Alina Troyano, more commonly known as Carmelita Tropicana, is a Cuban-American stage and film lesbian actress who lives and works in New York City.
Troyano burst on New York's downtown performing arts scene in the 1980s with her alter ego, the spitfire Carmelita Tropicana and her counterpart, the irresistible archetypal Latin macho Pingalito Betancourt.
In 1999, she received an Obie Award for “sustained excellence in performance”[1][2] El Diario La Prensa, a daily Spanish-language newspaper, named Tropicana "One of the Most Notable Women of 1998".
[14] Other projects include Schwanze-Beast, a collaboration with filmmakers Ela Troyano and Susanne Sachsse, and El Comandante, based on her father who fought in the Cuban Revolution.
[19] Her work has also been cited in: From Bananas to Buttocks: The Latina Body in Popular Film and Culture, Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory, José, Can You See?