The Famous 41: Sexuality and Social Control in Mexico, 1901 [Paperback]

Robert McKee Irwin (Editor), Edward J. McCaughan (Editor), Michelle Rocio Nasser (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1403960496 | ISBN-13: 978-1403960498 | Publication Date: January 17, 2003 | Edition: First Edition

On November 17, 1901, Mexico City police raided a private party and arrested 41 men, half of whom were dressed as women. Clandestine transvestite balls were not unheard of at this time, and a raid would not normally gain national attention. However, Mexican cultural trends in literature, art, the sciences, and in journalism were inciting an atmosphere of sexual curiosity that was in search of the right turn of events to ignite a discursive explosion and focus interest on what was not a new phenomenon, but what was about to become a new concept: homosexuality. The editors treat the “nefarious” ball as a cultural event in itself and have assembled pictures, including the famous engravings by Posada, and have translated part of an historical novel about the event. At the same time, they uncover the underworld in Mexico City with essays on prison conditions, criminology, mental health discourse, and working class masculinities to create a rare and comprehensive slice of Mexican history at the turn of the century.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The Famous 41 is a rich contribution to the growing bibliography on the relationship between the state and sexuality. Taking an important case from 1901 in which police interrupted a clandestine party of drag queens in Mexico City, the editors first supply significant archival documentation taken from newspapers, graphic art, and lost fiction of the time and then assemble an impressive collection of scholarly essays to address affirmations of sexual difference and homophobic response in early twentieth century Mexico. Focusing on the politics of visibility and the power of normative law, on the culture of the closet and battles to regulate otherness, the authors offer original and illuminating insights that considerably expand the range of reflection belonging to Latin American cultural studies." -- Francine Masiello, UC Berkeley, author of The Art of Transition

About the Author

Robert McKee Irwin is Assistant Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Tulane University. Edward J. McCaughan is Associate Professor of Sociology and co-chair of Latin American Studies at Loyola University of New Orleans. Michelle Rocío Nasser was co-organizer of the Centenary of the Famous 41 symposium and curated the accompanying exhibition of José Guadalup Posada broadsides and newspaper stories on “the Famous 41.’

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; First Edition edition (January 17, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403960496
• ISBN-13: 978-1403960498
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,617,627 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert McKee Irwin (PhD 1999, Comparative Literature, New York University) is Chair of the Graduate Group in Cultural Studies and Professor of Spanish at the University of California, Davis.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A raid that lives on in Mexican culture, making "41" a slur, December 26, 2003

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Stephen O. Murray "Stephen O. Murray" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Famous 41: Sexuality and Social Control in Mexico, 1901 (Paperback)

Derived from a conference held at Tulane University on the centennial of the 1901 drag ball raided by Mexico City police, the book includes  (in both Spanish and English) a substantial part of a naturalist novel by Eduardo Castrejon, _Los 41_ that describes preparations for the ball, the ball, and the Yucatan exile of the unlucky cross-dressed males, the famous Posada cartoons, the reports from a range of newspapers, four chapters analyzing  the scandal and concerns about the compromised masculinity of the Porifirian elite, a chapter trying to impose the author's view on what the gender systems of Mexican prisons should have been (rejecting what evidence is available). a very detailed analysis of one case study of a woman incarcerated in a Mexican asylum, and an essay on the popular poet Amando Nervo's "sentimental womanliness." The last two chapters are not related to the bust of the (in)"famous 41," and the last one does not specify when Nervo wrote what Sylvia Molloy chooses to discuss. Although insightful, her chapter is unhistorical in being unmoored from dates of composition or publication.

The chapters by Robert Buffington on the denigration of the elite's masculinity in newspapers aimed at the Mexican working class and by Victor Macias-Gonzales on the quest of the would-be fashionable to look whiter (i.e., less Indian, more Parisian) are focused on general cultural conceptions rather than on chronological developments, but provide dates for the reader (Buffington being more compunctious about this). Both chapters include reproductions of cartoons and advertisements from Mexican publications of the era. Their authors and the authors of the two chapters discussing the scandal and its published representations (Carlos Monsivais and Robert Irwin) are also sensitive to and insightful about the class and racial/ethnic dynamics, placing the bust of the 41 in the context of undercutting the legitimacy of the unmanly, Francophilic,_refinadito_ (hyper-refined)  elite.

Although I'd have wished for systematic comparison to other homosexual "scandals" of the late-19th and early-20th centuries (and, like the authors, to know what those swept up for breaking no laws thought of their treatment and press coverage of the ball and raid), there is a great deal of fascinating early-20th-century material and of stimulating early-21st-century analysis in this volume.