.
For Aragon, being a goth Latina means finding a community. After opening Backstitch Bruja in 2018, she reeled in a community of Latines who identified with her style. This encouraged her to aim to make a change in the fashion world, where she hopes to break the standard “white” and small-frame goth stereotype. “For the longest time, I feel like there was a standard with the goth scene that it’s a very certain body type and a very specific girl,” she says. “It’s just nice to show that we come in all shapes and sizes and colors.” Her brand carries sizes from extra small to 4X. “It’s not just a certain niche type of model.”
But her clothes aren’t just for Latinos – she welcomes everyone. “I just want to empower other women in the scene that love it. Even with non-Latinos, I get a lot of white women that love what I do, and they want to be respectful. And they say, “Is it OK if I wear one of your Mexi-ween stuff?” she tells Remezcla. “I’m like, ‘Absolutely. As long as you’re supporting a Latina-owned brand, that’s the correct way to apply your love for other cultures and not use it as a costume and incorporate it in your everyday wear.”
Looking back on her success, she gets emotional when asked what she would tell her younger self who didn’t see herself represented. “I’m just thinking about little weirdo me,” she says, choking up on the call. “[I’d] just be like, ‘You’re so weird because you love Halloween,’ and it was not cool back then. But I would tell myself, ‘Yeah, you are weird, and that’s OK.’”
Hauntina, Content Creator
Tina, known as Hauntina, has garnered over 100 thousand TikTok followers and almost 60 thousand Instagram followers over eight years. The 34-year-old uses her platform to showcase her multifaceted identity as a nurse student who makes spooky content and promotes music events that cater to the Latine goth ear.
“Being Latina, being Mexican has always been so essential to who I personally am and how I identify,” Tina says on a call. She says that she’s proud of her heritage and is one of the first things she tells people who meet her. “Being able to represent that in my aesthetic – especially with the gothic culture – has always been very important,” she reiterates.
After noticing that there was a lack of Latine representation in the goth culture, she felt music was a unique way to connect with her people.
“Recently, there was a show called Los Espookys, and they have a really great soundtrack where they play a lot of Hispanic sort of gothic music,” Tina tells Remezcla. “And I just found myself wanting to reconnect with my culture in that way, where I was like, I would love to know about more goth bands. I don’t feel like anyone’s really putting that together. So I actually put a playlist together a couple of years ago, and it’s gotten a few thousand people following it. It’s called ‘Somos Darks.’”
This sparked the idea of using her social media following to further unite goth Latines. Now, she promotes clubs like Gothicumbia – which features genres from cumbia to darkwave – to bring together her fellow alternative Latines.
“I love the fact that I have been seeing more Latinas, especially celebrating their uniqueness within the gothic subcultures,” she tells Remezcla about the current status of Latine representation in her community. “Here [in Los Angeles], there’s actually some friends of mine who host events called Gothicumbia. It’s different dance nights where there are DJs that play dark wave, [and] gothic music, but then there’ll be a DJ that plays cumbias and rock en español. There’s such an increase [of Latines in goth space], I think, especially a lot of us first, [and] second-generation Latinos, we want to reconnect back with who our culture is. And a really big way we can do that is through music.”
Besides being an advocate for music in her subculture, Tina also wants to reshape the community by normalizing that it’s OK to be multiple things at once. “I want to make sure that I can open the door for people to feel like, ‘Hey, I can be multiple things. I’m a dynamic person. I don’t have to completely just be one label and stick to it. I can be multiple different things at one time, and it doesn’t erase any other parts of me.”
And what would she tell her inner child? Similar to Aragon’s advice to her younger self. “I would say to just tune out any insecurities or invalidations of who you think you are… I would just tell myself that you can just be weird and strange and unusual and not feel bad about it. Just embrace it because someone’s going to think you’re awesome.”
Denise Pontaza, Content Creator & True Crime Podcaster
Pontaza is a 34-year-old spooky content creator and true crime podcast co-founder. Together with her longtime friend Aly Luna, the two Mexican-Americans founded the bilingual So Violento So Macabro Podcast in 2021, where they discuss Latine crimes and advocate for mental health.
Pontaza loves the goth subculture because it’s all about embracing your individuality. “I think when you mix the goth community and being Latine in general, you have that extra expressive moment where you’re like, ‘I want to be seen as a person that is both into this sub-genre but can also make it my own.’”
She continues: “For me, it really emphasizes that I can combine both my love for music and fashion and the culture that the goth community gives; and also be into spooky stuff, into the paranormal, into true crime, and still hold that place with both communities.” She adds that she loves that goth culture encourages you to express yourself in your own way and to not “let anybody shame you for who you are and what you want to wear.”
Another way of expressing herself is by co-hosting a true crime podcast. The podcast was a result of the duo’s desire to bring more Latine stories to light. “We aren’t being portrayed in the media as much as we should be, whether it’s with true crime or missing people or just have any awareness of the victims and what they’re suffering from and what they need help with,” Pontaza tells Remezcla. “I feel like for the most part, the community itself is very united, and we can pull each other out and bring people back together.”
Not only that but the podcast is recorded in Spanglish, which represents Latines that speak both languages. However, it comes with its challenges, primarily from YouTube users who don’t appreciate the duo not speaking Spanish “properly.”
“I think that’s the most challenging part of it because you can’t satisfy everybody,” she shares. “And for us, sometimes it puts us in that difficult situation. It’s like, ‘What would we do? Do we satisfy everybody, or do we just do it the way that we know and the way we feel comfortable with?” They agreed to keep doing it their own way.
As far as advice goes, Pontaza, like the Aragon and Tina, vouches for freedom of expression: “I encourage everybody to be who they want to be and dress the way they want to dress – regardless of what your parents or your abuelita or tía or anybody thinks – because it just shapes who you are and it shapes your identity.”
