“A Problem Graver than Hunger or Illiteracy”: Regulating Youths, Creating Ideal Citizens, and Sanctioning Mexico's Homosexual Menace, 1930–70

In the March 18, 1967 issue of the magazine Sucesos Para Todos (Successes for All), two teenage homosexual males were interviewed about their experiences in Mexico City's Zona Rosa, which the youths described as a cosmopolitan paradise in which they mingled with tourists and hippies, cruised for lovers, and read homosexual novels like Paolo Po's 41. However, they also described the ever-present threats of police roundups, extortion and abuse, and Tribunal de Menores (Youth Tribunal) trials. As one said, “I had not committed any crime”—as homosexuality was legal—“but they treated me very badly.” This paper investigates how between 1930 and 1970 Mexico regulated youth homosexuality, as well as the ways in which youths used homosexuality as a means to resist authoritarian efforts to define a homogenous, heteronormative Mexican national identity. I illuminate how youths were considered to be in need of state protection from new “urban types” such as homosexuals, who were seen as both the “degenerate” products of Mexico's modernization and as Western imperialists bent on destroying Mexico's development through population control. Through an examination of civics primers, case files, and press reports, I demonstrate how sexuality was an integral component in the youth behaviors deemed necessary by Mexican political/cultural elites in the production of ideal future citizens. Moreover, I show how attempts to regulate sexuality resulted in youth resistance through new homosexual identities, as well as the creation of new allies, such as sympathetic social workers and journalists. Finally, I demonstrate how as late as the 1970s, Mexican criminologists still utilized turn-of-the-century ideas of homosexual degeneracy as a means of sanctioning youths. In so doing, they alienated many influential homosexual student leaders who would create the homosexual liberation movement that would contribute to Mexico's democratic opening and the demise of the PRI's authoritarian regime.