Copyright 2012 Ryan Michael Jones
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Copyright 2012 Ryan Michael Jones “ESTAMOS EN TODAS PARTES”: MALE HOMOSEXUALITY, NATION, AND MODERNITY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY MEXICO BY RYAN MICHAEL JONES DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History with minors in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Nils Jacobsen, Chair Professor Antoinette Burton Professor Mark Micale Associate Professor Martin Manalansan Associate Professor Jocelyn Olcott, Duke University ABSTRACT In broad strokes my research investigates the intersections between the nation, citizenship, masculinity, and culture as engaged through the lenses of gender, sexuality, and transnational flows of ideas and people. My project is a genealogy of what Mexican citizenship has and has not included as told through discourses on homosexuality and the experiences of homosexuals, a group that for the majority of the 20th century were largely excluded from full citizenship. This did not mean homosexuals were unimportant; on the contrary, they were the foils against which the ideal Mexican could be defined and participants in both democracy and citizenship through their negation. The experiences and challenges faced by homosexuals illuminate the great, if gradual shift, from exclusive definitions of citizenship towards more universal forms of citizenship, however flawed, found in Mexico’s current multiculturalism. In fact, homosexuals’ trajectory from a maligned anti-Mexican group to representatives of pluralist democracy by the late 1970s sheds important light on how Mexico shifted from oligarchy through paternalist state-interventionism towards more participatory politics and towards an understanding of citizenship that incorporated pride parades as Mexican and homosexuals as worthy of state-sanctioned marriage by 2009, even as the structural causes of homophobia remained. Moreover, the convergences between local realities, national aspirations, and transnational flows of culture and ideas—all of which were fundamental in post-revolutionary Mexican nation-building—are best understood in relation to homosexuality. This work has two interrelated objectives: first to reconstruct queer Mexican men’s lived experiences and second, to interrogate how effeminate homosexuals became not only popular cultural foils, but also crucial “others” against which Mexican national identity—as exemplified by the masculine patriarch—was defined. I thus examine Mexican queer sexuality in two ii registers: as a social historical formation of queer male identities and communities, and as a cultural historical articulation of Mexican national identity. I argue that the very category of “queer Mexican (man),” created as a pathology by social reformers, medical experts, and jurists, was foundational to the longue durée of political debates on citizenship and civil rights. Homosexuality was a key concern both in the formation of national identity, cultural icons, and ideologies that had far-reaching consequences, as well as for cultural, political, and medical- juridical authorities seeking to fashion Mexican modernity. As Mexican democracy was shaped through revolution, war, socio-cultural engineering, politics, and social movements, the line between those included and excluded from participation in that democracy remained unstable. This meant that what constituted a good citizen also shifted over time. Even so, at its core the dominant publicized ideal of the ideal Mexican citizen remained male, hetereosexual, hard-working in industry or agriculture, and a family provider. Between 1920 and 1960, the Mexican government embarked on an effort to solidify the nation through the propagation of this ideal citizen through propaganda, public art, education, cinema, and even Mexican-style wrestling. At the same time, numerous Mexicans resisted these definitions. For their part, homosexuals, rather than being obscured in the proverbial closet, challenged their exclusion and asserted that they were in fact model, law-abiding citizens, not anti-social delinquents, sinners, or criminals. In this way, their efforts foreshadowed the democratic opening that would accelerate in the late 1960s and beyond, as well as the eventual granting of more rights—including marriage—to LGBT individuals in the capital by 2009. iii For my parents, who always believed in me iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A project of this size cannot be completed without incurring many debts and without the support of numerous people. First, a big thank you to my dissertation committee. In particular, many thanks to my advisor Nils Jacobsen for his advice, counsel, patience, encouragement, and meticulous