Memories of a Sinner: The Autobiography of José Mojica

Queer Mexican tenor José Mojica (1895-1974) became a prominent singer and film actor from the 1920s to the 1940s, In Chicago and Hollywood, where he established his residence, he frequently hosted Latino actors, but also circulated in queer circles. After his mother’s death in 1942–and discovering that he was becoming deaf–Mojica decided to retire from stage to enter a Franciscan monastery in Peru. Mojica wrote his memoirs under direction of his spiritual director in the late 1940s and published the resulting work, Yo Pecador (1956) which became a best-seller and a film. In this paper, I analyze the way he portrayed his own transgressions of gender and sexual norms. Mojica narrated his childhood in rural Mexico, his migration to Mexico City where he experienced the Revolution and his stage career in New York, Chicago, and Hollywood. As he traveled across the country, he circulated in homosexual circles and narrates his close friendship with businessmen, artists, and priests. Mojica narrated his life story through guilt, sin, redemption and pride. I will also compare Mojica’s memoirs with other autobiographical works by queer men, like Salvador Novo’s La estatua de sal (1998) and Miguel de Molina Botín de guerra (1998). Novo and Molina, like Mojica, also mediated their life stories through transnational circulation. Travel and residence abroad afforded them the opportunity to connect with other men and chronicled their experience in queer spaces.