Men and Modernity in Porfirian Mexico

Men and Modernity in Porfirian Mexico
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American

History
Robert M. Buffington
Subject: History of Mexico, 18891910, Cultural History, Social History, Gender and Sexuality
Online Publication Date: Apr 2016 DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.013.19
Summary and Keywords
The Porfirian era (18761911) marked a watershed in social understandings of manhood.

New ideas about what it meant to be a man had appeared in Mexico by the middle of the
19th century in the form of self-help manuals intended primarily for middle-class and
bourgeois men who sought to distinguish themselves in a post-independence society that
had done away with legal distinctions, including aristocratic titles. Marks of distinction
included cleanliness, good grooming, moderation, affability, respectability, love of
country, and careful attentiveness to the needs and opinions of others, including women,
children, and social inferiorsan approach that artfully combined longstanding notions
of masculine responsibility and authority with modern ideas about self-mastery and
citizenship, especially the sublimation of volatile passions in all domains of social life.
Modern qualities also mapped onto traditional concerns about male honor predicated on
the fulfillment of patriarchal duties, especially the control of female dependents. The
socially validated, hegemonic masculinity produced by this amalgamation of modern
and traditional ideas proved burdensome for many middle-class men, who struggled to
maintain an always precarious sense of honor or who rejected the constraints it sought to
impose on their behavior. For men from less privileged classes, it represented an
impossible ideal that they sometimes rejected through the adoption of antisocial protest
masculinities and often satirized as delusional or unmanly, even as they too came to
define their masculinity in relation to a modern/traditional binary. The modern/traditional
binary that characterized ideas about masculinity for all sectors of Porfirian society has
persisted until the present day, despite the epochal 1910 social revolution that
inaugurated a new era in Mexican social relations.
Keywords: masculinity (in Mexico), machismo, Porfirian modernity, gender relations (in Mexico), homosexuality
(in Mexico), homophobia (in Mexico), Manual of Urbanity and Good Manners, Porfiriato
The protracted period of relative political stability in Mexico known to historians as the
Porfiriato (18761911) in recognition of the commanding presence of its major political
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figure, Porfirio Daz, had a profound impact on social relations, including how society
viewed manhood and how men understood and experienced themselves as men. Ideas
about modernity, especially what it meant to be modern, played a central role in
developing and fostering these new notions of masculinity. Although by most measures
everyday male behaviors probably changed very little and very slowly during this period,
the way that Mexicans from all walks of life made sense of those behaviors underwent
what was for many of them a radical transformation. Some men (and women) embraced
modern manhood, while others preferred to negotiate, contest, or reject it. But nearly
everyone came to understand and explain masculinity on a spectrum that ran from
modern to traditional. This new binary mapped onto older binariesmasculine/feminine,
moral/immoral, respectable/disreputable, normative/deviant, etc.and intersected with
longstanding social distinctions based on gender, race/ethnicity, and class in different
ways. These mappings and intersections produced a dizzying array of contradictory,
shifting, and flexible masculinities or masculine scripts that ranged from the manly
charro (cowboy), associated with tradition-bound rural men, to the effeminate catrn
(dandy), associated with modern bourgeois male self-indulgence; from the despised
pelado (bum), associated with allegedly lazy urban poor men, to the patriotic obrero
(worker), associated with modern productive male citizens; from the passive indio
(Indian), associated with generations of downtrodden colonial subjects, to the energetic
mestizo (person of mixed race), a masculine type that included Porfirio Daz himself, the
paragon of modern manhood.
A Conceptual Framework for Studying Men as

