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To inaugurate this year’s Pride Month celebrations, The El Paso Museum of History is opening 2024 Pride Pop-Up, El Baile de los 41, or the Dance of the 41 which delves into Profirian era Mexico and the society scandal that prominent 20th century cultural critic Carlos Monsivais sardonically penned as “the invention of homosexuality in Mexico.” The scandal involved a police raid carried out on November 17, 1901, where a clandestine ball with only men in attendance took place in a rented home at the limits of Mexico City. On Sunday night, at a house on the fourth block of Calle la Paz, the police burst into a dance attended by 42 unaccompanied men wearing women’s clothes. Among those individuals were some dandies and sex workers from Calle Plateros. Among the attendees and lead organizers, the son-in-law of then-President Porfirio Díaz, Ignacio de la Torre y Mier, married to his daughter Amada Díaz, and Antonio Adalid, nicknamed “Toña la Mamonera”, godson of Maximilian I of Mexico and Carlota of Mexico and many other men of Mexico’s high society as well as several working poor trans individuals.
This exhibit will explore the nuanced and disparate meting of justice, Mexico’s views then and now on LGBTQ+ issues through the lens of race, class and gender at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries.
“El Baile De Los 41” will be on display starting Saturday, June 1 through Sunday, July 28 in our Juan & Linda Uribe Community Gallery.
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