National Santos and Mariachi Machos: Following the Liberatory Ethics in the Aesthetics of Pleasure in Mecos Films

In the aftermath of the democratization of Mexico in 2000 and the progressive neoliberalization of cultural spheres, gay pornography appears as a medium where national identities and the racial/ethnic tensions inherent in the mestizo complex have been resituated, challenged and redefined through a liberatory ethics and aesthetics. Mecos Films, now a leading producer in the Mexican adult entertainment industry with global ties and electronic distribution, released its first two films La Putiza and La Verganza where it mobilizes popular stereotypes such as the luchador wrestler and sexualizes national heroes such as mariachis. The sexual(ized) men on screen reformulate a sexual politics where mutual pleasure is the starting point to develop a sexual citizenship liberated from structurally violent gender norms. Anchoring the characters in contemporary Mexico through popular imagery and references, the films counter the hegemonic understandings of Mexican sexuality as developed by post-revolutionary intellectuals like Samuel Ramos and later solidified by Octavio Paz, who ground sexuality in the Mediterranean complex of active(penetrator)-passive(penetrated) bodies to produce intellectual understanding of mestizo citizens, which will then circulate in mass-media during the Época de Oro and later. Through close analysis of the Filmoteca de la UNAM’s archive of early Mexican pornographic production from the 1920s (Colección Callado), this presentation highlights popular subjects (charros, mariachis, chinas poblanas, etc.) as visible representations of queer and non-normative sexual subjects within the space of the nation, this presentation focuses on the clandestine circulation of sexual images as flows of contestatory nationalism, in underground theatres during the 1920s and the projection of films in gay bars as the Mexican mediascape went online. The films foreground role-play as a strategic tool to subvert and redefine Mexican masculine sexualities, and ultimately mobilize an aesthetics of pleasure, particularly anal pleasure, that deconstructs and reconstructs liberated Mexican masculinities.