Men
Any attempt to explain how Mexicans in the Porfirian era made sense of masculinity
hombra or manhood is the word they would have usedmust begin with some basic
concepts. Perhaps the most important and most basic of these concepts is that
masculinity is a social construct rather than a natural condition. A social constructionist
view of masculinity insists that broadly accepted if often contradictory understandings of
what it means to be a man derive from social and cultural practices rather than from
predetermined behaviors produced by genital difference, genetic coding, and hormonal
secretionsalthough these may indeed have an influence on the way masculinity is
socially constructed. As a social construct, masculinity has a history and thus makes
sense only in historical context. It is also situational in that what it means to be a man is
understood differently in different social situations, in different places, by different
people, and even by the same person in different contexts.
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Another basic concept is hegemonic masculinity. Associated with the work of influential
masculinity studies theorist R. W. Connell, the concept of hegemonic masculinity seeks to
explain how normative notions of masculinity privilege some expressions of masculinity
over others and how privileging these normative masculinities ensures the patriarchal
dominance of some men over women, children, and other men (who are sometimes
feminized in the process). Connells use of the word hegemony highlights two important
things: the role that masculinity plays in maintaining social hierarchies and other unequal
power relations as well as the wide acceptance of these inequalities as the byproduct of
the natural superiority of normal men. Although some scholars have rightly noted
that the notion of a single hegemonic masculinity lends itself to ahistorical analysis and
overgeneralization, Connell and his colleague James Messerschmidt argue persuasively
for the concepts continued relevance. They note that fundamental features such as the
plurality of masculinities and the hierarchy of masculinities as well as the idea that the
hierarchy of masculinities is a pattern of hegemony, not a pattern of simple domination
based on force, have stood the test of time.1 As part of their reformulation of the
hegemonic masculinities concept, Connell and Messerschmidt add another caveat that
masculinity scholars do well to bear in mind: [although] hegemonic masculinities can be
constructed that do not correspond closely to the lives of any actual men . . . these
models do, in various ways, express widespread ideals, fantasies, and desires. They
provide models of relations with women and solutions to problems of gender relations.
Furthermore, they articulate loosely with the practical constitution of masculinities as
ways of living in everyday local circumstances.2 In other words, while hegemonic
masculinities invariably shape the way men understand themselves and are understood
by others as men, they rarely reflect the real life experiences of most men.
As the concept of hegemonic masculinity makes clear, whatever their form, masculinities
are constructed through difference and against a constitutive outside composed of
excluded traits and practices that mark the boundaries of any given masculinity. This
process invariably invokes some sort of binary opposition: masculine/feminine, active/
passive, heterosexual/homosexual, moral/immoral, respectable/disreputable, strong/
weak, brave/cowardly, productive/lazy, and so on. At one level, binary oppositions clarify
social categories by explaining what things are in relation to what they are not. At
another, they represent crude attempts to gloss over the complex issues of identity and
subjectivity that characterize individual experience. At yet another, they reflect the all-
too-human desire to create a stable sense of self and the selves of others in order to
understand our place in the world and theirs. Whatever its virtues or flaws, the human
propensity for making sense of things, including ourselves and each other, through binary
oppositions provides historians with a valuable window into the ways in which people in
the past have perceived their world. It may be impossible to discover the meaning of
subjective real-life experiences that even individuals caught up in them struggle to
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understand. Nonetheless, creative use of historical sources and theoretical insights into
the social construction of masculinities can help historians recover the cultural logics that
people in the past used to make sense of themselves, other people, and their social world.
A final concept essential to understanding Porfirian masculinities is modernity, a

notoriously slippery term that scholars in a range of disciplines use to distinguish
modern societies from their traditional predecessors. Different scholars have focused
on different aspects of modernitytechnological change, global capitalism, large-scale
labor migrations, industrialization, bureaucratization, democratic institutions, increased
social complexity, and so on. Still, most agree that the concept revolves around a so-
called modern perspective that stresses the contingent nature of knowledge and thus
generates an ongoing process of revision in the way people understand and experience
the world. Like other social constructs, modernity is produced through binary opposition.
Thus people, societies, and even civilizations are considered modern (seen as dynamic
and oriented toward the future) precisely because they are no longer held back by
tradition (seen as static and oriented toward the past). In this sense, Porfirian mottos
like Order and Progress and Less Politics, More Administration, reflect the regimes
recognition that the construction of a modern nation-state meant transcending a tradition
of political instability, economic insecurity, social stagnation, and cultural stasis. But if
Porfirian ideologues promoted modernity as a source of dynamism, for most Mexicans it
was also a source of social and cognitive instability that could be exhilarating or
terrifying or both at the same time.
The interplay of binary oppositions in producing and sustaining masculinities (and other
social constructs) renders them inherently unstable, even when supported by
longstanding tradition. For a society such as Porfirian Mexico, caught up in a perceived
transition from a static past to an uncertain future, the inherent instability of masculinity
became a subject of conscious concern rather than sublimated anxiety. Sometimes it rose
to the level of a full-fledged moral panic. More than at any previous time in Mexican
history, then, being a man in the Porfirian era meant engaging with new modern forms
of masculinity that were, by definition, susceptible to perpetual revision and disturbing
contradiction.
A Model for Modern Manhood

