Safeguarding the Revolutionary Family: The Anti-vice Campaign in 1950s Mexico City

This presentation examines a series of legal and social reforms undertaken by Ernesto P. Uruchurtu (1952-1966), Mexico City’s longest-serving and most infamous regent, to eradicate unwanted cultural practices of the capital’s residents. The administration’s crackdown on vice attempted to create a neo-Porfirian model of moralization for the urban poor. Echoing Porfirian-era criminologists, the regent believed that deviant activities not only damaged the moral fabric of society, but hindered law-abiding merchants from safely operating their businesses. Uruchurtu’s subsequent bans on nightlife activities and alcohol sales also reinforced traditional gender roles, catering prominently to middle class’ values and customs. Official constructions of “modern” masculinity and femininity were based on notions of the “revolutionary” nuclear family, one headed by a sober male breadwinner and a secluded female homemaker. The administration’s anti-vice campaigns had mixed results. While many residents welcomed the removal of cabarets and pulquerías, the physical restructuring of urban space and raids on newly illegal businesses had profoundly negative consequences for those working in the growing informal employment sector as well as the underground economy of the city. Among other unexpected consequences was the mass homelessness of lower class women. By removing centers of vice and cracking down on semi-private “immoral” behaviors, Uruchurtu and the state sought to normalize city residents through the alteration of the built environment. These not only reinforced traditional notions of family, gender, and morality, but continually expanded the number of police officers to act as a buffer against the so-called innate criminal inclinations of lower class residents. This attempt to legislate morality within the context of increased rapid urbanization stands as a misguided and, ultimately, unrealistic program of reform that sought to transform the physical landscape of the city and the means by which many of its most vulnerable residents attempted to navigate urban spaces.