Identity, Activism, and Subculture: A History of the Imperial Court System Viewed from the Global South

This paper explores the history of the Imperial Court System, a grassroot network of drag communities and an international LGBT fundraising organization founded in San Francisco, California, in 1965. The Court System has received attention from different scholars and its history has been documented by court historians themselves, as the parody of imperial protocol has also served the purpose of preserving the memory of the courts. However, this paper focuses on the complexity of this camp parody, as it reproduces representations of coloniality. Based on archival research, the paper takes the standpoint of the 1985 founding of the Imperial Court of Tijuana and traces the various ways in which Latinx representation has been at the center of the Court Systems’ history. Ultimately, this history viewed from the Global South sheds a light to the complexity of queer global history, as it offers an example of a rare collaboration that shaped identity categories, activist strategies and LGBT subcultures in the US-Mexico border.