Todos/as Somos 41: The Dance of the Forty-One from Homosexual Reappropriation to Transgender Representation in Mexico, 1945-2001
Abstract
In the early hours of November 17, 1901, police broke up a loud party being held on La Paz Street in downtown Mexico City. Upon entering the private home, they discovered forty-one men in the midst of a ball – nineteen of whom were dressed as women. The “Dance of the Forty-One” is one of the most scandalous events in Mexican history, erupting during the Porfiriato dictatorship (1876-1911) and making the number 41 a symbol of homosexuality. The present article analyzes this symbol through the numerous cultural artifacts that have immortalized the scandal, ranging from novels, paintings, memoirs, and even archival prints, to see how the memory of the Dance was deployed for diverse agendas over the course of the twentieth century. It argues that contestations by elite state and cultural actors and activists to remove the stigma and shame tied to the Forty-One, initially part of the process of homosexual identity formation and liberation, also enabled the proliferation of new and radical modes of representation and community dialogue. The symbolism and memory of the Famous 41 offered an opportunity for the portrayal of sexual desires in magazines and erotica that defied dominant notions of sexual and aesthetic hierarchy, from the portrayal of healthy bodies and the emphasis of alternative sexual practices in the aftermath of the HIV/AIDS crisis to the centering of the eroticism of transgender bodies and the viewing pleasure of women.
References
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Piccato, Pablo. The Tyranny of Opinion: Honor in the Construction of the Mexican Public Sphere. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
Po, Paolo. 41 o el muchacho que soñaba en fantasmas. México D.F.: B. Costa Amic, 1964.
Prieur, Annick. Mema’s House, Mexico City: On Transvestites, Queens, and Machos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
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Balderston, Daniel. “Poetry, Revolution, Homophobia: Polemics from the Mexican Revolution.” In Hispanisms and Homosexualities, edited by Sylvia Molloy and Robert McKee Irwin, 57-75. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.
Barajas Durán, Rafael. Posada, mito y mitote. La caricatura política de José Guadalupe Posada y Manuel Alfonso Manila. México, D. F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2009.
Bartra, Roger. Blood, Ink, and Culture: Miseries and Splendors of the Post-Mexican Condition. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.
Beezley, William H. Mexican National Identity: Memory, Innuendo, and Popular Culture. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2008.
——. Judas at the Jockey Club and Other Episodes of Porfirian Mexico. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.
Beezley, William H., William E. French and Cheryl English Martin, eds. Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico. Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 1994.
Benjamin, Thomas. La Revolución: Mexico’s Great Revolution as Memory, Myth, & History. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.
Benjamin, Thomas and Marcias Ocasio-Melendez. “Organizing the Memory of Modern Mexico: Porfirian Historiography in Perspective, 1880s-1980s.” The Hispanic American Historical Review 64, no. 2 (1984): 323-364
Beverley, John. Testimonio: On the Politics of Truth. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.
Bordieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.
Brown, Elspeth H. and Sara Davidmann. “Queering the Trans* Family Album”: Elspeth H. Brown and Sara Davidmann, in Conversation.” Radical History Review 122 (2015): 188–200
Brunk, Samuel. The Posthumous Career of Emiliano Zapata: Myth, Memory, and Mexico’s Twentieth Century. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008.
Buffington, Robert. Criminal and Citizen in Modern Mexico. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.
——. “Homophobia and the Mexican Working Class, 1900-1910.” In The Famous 41: Sexuality and Social Control in Mexico, c. 1901, edited by Robert McKee Irwin, Edward J. McCaughan and Michelle Rocío Nasser, 193-225. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
——. A Sentimental Education for the Working Man: the Mexico City Penny Press, 1900-1910. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015.
Buñuel, Luis. My Last Sigh. Translated by Abigail Israel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.
——. “Critically Queer.” GLQ 1 (1 November 1993): 17–32.
Carrier, Joseph. De los Otros: Intimacy and Homosexuality Among Mexican Gay Men. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
Carrilo, Héctor. The Night is Young: Sexuality in Mexico in the Time of AIDS. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Castrejón, Eduardo A. Los cuarenta y uno: novela crítico-social. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Coordinación de Difusión Cultural, Dirección de Literatura, 2010.
Chassen Lopez, Francie R. “Distorting the Picture: Gender, Ethnicity, and Desire in a Mexican Telenovela (El vuelo del águila).” Journal of Women’s History 20, no. 2 (2008): 106-129.
De la Dehesa, Rafael. Queering the Public Sphere in Mexico and Brazil: Sexual Rights Movements in Emerging Democracies. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
Díaz, María Elena. “Cultura política y periodismo popular en el México de principios de siglo: La prensa satírica para obreros.” In Posada y la prensa ilustrada: Signos de modernización y resistencias: Museo nacional de arte, Julio - Octubre, 1996, 89-101. México: Patronato del Museo Nacional de Arte: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1996.