comments on my writing. You’ve taught me a great deal, Nils. Thanks to Antoinette Burton, who indulged a green graduate student coming to her office when chair for conversations and who served as a keen advocate on my behalf for years, a valuable listener to and commentator on my ideas, and friend. Thanks to Martin Manalansan and Mark Micale for being important sources of support, particularly when this project was in its nascent stages, and I was figuring out how to “do” sexuality as history. And thanks to Jocelyn Olcott for her detailed comments and insights into gender and modern Mexico. Many thanks to the Department of History, for serving as my intellectual home for many years and for the financial support that made this project possible; the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, for offering me the chance to hone my interdisciplinary thinking on Latin America and for the initial grants that sent me to Mexico for research; and the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, which in the final push to complete my dissertation, offered support financially and intellectually. Tom Bedwell and Elaine Sampson in the Department of history deserve special praise for all the magic they worked in helping me complete my graduate degree and research in Mexico. Thanks to the professors in many Illinois departments who indulged my interests, offered inspiration, and helped shape them into this project, particularly Jovita Baber and Tamara Chaplin. A special thanks to the staff at the University of Illinois library, particularly those wizards in the interlibrary loan department whose patience and assistance with my often obscure requests led to this project’s success. Thanks to my colleagues at the University of Illinois for the spirited conversations, workshops, and reading groups that v made my career memorable. Special thanks to Josh Lupkin for his library wizardry, advice, and friendship and James Welker for believing in me when I had doubts, early edits, and his mentorship. Thanks as well to Ryan, Lynda, Fedja, Maria, MdM, Ryan, and Elizabeth, and all my other dear friends who offered meals, drinks, and companionship over the past several years. A special thanks to James N. Green who has offered support and advocated on my behalf on the job market, as well as for his book Beyond Carnival, which was a catalyst in my own work. In Mexico, my thanks to the dedicated staffs at the Archivo General de la Nación, Hemeroteca Nacional, Archivo Historico del Distrito Federal, Centro de Estudios de Historia de México CARSO, and the other archives whose documents were crucial to my research. Thanks as well to the Colegio de Mexico, its faculty, students, and staff for helping orient me when I moved there, for facilitating my access not only to their excellent library, but to other archives and institutions as an affiliate of the Colegio, and for helping me obtain extra visas to extend my research time in Mexico. Special thanks to my friend Héctor Antonio Sánchez, whose knowledge of the nuances of Mexican Spanish and love of language proved invaluable in translating texts and who acquired important texts for me, and Rodrigo Laguarda, for his friendship, encouragement, and intellectual interest in my work. Thanks as well to Enrique, Emmanuel, Fabrizio, Mario, Sofia, Dario, Nelly, Juliet, Ros, Brenda, Dyana, Pato, Alisa, Antonio, Alonso, the participants of the Women’s History Group, and Enrique for their help and friendship over the past few years. Thanks to the taquería El Faraón for the delicious tacos and micheladas. A special thanks to Juval Racelis for his unwavering support for the past two years, even from a long distance away, and for all those phone calls and funny stories when I needed them. Finally, a huge thanks to my family, particularly to my parents for putting up with this process, for your support, and for always believing I could do this crazy thing called academia. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………..1 SECTION I INTRODUCTION: (HOMO)SEXUALITY AND NINETEENTH CENTURY MEXICO ………………………………………………………………………………………..32 CHAPTER 1: FROM SODOMY TO PEDERASTY TO MORAL OUTRAGES: MEXICAN HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY........................................................34 CHAPTER 2: HOMOSEXUALITY, TRANSVESTISM, AND NATION, 1900-1920………..80 SECTION II INTRODUCTION: HOMOSEXUALITY AND SOCIETY IN MEXICO, 1920- 1940…………………………………………………………………………………………….142 CHAPTER 3: VIRILE CITIZENSHIP, DISSIDENT SEXUALITIES, AND HOMOSEXUAL “TYPES,” 1920-1940…...……......……………………………………….....….......….............152 CHAPTER 4: THE SALTED WORLD: SOCIO-CULTURAL HISTORIES OF HOMOSEXUALITY, 1920-1940……………………………………………………………...217 CHAPTER 5: INVERTS IN THE “TOMB OF THE PACIFIC:”