Meet Me at Sanborns: Labor, Leisure, Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Mexico
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MEET ME AT SANBORNS: LABOR, LEISURE, GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY MEXICO KEVIN M. CHRISMAN A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HISTORY YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO October, 2018 © Kevin M. Chrisman, 2018 ii Abstract This dissertation is a cultural history about Sanborns, a Mexican business that began as a drugstore in 1903. It continues into the present as a national chain of restaurants and department stores owned by the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. Each chapter explores different topics of analysis: modernity, consumerism, and upper-class leisure culture; revolutionary masculinity and racial politics; food, commodities, and Mexican nationalism; working-class labor struggles and company paternalism, and urban sexuality. The dissertation examines how everyday life created and was created by post-Revolutionary Mexico’s changing gender ideologies, evolving nationalist culture, and openness to foreign capital. It argues that the Sanborns chain has been an essential site of contestation and redefinition of gender roles across Mexico. Tracing the development of Sanborns contributes to the discussion of Mexico’s national culture during the twentieth-century. Commercial retailers and spaces of consumption helped shape Mexico’s urban landscape and consumer identities. The popularity of Sanborns was shaped by local consumer tastes and global technologies as they developed over time. My work describes the collaboration and conflict between Sanborns and its customers who used the floor space in their own way; the store began as a place of leisure for Mexico’s upper-class but evolved into a sexual space shared among classes. Sanborns also became an important intermediary connecting U.S. manufacturers with Mexico’s developing consumer culture, and U.S. tourists with folkloric Mexican handicrafts. The fieldwork conducted for this project took place in Mexico City, Monterrey, and Acapulco. It incorporates the narratives of historical actors from a wide range of class and race positions. Source material for this project included government documents, company ephemera, business licenses, internal business documents, personal letters, advertisements, periodicals, photographs, film, novels, and other print media. The dissertation also incorporated ethnographic research from oral interviews with company employees and Sanborns customers. iii To my family, and To my mentors: Mike Torney, Daron Olson, James Garza, and Anne Rubenstein iv Acknowledgements My adventure as an Illinoisan living in Toronto studying Mexican cultural history began in Lincoln, Nebraska in 2011. I am indebted to my former M.A. advisor, James Garza, for grooming me into a Mexicanist; he provided me a path that eventually brought me to Oaxaca, Mexico. During the 2012 Oaxaca Summer Institute, I met Anne Rubenstein. She encouraged me to apply for the doctoral program at York University and work with her. One consistency I have found throughout this PhD program has been the unwavering support from my advisor, Anne Rubenstein. Her humor, generosity, guidance, and intellectual vigor are what I admire about her most. Her creativity and passion for Mexican history inspired and challenged key parts of this project. After all, it was Anne who suggested Sanborns as a dissertation topic, and then I ran with it. I appreciate how she taught me to think critically about my source material. Her encouragement kept me on track, and I am incredibly grateful for all that she has done for me. My committee members Gillian McGillivray and Jeffrey Pilcher were tremendously helpful in shaping this dissertation and have been great colleagues to work with. I am very lucky to have had them. When I arrived in Toronto, Ben Bryce, Pamela Fuentes, and Bradley Skopyk were the upper- level Latin Americanists at York that I looked up to. I wish to thank them for getting me acclimated to life in Canada, and for assisting me throughout the program. I am lucky to have met Sara Farhan, Ryan Targa, and Funké Aladejebi. They were sources of encouragement, humor, intellect, and generosity. Special thanks to Manuel Romero MieryTerán and Tania Hernández-Cervantes for their friendship and hospitality. I also wish to thank Molly Ladd-Taylor, William M. Jenkins, Alan Durston, Maju Tavera, Grant Bellamy, Virgilio Partida, Camila Bonifaz, the members of the Latin American Research Group, and the staff at York’s RACER Interlibrary Loan department. v Over the course of my field research in Mexico City, I benefited from having a large network of friends that made me feel en casa. I am grateful for Rafael Ríos Chagolla, Dulce María Urbina, Emilio Valencia, Jessica Victoria Ortiz