The 19th century in Europe and the Americas was a period of transition characterized by
the uneven but implacable rise of the middle classes, especially the elite bourgeoisie. In
order to consolidate bourgeois hegemony, ideologues relentlessly contrasted their
enlightened ideas of progress with the deliberate obscurantism of an ancien rgime (old
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order), which sought to bind the common people to traditional institutions such as the
Catholic Church, absolutist monarchy, and hereditary nobility through a combination of
ignorance, superstition, and repression. Attacking the legitimacy of these bastions of
institutional patriarchy was a risky proposition that threatened to undermine all social
hierarchies, as the more radical phases of the French Revolution had made all too
apparent. Bourgeois hegemony thus required, among other things, a reformulation of a
traditional patriarchy grounded in discredited institutions, inherited social status, and
religiously sanctioned gender roles. And the reformation of patriarchy meant reworking
traditional notions of masculinity. This was especially true for places like Mexico,
assumed even then to be suffering the pernicious effects of predatory masculine types
such as the ruthless caudillo (strongman), rapacious rural bandit, and urban ratero
(represented as a lower-class, mestizo man predisposed to begging, petty theft, and
violence).3
To instruct upwardly mobile middle-class men in the ways of modern masculinity, a new
generation of enlightened letrados (men of letters) turned to a tried and true method for
civilizing aristocratic courtiers and religious devotees: the self-improvement manual.
The most popular of these guides in Porfirian Mexico was the Manual de urbanidad y
buenas maneras (Manual of Urbanity and Good Manners), first published in 1854 by
Manuel Antonio Carreo, a prominent Venezuelan statesman, diplomat, and pedagogue,
and reprinted regularly throughout Latin America ever since.4 For the Porfirian
bourgeoisie, Carreos Manual de urbanidad provided essential and exhaustive
instruction in proper forms of comportment for men, women, and children at home and in
public. Although modeled on aristocratic self-help manuals, unabashed in its religious
moralizing, and unconcerned about entrenched social hierarchies, the Manual de
urbanidad nonetheless espoused a reformation of traditional manhood predicated on
cleanliness, good grooming, moderation, affability, respectability, love of country, and
careful attentiveness to the needs and opinions of others, including women, children, and
social inferiorsan approach that artfully combined longstanding notions of masculine
responsibility and authority with modern ideas about self-mastery and citizenship,
especially the sublimation of volatile passions in all domains of social life. According to
Carreo, the fate of civilization itself was at stake. As he explained in the introduction:
Without knowledge and practice of the laws prescribed by morality, there can be no
peace, nor order, nor happiness among men; and in vain would we seek to find in another
source the true constitutive and preservative principles of society that we propose to
study; and the rules that [these laws] teach us about how to conduct ourselves in
[society] with the decency and moderation that distinguish the civilized and cultured
man.5
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After decades of political turmoil in Mexico, Porfirian letrados found Carreos

prescription for civilizing unruly male behavior both compelling and useful. Bourgeois
parents went out of their way to socialize their sons according to these precepts.6 And
Education Secretary Justo Sierra, one of President Dazs most prominent and
progressive cientfico advisers, even incorporated a simplified version of Carreos
precepts into the elementary school curriculum, with each month of the year dedicated to
fostering a different aspect of urbanity.7 Nonetheless, the elaborate instructions laid out
in the Manual de urbanidad were beyond the capacity of most men to realize. And if their
behavior is any indication, many bourgeois men bridled at its severe constraints on their
private and public behaviorand the constant self-policing involvedalthough they may
have derived some comfort from its overt endorsement of a moral double standard that
weighed far more heavily on the women in their lives. For men with fewer resources and
less social status, adhering to Carreos exacting standards was next to impossible. As a
masculine ideal, this image of the civilized and cultured male had much to recommend
it, especially its meticulously crafted appearance of mental acuity (wit), emotional
equanimity (affability), and physical grace (health), which revealed the natural
superiority of the men who appeared to have achieved it.
It is hardly surprising, then, that publicity photographs of prominent members of the Daz
administration, including of course the president himself, went to great lengths to
capture the studied urbanity of their subjects. For example, a period photograph of
Finance Secretary Jos Yves Limantour seated in a rattan chair on an outdoor patio,
looking self-assuredly at the camera, depicts him as a paragon of modern bourgeois
manhood: gracefully posed, impeccably groomed, and dressed in the height of continental
fashion.
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Another period
photograph, this one of
Porfirio Daz accompanied
by his wife, Carmen
Romero Rubio, at the
extravagant 1910
centenary celebration of
independence, adds a
feminine touch to the
public persona of the
indispensable caudillo,
hinting at a domestic
haven that provided him a
refuge from the trials and
Click to view larger tribulation of public life
Figure 1. Finance Secretary Jos Yves Limantour. an essential and formative
Library of Congress. female complement to
modern manhood as
described (and prescribed) by Carreo and other arbiters of taste.
These images suggest that

