The Dance of the Forty-One or the Ball of the Forty-One was a society scandal in early 20th-century Mexico, during the presidency of Porfirio Díaz. The incident revolved around an illegal police raid carried out on 17 November 1901 against a private home on Calle de la Paz in Colonia Tabacalera of Mexico City, the site of a dance attended by a group of men, of whom 19 were dressed in "feminine" clothing. The press was keen to report the incident, in spite of the government's efforts to hush it up, since the participants belonged to the upper echelons of society including :es:Ignacio de la Torre y Mier|Ignacio de la Torre y Mier, son-in-law of the incumbent President of Mexico, Porfirio Diaz. The list of the detainees was never published. The scandal was called by prominent writer Carlos Monsiváis "the invention of the homosexuality in Mexico", due to it being the first time homosexuality was openly spoken about in the Mexican media.
Details
In the early 20th century in Mexico performing dances where only men or only women attended was done frequently, albeit in a clandestine way due to discrimination and public condemnation of sexual diversity at the time. Several sources reported the celebration of parties and public events as parades with transvestitemen and women, although they were justified as costume parties. The presumed organizers of the party would have been the son-in-law of then-President Porfirio Diaz, Ignacio de la Torre y Mier, married with his daughter :es:Amada Díaz|Amada Díaz, and Antonio Adalid, nicknamed "Toña la Mamonera", godson of Maximilian I of Mexico and Carlota of Mexico; Other sources quoted the journalist Jesús "Chucho" Rábago and the landowner Alejandro Redo as frequent organizers. The party began the night of November 17 secretly in a house rented for that purpose in what were the limits of Mexico City, the Colonia Tabacalera. Media cite the fourth street of La Paz where the guests had gathered in different carriages. The party included, in addition, the "Raffle of Pepito", a contest where the prize would be a sex worker. Around three o'clock on the morning ofNovember 18, the police raided the house after a transvestite opened the door. This was stated in a journalistic note of the time: A rumor, neither confirmed nor denied, soon emerged, claiming that there were in reality 42 participants, with the forty-second being :es:Ignacio de la Torre|Ignacio de la Torre, Porfirio Díaz's son-in-law, who was allowed to escape. Although the raid was illegal and completely arbitrary, the 41 were convicted and conscripted into the army and sent to Yucatán where the Caste War was still being fought: On 4 December 1901 there was a similar raid on a group of lesbians in Santa María, but that incident received far less attention.
As a result of the scandal, the numbers 41 and 42 were adopted by Mexican popular parlance to refer to homosexuality, with 42 reserved for passive homosexuals. The incident and the numbers were spread through press reports, but also through engravings, satires, plays, literature, and paintings; in recent years, they have even appeared on television, in the historical telenovelaEl vuelo del águila, first broadcast by Televisa in 1994. In 1906 Eduardo A. Castrejón published a book titled Los cuarenta y uno. Novela crítico-social. José Guadalupe Posada's engravings alluding to the affair are famous, and were frequently published alongside satirical verses: Such was the impact of the affair that the number 41 became taboo, as described by the essayist Francisco L. Urquizo in 1965:
Film
The feature film "El baile de los 41" will premiere in 2020. The movie was directed by David Pablos, written by Monika Revilla, produced by Pablo Cruz and it stars Alfonso Herrera as Ignacio de la Torre.
