IT seems, whenever persecutions happen to marginalized individuals, including those seen as homosexuals or gays, judgment always happens at the site of a Catholic Church or around its patio. Thus, when 41 (?) men belonging to a secret society—actually a brotherhood of men into men and/or men into women’s clothes—are arrested by government one night, they have to be hauled out in public, brought to a plaza where moral guardians can ask God to look at them. This is strange and anomalous knowing how it has been proven that what this institution has declared as “perversion” is prevalent within its communities.
All this is at the core of the film Dance of the 41 (El Baile de los cuarenta y uno). The title refers to a ball involving men who belong to the most prominent families in Mexico, or at least hold prominent positions in the government.
The scandal takes place during the presidency of Porfirio Díaz, which brings no less than the character of the president within the crisis and controversies of that period. The president does not only provide a historical point in the depiction of the event; the president himself is related to one of the lead personas who figures in the cause célèbre of 1901 Mexico.
The film begins with Ignacio de la Torre y Mier, a young politician being groomed for a bright political future. He marries Amada Díaz, the president’s daughter. Ignacio is, however, gay and unable to fulfil his sexual duties on the night of the marriage. Ignacio is also an active member of that secret brotherhood and, even outside it, has started an intense relationship with another young man in the city.
At this point, the narrative, described to be a fictional account of that 1901 fiasco, becomes dense. Amada Díaz, the wife, is tormented. She is also revealed as half-Indian, an ethnicity that appears to be the justification for her power and virulence. Like her husband, she is shunned subtly by the high society that reminds her always of the color of her skin.
Amada keeps Ignacio away from his lover, who is sentenced to do harsh public works in Yucatan. Troubled, she is without emotion as she tells Ignacio at the breakfast table what happened to that lover.
The punishment for the 41 individuals is harsh. At the church patio, they are paraded in broad daylight, some of them still dressed in gowns, their mustaches not erased but rather exotic counterpoints to the glamor of their costumes. They are pelted with stones and objects, derided, spit at, mocked.
Ignacio comes home also in gown. Amada looks at him and we fear for his life.
Images of the belle epoch clash with the tenderness and manners of that period. Much as we now look back at the 1900s with unbridled nostalgia, we forget how the rigidity of the mores of those years were the reason for the men and women being ostracized over the choices they bravely or secretly opted for.
Historical backgrounds would show that the 1901 scandal was not the first time that men danced with men. Tales abound in Mexico of men who dressed up in women’s clothing, but these happened in parties that were disguised as costume parties, with the purpose of the celebration veiling the transvestites trying to find their own spaces.
While activities of this kind were kept under wraps, the case of the 41 dancers was much too exciting to be ignored and for those men to be forgiven. Those who breached the good manners and right conduct were all members of the high society, the class that the society of that period was deemed responsible for protecting and projecting the image of the Good Person or the Ideal Man.
The event became the favorite subject of cartoonists and satirists. The group then called “41 maricones” or homosexuals was oftentimes rendered as “comic” figures, perhaps to lessen the affront that their conduct had wrought upon the Mexican society.
For all the noise of the arrest and the ensuing shame and scandal, the 1901 event never became part of the popular history of Mexico. It was turned into one of the great unsaid in their societies. The breach was so great that the collective consciousness pushed it further to the unconscious. In the absence of that “history,” the film ceases to be a retelling but a new way of telling us junctures in the sexual politics of societies.
Consider the artistic license and consider as well how our present-day societies are now ready to face this kind of story. Consider also the fact that, for all the silencing, the truth of that era squeezes out of the pores of the Mexican society a new discourse. The lies are there in what cannot be uttered.
According to Francisco Luis Urquizo, Mexican writer and historian, in Mexico, “the number 41 has no validity and is offensive….” Illustrating this attitude brought about by morals and histories, the said number was ignored. Houses skipped number “41”. Even hospitals or hotels avoided the use the “41”. Entering the Mexican popular culture, the number “41” became a code for homosexuals.
Has this remained so?
Interestingly, the film claims the number should be “42”. That there is another person who manages to evade arrest or is taken out of the location so that policemen would not record his presence is as much the message as well as the immoral lesson of The Dance of the 41. This man is Ignacio, the presidential son-in-law.
The movie Dance of the 41 is directed by David Pablos, written by Monika Revilla, produced by Pablo Cruz. It stars Alfonso Herrera as Ignacio de la Torre y Mier. The luscious cinematography is by Carolina Costa, one of the top women cinematographers at present.
Produced by Canana Films, El Studio, and Bananeira Filmes, the film premiered on Netflix worldwide on May 12.