Ortega, Alonso Flores, Alejandro Garro, Tania Reza, Héctor Javier Izquierdo García, Julio Tadeo Castro Navarrete, Sandra Aideé Alcalá Bautista, Rob Franco, Farren Yero, Maribel Castelán Rangel, Marco Antonio Vega García, Laura Medina Solano, and many others. I am also indebted for the academic support I received from Linda Arnold, Gabriela Cano, Claudia Agostoni, Cynthia Radding, Rodrigo Laguarda, Ernesto Reséndiz Oikión, Miguel Alonso Hernández Victoría, María Dolores Lorenzo, and John Mraz. I owe a special dedication to the various archivists and librarians that assisted me in and around Mexico City. At the Archivo General de la Nación, special thanks to José Zavala Rangel, Omar Ocampo Fuentes, and Alma Vázquez. Cristina Jiménez Calero and Bettina T. Gómez Oliver from the Centro Académico de la Memoria de Nuestra América (CAMeNA), were extremely helpful in locating source material. At Sanborns, special thanks to Virginia Gonzalez, Maribel Pérez, and Diana Beltrán Hau for lending me their time and assistance. I am especially thankful for Carla Zarebska for getting me access to the private Archivo Sanborn Hermanos. There are several historians I wish to acknowledge for assisting me with this project, including Víctor Macías-González, Barry Carr, Susie Porter, J. Aaron Waggoner, Rick A. López, Ageeth Sluis, Steven B. Bunker, Louise Walker, and Donna Lindgren. Funding for my doctoral studies were made possible by the Government of Ontario’s Trillium Scholarship, and York University’s Susan Mann Dissertation Scholarship. Other funding for my field research came from York’s Faculty of Graduate Studies. I am particularly thankful for the wonderful staff and faculty in York’s Department of History. I am so grateful for the opportunity they provided me, and I thank them immensely for supporting me as a student. vi Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………..ii Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………………...iii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………………iv Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………………….vi List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………………….ix Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………....1 A Monument of Mexican Progress……………………………………………………………………...1 Sanborns and the Transformative City…………………………………………………………………..5 Historiographical Approaches to Consumerism and Commercialized Spaces……………………………...….15 Chapter Outline…………………………….…………………………………………….…………28 Following the Fragments of Archival Sources……………………………………………………………30 Key Terms…………………………………………………………………………………………..35 Chapter I. Selling Modernity in Mexico City: Gender, Class, Leisure, and Consumerism at the American Drugstore, (1903-1946) ……………………………………………………….….38 Sanborns Arrives in Porfirian Mexico City………………………………………………………….….42 Sanborns and la Casa de los Azulejos………………………………………………………………….57 The Gendering of Space inside “the Rendezvous of Society,” 1914-1940……………………………………73 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………….86 Chapter II. Ice Cream Soda Flavored with the Blood of a Gringo: Sanborns at the Intersection of Race, Gender, and Revolution, (1910-1960) ..............................................................88 Sanborns and the Mexican Revolution………………………………………………………………….92 Zapatistas in Sanborns: Contesting a Site of Porfirian Power, 1914………………………………………..98 Jack Johnson vs. Walter Sanborns: The Fight over Power, Class, and Racial Politics……………….……….104 Homo sapiens and Homo Sanborns: Upper-class Leisure and Sociability, 1920-1960………….…………...124 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………....131 vii Chapter III. Reminiscent of Old Mexico: Commercializing Nationalism through Food, Commodities, and Invented Traditions, (1920-1950)………………………………………....135 José Clemente Orozco’s Mural in the House of Tiles, 1925…………………………………...………….139 Sanborns Mexican Silver……………………………………………………………………………144 Mexican Art, Antiques, and Curios Department………………………………………………………148 Mexicanizing the Sanborns Waitress Uniforms………………………………………………………...154 Fine Dining at Sanborns, 1919-1940………………………………………………………………..159 Porfirio Díaz’s Banana Split at the Sanborns Bar: Invented Traditions and Cultural Authenticity…………...170 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………....177 Chapter IV. La Gran Familia Sanborns: Working Women, Labor Paternalism, and Union Movement, (1920- 1948)…………………………………………………………………………………………….180 Working Women at Sanborns: Gender, Hierarchy, and Labor Conditions………………………………...189 Striking Bread Workers Confront Sanborns Paternalism, 1922……………………………………….....197 Sanborns and Mexico’s Sports Culture during the 1930s………………………………………………..207 Sanborns Paternalism in Monterrey: The Case of Alejandra Molina, 1944-1945………………………….212 The 1947 Labor Strike at Sanborns Monterrey………………………………………………………..227 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………....242