unrealistic as the
prescriptions of self-
improvement guides like
the Manual of Urbanity
undoubtedly were, they
nonetheless represented a
hegemonic masculine
ideal, consciously
embodied by influential
Click to view larger men who presented
Figure 2. President Porfirio Daz and his wife, themselves as role models
Carmen Romero Rubio, at the 1910 centenary for other men. And if
celebration of Mexican independence. Library of
Congress.
public opinion werent
incentive enough,
legislation, especially the 1871 Penal Code, provided legal sanctions for masculine (and
feminine) behavior that failed to live up to modern standards of proper comportment,
especially the need for self-control and moderation in public and private life.8
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Ghosts in the Machine
The modern masculine ideal prescribed by self-improvement manuals and referenced in

period photographs of influential public men was not the only hegemonic masculinity at
work in Porfirian Mexico. Indeed, the image of Porfirio Daz and his wife surrounded by
uniformed military officers also referenced the presidents past exploits as a ruthless man
of action capable of personal heroism, implacable judgment, and sudden outbursts of
anger at challenges to his authority. In this particular case, Dazs transformation into a
distinguished, even-tempered elder statesmanattributed by many to the civilizing
influence of Doa Carmensymbolized the maturation of Mexico into a modern nation.
But not all men had the prestige to withstand the unintended, albeit foreseeable,
consequences of modern manhood.
As happened with other traditional patriarchal ideas, longstanding links between notions
of manhood and concerns about masculine honor and reputation in Mexico (and
elsewhere) underwent significant revision over the course of the 19th and into the 20th
century. And the modern incarnation of those linkages, which based reputation on
precarious merit rather than preordained social position, was reiterated ad nauseam in
19th-century self-improvement manuals. The compulsive reiteration of new masculine
ideals had an anxious, defensive quality that reveals fundamental instabilities at the heart
of modern manhood derived directly from its efforts to soften the hard edges of
traditional hegemonic masculine types.
For proponents of the reformation of manhood, the struggle to supplant traditional

masculinities was serious business; less invested observers saw it as a rich source of
satire. For example, a popular broadside illustrated by master printmaker Jos Guadalupe
Posada, Nuevos y divertidos versos de un valiente del Bajo a sus valedores (New and
Entertaining Verses of a Brave Man of Bajo to his Buddies), depicts a stereotypical
charro (cowboy), dressed in traditional regalia with a horse whip in one hand and the
reins of a snorting stallion in the other, as he challenges a billiard hall full of bewildered
city boys with an offer to put their women in the family way and the assertion that Im
your papa, hotshots/The one you must respect/So dont muddy the water boys/Because
thats the way youll have to drink it.9
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The broadside derives its

humor from the binary
opposition between
modern masculinity in the
guise of hatless billiard
playing chulos (hotshots)
and its traditional
counterpart cast as a
boastful charro with a
bristly mustache and wide-
brimmed sombrero, the
classic symbol of manhood
and national identity.10
The binary opposition

