"The dance of the 41": the real story that inspires the Netflix movie

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Saber másAclaración: Este artículo se publicó por primera vez el 10 de mayo de 2021.

A two -digit figure, an insult in society and the shame of a government, all that meant number 41 for many years. Y en noviembre del 2020, los mexicanos avivaron el recuerdo cuando se estrenó en cines “El baile de los 41”, la película del director David Pablos inspirada en la fiesta gay más famosa del siglo XX y que, desde mayo del 2021, Netflix ofrece en su plataforma.

The newspaper El Popular said on November 21, 1901 that a gendarme of the fourth street of La Paz noticed that “in an accessory a dance was carried out behind closed doors, and to ask for the license he went to knock on the door.He went out to open a effeminate woman's dress, with the skirt collected, the face and lips full of shaving and very sweet and melindroso of speech.With that view, that even the tired Guardian stomped his stomach, he introduced hethey danced and welcomed in that club ".

Quizás este baile no habría tenido tal repercusión de no ser porque uno de los 42 asistentes que escapó en medio de la redada policial aquella noche (de modo que en el conteo posterior solo figurarían 41 detenidos) , habría sido Ignacio de la Torre y Mier, quien estaba casado con Amada Díaz, la hija de Porfirio Díaz, el dictador que gobernó México durante casi 30 años.

The party was a scandal that fed on the talk of the time.It worked wonderfully in the last years of the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, the president that many call "murderer", and today is the perfect input to assemble a puzzle of the genre romance with the performance of Alfonso Herrera (Ignacio de la Torre and Mier) and Emiliano Zurita (Evaristo Rivas) in Netflix.

“It is a founding myth, because there are more doubts than certainties.In addition, other texts that could have served to rebuild the incident were lost, ”said Intro Alonso Hernández Victoria, speaker and director of diverse archives and memories and founding member of the Latin American Network of Archives, Museums, collections and researchers LGBTQIA-+.

“The first newspapers that give the news on Tuesday, November 19, 1901 and one of them says that the party was on Saturday night November 16.And they said the raid was at dawn from 17 to 3 to.m.On Tuesday, the dancers were already arrested and separated between the dresses as a woman and as a man. El miércoles 20, existe esa confusión, lo marca un folleto de la fiesta.But that does not coincide, because the newspapers had given the news a day before. Según los textos, nadie pudo haber escapado en ese preciso momento de la redada. Mas bien, pudieron haber comprado su libertad ya estando en la comisaria”, agregó Sergio Téllez-Pon, escritor queer y autor de una crónica sobre el baile de los 41 de próxima publicación, en conversación con esta web.

Fame of "Dandy"

Just a popular anecdote. “Supuestamente al cronista Carlos Monsiváis, en la librería Madero, se le acercó un anciano para comentarle que efectivamente Ignacio de la Torre y Mier había estado en ese baile y que había escapado trepando a la azotea.You have to notice that Ignacio was a man with an important physical strength, he practiced different sports and therefore was quite agile, ”says Alonso Hernández Victoria.

“El baile de los 41”: la historia real que inspira la película de Netflix

The few hemerographic tests did not leave much official trace of the 41.Something real is that the film represents a common practice in a minority in Europe that, with European visitors to North America, then reached the customs of Latin society.

But they were not only dances, but also rites, such as "grazing", an Italian tradition in which one of the men recognized a homosexual couple in clandestine society and then there was a party.Two others were "the baptism", after nine months of relationship the same couple staged the conception of a baby with a doll, and a third, the "pepito raffle" or young man who would begin in homoerotic pleasures.

To this we add Ignacio de la Torre and Mier, a character.He had a profile that, for a society that saw the gay parties as a crime "against the order of families", because it was the perfect bait for political gossip and Achilles heel of a public family that had to keep appearances for their links with power.

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“La leyenda de Nacho de la Torre como un hombre homosexual está basada en el background y propio comportamiento del empresario mexicano.It is very likely that he was at that party, because he lived a few blocks from the place where the dance was. Tenía fama de dandy, de lagartijo, de fifino, de vestir un poco extravagante. Llevaba una vida libertina y frecuentaba a círculos homosociales, como el Jockey Club de la Ciudad de México, donde no pasaban mujeres o esposas”, explica Sergio Téllez-Pon.

A fiction

Seizing rumor is a sport.Once Ignacio de la Torre and Mier showed his friends his wide collection of shoes and presented it as "My Library", he says in the pages of "The Fair of Life" José Juan Tablada.Or that the dance detainees were forced to sweep the streets dressed as a woman.And also, according to the film, that Porfirio Díaz's older brother, Félix Díaz, is a police character and was part of the raid, when in reality “in 1901 it seems to have a diplomatic mission in Chile and until 1904 he was head of the Police”Says Sergio Téllez-Pon.

“Nothing else was to understand the porfiriato and the cultural political context, but to go to the details of the day to day.I had books where the banquets were organized, how people were placed at the table.Oh!It was going to details.I think that screenwriter Mónica Revilla was very obsessive and all this put in the script, "said the director of the" 41 "David Pablos at a press conference.

"Fuchi!" They wrote in the newspaper El Popular, where they made fun of the detainees who were transferred to Yucatan to make forced labor.In the article “The trip of the quarantine and one” of that newspaper, a group of homosexuals speak between them: “Without consideration of our sex and the interesting state of several of the ladies, that we are victims of a male barbarity they put us,Made balls, in a third-class car of the Mexican railroad revolts with those soldiers that, every so often, insulted our modest.

“Pepita began to abort ... bad words;But we cover her mouth, saying: "Calm down, chulita for the love of God, because these leperons will continue to treat us, but that if we were clandestine," continues the text of The Popular.

41 went down in history

From censorship to the press, the porfiriato in Mexico began to reinforce discrimination against minorities that were identified with an unpaid gender at birth.As the comedy cited by El Popular narrates, the most homophobic part opened fire in many ways, for example, extremely rejecting a mathematical number, 41.

"When people point to effeminates to disturb them, he says:‘ You belong to the 41.

“El veto del número 41 es un mito, pero a mí sí me tocó, cuando mi padre cumplió 41 años, escuchar: ‘señor Miguel, no se vaya usted a voltear’.Because at 41 he is supposed to become homosexual.Or when I went to school, the students counted from 1 to a number, but in 41, they said ‘Safo’, that is, ‘I don't’, ‘I skip’.If one goes to Ezequiel Montes street, there is no number 41 in the order of the houses.Referred to male homosexuality and therefore people shielded him.You can still listen to older taxi drivers or among the police on their phones say 'a 41': a homosexual ', ”says Hernández Victoria, who has promoted a non -profit organization to encourage the investigation of the history of origin of the communityLGBTQIA-+.

So yes.Fiction probably transformed the story to continue reaping the legend of Ignacio de la Torre and Mier, dictated the dialogues of a beloved Díaz from whom there is no official testimony, but finally evidenced a discussion about such a true homophobia today that Alfonso Herrera himself hasHighlighted at a press conference: "It was a taboo subject and when you listen to number 41, it takes society to a rather gray place".So what is the truth of the scandal here?Simply, the fact that the story that supposedly does not happen continues and a movie makes us talk again about the subject.