Homosexuality in Mexico

[7][8] Given that the defenders of the natives manipulated the information to their opinion as much as those who were opposed by them, some trying to minimize the incidence of sodomy and others exaggerating the stories, it proves impossible to get an adequate picture of homosexuality in pre-Columbian Mexico.

[11] Geoffrey Kimball argues that later texts from the early colonial-period like the Florentine Codex have been mistranslated due to the homophobic prejudices which were prevalent in the United States at the time.

[20] Titlacahuan himself was depicted carrying a flower signifying his eroticism and blowing on a phallic flute denoting penance and communication with the gods, and was associated with excessive sexual activity.

[24] The xōchihuah held an institutionalised, albeit degraded, role within Mexica society whereby they were kept as dependents of high-level nobles for whom they performed household chores, cleaned temples, and accompanied warriors in war and provided them with services including sexual ones.

"[29] In an account on the indigenous people realized in 1519 for the council of the town of Veracruz to report to Charles I, attributed to Hernán Cortés, it is mentioned that they had "managed to know for certain that they are all sodomites and practice that abominable sin".

Finally, he comments that "all the inhabitants of New Spain and those of other adjacent provinces ate human flesh, all commonly practiced sodomy and drank to excess", comparing some of the customs of the indigenous people with those of the ungodly saracens.

[29] In the middle of the 16th century the conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo and the soldier Juan de Grijalva write about scenes of sodomy carved into the architecture, in gold jewelry, in terracota and in statues.

Francisco de Vitoria, despite knowing that the indigenous people were right and that as such the emperor did not have law over them, thought that "the heathens that committed sins against nature, such as idolatry, pederasty or fornication, all those offenses to God, could have been stopped by force".

Friar Gregorio García, in his Origin of the Indians of the new world (sic, 1607), assured that before the arrival of the Spanish "the men of New Spain committed huge sins, especially those against nature, although repeatedly they burned for those and were consumed in the fire sent from the heavens [... the indigenous people] punished the sodomites with death, executed them with great vigor.

Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxochitl, governor of Texcoco, wrote in 1605 that among the Chichimecs, the one who "assumed the function of the woman had his internal parts extracted by the backside while he stayed tied up to a stake, after which some boys poured ashes on the body until it was buried under them [...] they covered all the pile with many pieces of firewood and set it on fire.

[29] Alva Ixtlilxochitl's account is, according to Crompton, too detailed to be invented, but according to Garza the story shows clear signs of Mediterranean influence in the fact of the differentiation between active and passive homosexuals.

[32] Initially the Inquisition was controlled by the local bishops, such as the archbishop Juan de Zumárraga (1536-1543), of whom a study of the cases judged shows that homosexuality was one of the main preoccupations of the court.

[29] Pedro Cieza de León also tells that Juan of Olmos, principal judge of Puerto Viejo, had burned "great quantities of those depraved and demonic Indians".

[9] In 1596, the viceroy Gaspar de Zúñiga, Count of Monterrey reported, in a letter sent to Philip II to justify the increase of the salary of the royal officials, that those had seized and burned some delinquents for the unspeakable sin and other types of sodomy, although he does not give the number of victims or the circumstances of the event.

[29] In 1658 the Viceroy of New Spain, the Duke of Albuquerque, wrote to Philip IV about a case of unspeakable sin in Mexico City in which he had "nineteen prisoners, fourteen of which [were] sentenced to burn".

Among the documents sent to the king is a letter from the judge of the Supreme Court of His Majesty, Juan Manuel Sotomayor, who describes sodomy as an "endemic cancer" that had "infested and spread among the captive prisoners of the Inquisition in their individual cells and the ecclesiastical officials have also begun their own investigations".

The Viceroy as much as the Magistrate bases his rejection of sodomy on the Bible and religion, although they use stories sui generis, like Sotomayor, who writes "as some saints have professed, that all the sodomites have died with the birth of Our Lord Jesus".

The group met periodically in private houses, often on the days of religious festivities with the excuse of praying and giving tribute to the Virgin and the saints, but in reality they had cross-dressing dances and orgies.

In Mexico, Carlota became pregnant, possibly by the baron Alfred van Der Smissen, who formed part of the queen's guard, while the emperor was surrounded by his male friends, like the prince Félix Salm-Salm or the colonel López, who were loyal to the end.

In the spring of 1918, Manuel Palafox, secretary general of Emiliano Zapata, was accused by political enemies within the Zapatista camp of having leaked information through his homosexual relationships.

[40][41] On Sunday night, at a house on the fourth block of Calle la Paz, the police burst into a dance attended by 41 unaccompanied men wearing women's clothes.

We refrain from giving our readers further details because they are exceedingly disgusting.A rumour, neither confirmed nor denied, soon emerged, claiming that there were in reality 42 participants, with the forty-second being Ignacio de la Torre, Porfirio Díaz's son-in-law, who was allowed to escape.

[28] 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 telenovela El vuelo del águila, first broadcast by Televisa in 1994.

José Guadalupe Posada's engravings alluding to the affair are famous, and were frequently published alongside satirical verses:[41] Hace aún muy pocos díasQue en la calle de la Paz,Los gendarmes atisbaronUn gran baile singular.Cuarenta y un lagartijosDisfrazados la mitadDe simpáticas muchachasBailaban como el que más.La otra mitad con su traje,Es decir de masculinos,Gozaban al estrecharA los famosos jotitos.Vestidos de raso y sedaAl último figurín,Con pelucas bien peinadasY moviéndose con chic.Such was the impact of the affair that the number 41 became taboo, as described by the essayist Francisco L. Urquizo: In Mexico, the number 41 has no validity and is offensive...

On 2 October of the same year, the groups FLH, Lesbos, Oikabeth, Lambda of Homosexual Liberation, and Sex-Pol, among others, marched in the demonstration to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the movement of 1968.

The law, which has been criticized as insufficient,[63] gives rise to the creation of the National Council to Prevent Discrimination (Consejo Nacional para Prevenir la Discriminación, CONAPRED), which is in charge of receiving and settling cases of discrimination, as well as "develop[ing] actions to protect all citizens from every distinction or exclusion based on ethnic or national origin, sex, age, disability, social or economic condition, conditions of health, pregnancy, language, religion, beliefs, sexual preferences, marital status or any other, that prevents or annuls the acknowledgement or the exercise of the rights and the real equality of opportunities of persons".

The law - in effect since its publication in the official newspaper of the capital city government on 16 March 2007 - gives almost the same rights as a married couple within the limits of the Federal District, with the exception of adoption.

[77] Mexican LGBT author Luis Zapata Quiroz has been criticized for perpetuating the stereotypes of the American pattern of the tragic gay man, although he never portrays homosexuality negatively.

[78] Several of his poets, such as Xavier Villaurrutia, Carlos Pellicer, and Salvador Novo, were gay and "let themselves be touched, discreetly, by a theme very dear to the age: the sailors, in the aura of the night port, with their liberty and their beauty".

Thus, Gloria E. Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga are two important authors within the North American LGBT community, and Francisco X. Alarcón, professor at the University of California, has published nine books of poetry.