Click to view larger
expressed in New and
Figure 3. Nuevos y divertidos versos de un valiente
del Bajo a sus valedores (New and Entertaining
Entertaining Verses
Verses of a Brave Man of Bajo to his Buddies), carried over into other
broadside printed by Jos Guadalupe Posada. masculine domains.
University of Hawaii, Jean Charlot Collection.
Porfirian modernizers
tended to see modern male
sports like baseball, boxing, bicycling, and billiards as civilized (regulated, hygienic,
healthy) and traditional male entertainments like rodeo, bullfighting, and cockfights as
savage (improvisational, bloody, inflammatory).11 But even hardcore bullfight fans
interpreted the distinctive styles of the dandified, clean-shaven Spanish-born matador,
Luis Mazzantini, and his hard-drinking, mustachioed Mexican-born colleague, Ponciano
Daz, in terms of competing masculinities along the modern/traditional binary and aligned
their sympathies accordingly.12 Although the billiard players in Posadas print might
construct themselves as modern men in opposition to rural masculine stereotypes like the
boastful charro from Bajo, the broadside also hints at a certain loss of manliness as they
sublimated natural male aggression in order to embrace a tame urban lifestyle
characterized by civilized games like billiards. A similar dynamic appears in the cultural
wars around the bullfighting styles of Mazzatini and Daz, with upper-class aficionados
more likely to favor the urbane Spaniard and the satiric penny press for workers
advocating for the earthy Mexican. New masculine types such as the lagatijo (literally
lizard) and the catrn (dandy) emerged as way to identify, satirize, and sometimes
feminize this new generation of cosmopolitan middle- and upper-class men.
These Porfirian culture wars around masculine style had quite a bit to do with changing
ideas about gender, consumption, and citizenship. For example, the central plot of liberal
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letrado Ignacio Altamiranos popular 1901 novel, El Zarco, revolves around a competition
between two distinct masculine typesthe flashy bandit El Zarco and the steady
blacksmith Nicolsfor the attentions of the beautiful Manuela. In addition to the
obvious psychological differences between the cruel, capricious El Zarco and the
considerate, constant Nicols, the two men are distinguished by distinct modes of
production and consumption. At one level, El Zarco and Nicols represent pre-modern
and modern masculine types, at another the two men embody two mutually exclusive
possibilities at the heart of the modern project . . . a future (desired) dominated by
production as the determining characteristic of masculine identity . . . face to face with a
future (exorcized) dominated by unproductive consumption and ostentation.13 In the eyes
of Altamirano and his fellow letrados, the key to Mexicos future lay in the triumph of
productive citizens like the upstanding mestizo Nicolswho ultimately rejects the
feckless gera (blonde) Manuela for the modest mestiza Pilarover the destructive gero
bandit El Zarco. The novel ends predictably enough with the deaths of El Zarco and
Manuela and the marriage of Nicols and Pilar, a symbol of the happy future promised to
and produced by modern masculine and feminine subjects (and their inevitably patriotic,
industrious offspring). At the same time, the novels pro-mestizo politics, not uncommon
among Mexican letrados, fly in the face of the scientific racism of the day and other
imported notions of modernity tainted by white supremacy. The racial politics of
nationalismexpressed in El Zarco and the Mazzatini/Daz split, and embodied by the
charro from Bajo and a mestizo president (despite efforts to whiten his public image)
would continue to haunt attempts to reform manhood by calling into question the virility
of civilized and cultured men, even for bourgeois men otherwise eager to distance
themselves from lower-middle-class and working-class men.
Complications related to the racial politics of nationalism were not the only source of
tension for Porfirian men as they sought to adapt to the modern world. Although
Altamirano sets his novel in rural Morelos, the centrality of consumption to modern
identity was probably felt most acutely in Mexicos rapidly growing urban centers,
especially by middle-class men. By the end of the 19th century, the proliferation of
upscale urban department stores such as Mexico Citys famous Palacio de Hierro (Iron
Palace) and the development of fashionable shopping and entertainment districts
provided the middle and upper classes with exposure and access to the latest
cosmopolitan stylesand helped them cultivate a new modern and intensely gendered
class identity grounded in their ability to acquire and deploy a material culture of
European provenance, even if at times it relied on cheap, domestically-produced copies
and brands.14 Conspicuous consumption of fashionable clothing, accessories, beauty
products, cigarettes, alcohol, and entertainment was expensive and often strained the
resources of the growing but still precarious middle class, the very group most desperate
to maintain its status as gente decente (decent folk). And the anxieties produced by new
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patterns of consumption proved especially troubling for middle-class men, who struggled
to live up to the financial demands of modern masculinity, including an obligation to meet
the consumption needs of their wives and children.
The conspicuous consumption essential to constructing and projecting a modern