García Ramírez, Sergio. El final de Lecumberri: Reflexiones sobre la prisión. México: Porrúa, 1977.
Garza, James Alex. The Imagined Underworld: Sex, Crime, and Vice in Porfirian Mexico City. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2007.
Gutmann, Matthew. Fixing Men: Sex, Birth Control, and AIDS in Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
——. The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Hallas, Roger. Reframing Bodies: AIDS, Bearing Witness, and the Queer Moving Image. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.
Irwin, Robert McKee. “The Centenary of the Famous 41.” In The Famous 41: Sexuality and Social Control in Mexico, c. 1901, edited by Robert McKee Irwin, Edward J. McCaughan and Michelle Rocío Nasser, 169-189. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
——. “The Famous 41: The Scandalous Birth of Modern Mexican Homosexuality.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 6, no. 3 (2000): 353-376.
——. Mexican Masculinities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
Irwin, Robert McKee, Edward J. McCaughan and Michelle Rocío Nasser, eds. The Famous 41: Sexuality and Social Control in Mexico, c. 1901. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Kulick, Don. Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
LaCapra, Dominick. History and Memory After Auschwitz. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998.
Laguarda, Rodrigo. Ser gay en la ciudad de México: Lucha de representaciones y apropiación de una identidad, 1968-1982. México: CIESAS, 2009.
Lear, John. Picturing the Proletariat: Artists and Labor in Revolutionary Mexico, 1908-1940. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016.
Lomnitz-Adler, Claudio. The Return of Comrade Ricardo Flores Magón. Brooklyn, New York: Zone Books, 2014.
Macías-González, Víctor M. “The Lagartijo at The High Life: Notes on Masculine Consumption, Race, Nation, and Homosexuality in Porfirian Mexico.” In The Famous 41: Sexuality and Social Control in Mexico, c. 1901, edited by Robert McKee Irwin, Edward J. McCaughan and Michelle Rocío Nasser, 227-249. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
——. “A Note on Homosexuality in Porfirian and Postrevolutionary Northern Mexico.” Journal of the Southwest 43, no. 4 (2001): 543-548.
Macías-González Víctor M. and Anne Rubenstein, eds. Masculinity and Sexuality in Modern Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2012.
Marshall, Daniel, Kevin P. Murphy and Zeb Tortorici, eds. “Queering Archives: Historical Unravelings,” Special Issue, Radical History Review 120 (2014)
——. “Queering Archives: Intimate Tracings,” Special Issue, Radical History Review 122 (2015).
Monsivaís, Carlos. “The 41 and the Gran Redada.” In The Famous 41: Sexuality and Social Control in Mexico, c. 1901, edited by Robert McKee Irwin, Edward J. McCaughan and Michelle Rocío Nasser, 139-167. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Novo, Salvador. Pillar of Salt: An Autobiography with 19 Erotic Sonnets. Translated by Marguerite Feitlowitz. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014.
Pérez Montfort, Ricardo, Alberto del Castillo and Pablo Piccato. Hábitos, normas y escándalo: Prensa, criminalidad y drogas durante el porfiriato tardío. México, D.F.: CIESAS, 1997.
Piccato, Pablo. The Tyranny of Opinion: Honor in the Construction of the Mexican Public Sphere. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
Po, Paolo. 41 o el muchacho que soñaba en fantasmas. México D.F.: B. Costa Amic, 1964.
Prieur, Annick. Mema’s House, Mexico City: On Transvestites, Queens, and Machos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Rocha Osornio, Juan Carlos. “El performance del insulto en los albores de la novela mexicana de temática homosexual: 41 o el muchacho que soñaba en fantasmas (1964) de Paolo Po.” Cincinnati Romance Review 34 (2012): 97-111.
Streitmatter, Rodger. From “Perverts” to “Fab Five”: The Media’s Changing Depiction of Gay Men and Lesbians. New York: Routledge, 2009.
Stryker, Susan. Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution. New York: Seal Press, 2017.
Stryker, Susan and Stephen Wittle, eds. The Transgender Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Urquizo, Francisco L. Símbolos y Números. México D.F.: B. Costa Amic, 1965.
Vaccaro, Jeanne. “Look More at the Camera than at Me”: Susan and the Transgender Archive. Radical History Review 122 (2015): 38–46
Valentine, David. “‘I Went to Bed With My Own Kind Once’: The Erasure of Desire in the Name of Identity.” In The Transgender Studies Reader, edited by Susan Stryker and Stephen Wittle, 123-138. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Vargas Cervantes, Susana. “Alarma!: Mujercitos performing gender in a pigmentocratic sociocultural system.” PhD dissertation, McGill University, 2013.
Vaughan, Mary K. and Stephen E. Lewis, eds. The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.
Wiegman, Robyn. Object Lessons. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012.