masculine persona intersected in complicated ways with changing notions of male honor.
While bourgeois and aristocratic men from influential families inherited honor as a
birthrightalthough some managed to fall into disgrace nonethelessless established
middle-class men worked hard to acquire and maintain their reputations. No group felt
this pressure more acutely than a new generation of contentious combat journalists,
whose public reputations as men of honor were essential to their precarious social
position. This meant that, any doubt about their integrity prompted strong rebuttals,
often leading to verbal and printed insults or the threat of violence through a duel.15 Few
public disputes ended in formal duelsalthough future Education Secretary Justo
Sierras brother Santiago was killed in a duel by a rival newspaper editorbut the threat
of violence to avenge affronts to personal honor was a serious occupational hazard until
the late 1890s, when a combination of government subsidies, press censorship, and
outright repression put a severe damper on journalistic debate.16 Because of its
dependence on reputation and public opinion, the modern honor espoused by middle-
class men such as the combat journalistsalthough more democratic and meritocratic
than its traditional predecessorwould prove even more volatile and no less hegemonic,
despite its contradictory effects on other more civilized ways of being a man.
Variations on a Theme
Then as now, a mans ability to convincingly assume, perform, or embody hegemonic
masculinity required a sense (or at least credible pretense) of mastery of oneself and
other peoplewomen, children, and less powerful men. While men of means, however
modest, could at least aspire to some degree of mastery, this was not a realistic option for
many of their less well off brethren. Working-class Mexican men have long been cast as
prototypical machosa stereotype bolstered by the widespread use of the Spanish-
language term, which acquired its current meaning in Mexico sometime in the mid-20th
century.17 Whatever truth might lurk behind the stereotype, a close look at Porfirian-era
popular culture, especially the vibrant Mexico City satiric penny press for workers,
provides a more nuanced view of Mexican working-class masculinities. The satiric penny
press occasionally endorsed a gamut of traditional macho behaviors that ran from
patriarchal condescension to outright violence. A poem from El Diablito Rojo (The Little
Red Devil) advised readers that, every good woman sews, washes, irons, and cooks.18
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Another ominously warned men who had been betrayed by deceitful womena
reoccurring theme in penny press poetrythat when it has to do with love/he thats not
a fool, prefers/to the blow from which he dies/the blow with which he kills.19
At the same time, penny press editors understood the humor inherent in working mens
struggles with the particular (not to say peculiar) demands of modern manhood. A La
Guacamaya (The Squawking Parrot) story about a temporarily unemployed workerwho
turns out to be the editors alter egoculminates with a ghostly late-night visitor whom
he initially confuses with Don Gonzalo, the murdered father-in-law who comes to drag
Don Juan Tenorio off to hell in the popular play of the same name, traditionally performed
each year throughout Mexico as part of the Day of the Dead festivities. He confronts the
specter with Don Juans blustery lines: Dont think that you can scare with your
fearsome looks, with your remorseless face, never in death nor in life will you humiliate
my valor, only to discover that the figure is just his long-suffering wife come to beg a
ships ration of bread and water. And for all his posturing, he confesses to having
hidden his head under a sleeping mat the entire timea cowardly act that makes him a
sympathetic character but hardly a paragon of manly self-control or even an effective
breadwinner. Along with satirizing the trials and tribulations of non-elite men, penny
press editors sometimes represented working-class men as more modern than their
middle- and upper class counterparts, at least with regard to gender relations. A 1905
cover for El Chile Piqun (The Spicy Pepper), illustrated by Posada, depicts a scruffy
working-class man with sandals, rolled-up pants, straw hat, and the gear of a cargador
(hauler) slung over his back, talking with a frumpy woman with missing front teeth on her
way to market.
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The dialogue below the

image, written in street-
inflected Spanish, alerts
readers to a budding
romantic relationship:
Man: Where are you

going Doa Manuela?
Woman: Im going to
the plaza, Perfirio.
Youre just flirting with
me.
Man: Its that Im crazy

about you.
Figure 4. El Chile Piqun (The Spicy Pepper), Woman: Dont be such

January 12, 1905. University of Texas at Austin,
Benson Latin American Collection. a flatterer.
Man: And you dont be

such a tease.
Woman: (How smooth this guy is.)
Man: (How ripe this honey seems.) Are you going with me my love?
Woman: Yes, Perfirio even into hell.
Man: Well now, I really am going to laugh at the harshness of winter.
The humor in this exchange derives from the cognitive dissonance created by their frank
expression of mutual desire (especially in the unspoken parenthetical thoughts) and their
decidedly unsexy appearance. Notable as well is the absence of any hint of male
dominance or female subordination, even with regard to the expression of sexual desire
in the final lines when Perfirio takes comfort in the prospect of bodily contact as
protection against the cold of winter. The promise of egalitarian or companionate
relationships between working-class men and women, relationships grounded in
emotional bonding and sexual attraction, puts them at the forefront of modern ideas
about love and marriage that anthropologists have argued would not occur among the
Mexican working classes until late in the 20th century.20 Nonetheless, as this fictional
encounter suggests, while working-class men might lack the means to purchase a modern
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persona or to pretend to self-mastery along the lines suggested by Carreos Manual of

Urbanity, they could aspire to be modern in other, more authentic ways.
One explanation for this counterintuitive view of working-class men as harbingers of

modernity is the expansion of literacy among the lower classes over the course of the
19th century. This expansion included access to literary culture even for men considered
illiterate by conventional standards. With it came a newfound ability to communicate
indirectly and discreetly with potential partners, sometimes despite the best efforts of
concerned parents to safeguard their daughters, as in this letter from a working-class
Guadalajara man to his sweetheart:
I dont want you to have any illusions about a man that you only know
superficially, and that you dont understand . . . because if Im a man I also know
that I have to suffer now to enjoy later, I dont want you to think I will make you
happy, when on the contrary you have to suffer a little until I change, which is to
say, until you make me change by the way you sweeten life, but this will be later,
for now I only want that you be with me because I know that I have a right to your
help and you will teach me to love you more so that you can live in tranquility
when youre older.21
Although the letter reflects a more traditional view of companionate relationships than is
implied by the El Chile Piqun cover, it nonetheless reveals that working-class men and
women used letters to foster and strengthen their emotional bonds through dialogue in a
way that they seem to have understoodjudging from frequent references to tradition-
bound parentsas modern.
Men in rural areas were also at a disadvantage when it came to a taking on a modern
masculine identity. Reasons varied: some rural men were as poor as their urban
counterparts, others lacked easy access to consumer goods, and still others found rural
communities less amenable to new cultural mores associated with modern urban
lifestyles. By the late 19th century, modern technologies like the railroad and telegraph
along with improved roads and a more reliable postal service had helped spread
consumer goods and modern ideas to all but the remotest corners of Mexico. In addition,
modernizing industries like mining and agriculture (in some areas more than others) had
begun to promote new forms of labor discipline among workers that soughtwith limited
successto rid men of traditional vices such as drinking, frequenting prostitutes, and
idleness and replace them with healthy modern habits, especially industriousness.22 As
happened in urban areas, rural men were more likely to construct themselves as modern
subjects through the circulation of letters than through the prescriptive literature of
bourgeois reformers. An impassioned letter from an absent mineworker to his novia, for
example, begins by telling her that you cant imagine what this poor heart has suffered
Page 14 of 29


for your love, before reassuring her with the, tranquility your passionate Pedro finds
when turning to write you with such growing and sweet love.23 Here again, the
passionate sentiments arent especially modernespecially considering the implication
here and in other places in the couples correspondence that suggests loss of self-control
on the part of both partiesbut the medium certainly is, at least for a working-class man.
So too is the notion that couples could work on their relationship through the exchange of
letters.
Historians know next to nothing about the intersections of manhood and modernity
among indigenous men. The letrado elite typically portrayed them in two very different
ways. Indian men living in settled areas, especially the central plateau, were frequently
represented as passive and weak to the point of possible extinction. An 1878 medical
study, for example, observed of the typical highland Indian: his constitution is generally
weak, his muscles little developed and his material work relatively minimal. His
complexion is pallid and yellowish, his face sullen, his air is sad and pensive, his step slow
and always with a reflection of melancholy vacillation.24 In contrast, Indian men who
actively resisted the encroachments of the Porfirian state were depicted as savages,
whose violent lack of masculine self-restraint stood in the way of national progress.
In both instances, they

were seen as stubbornly
attached to their
traditional way of life.
Justo Sierra may have
fretted about the difficulty
of harnessing the
destructive tendencies of
the energetic mestizo
(mixed race) men who
represented the nations
dynamic future, but when
it came to Indian men, his
favored solution was
immigration, because only
race mixture with
Figure 5. Two Tarahumara Indian men,
photographed in Tuaripa, Chihuahua, Mexico, 1892. European whites could
Wikimedia Commons. prevent our nation from
sinking, which would mean
regression, not evolution.25 Men of other racial groups faced similar, if less relentless,
stereotyping and not just at the hands of letrado nation-builders. Images of Chinese men
Page 15 of 29


harassed by angry mobs in the popular press reveal the centrality of masculine normsas
reflected in an emphasis on the traditional physical appearance, dress, and demeanor of
Chinese menin discriminatory attitudes toward foreigners of other races.
Even the symbolic

embodiment of U.S.
power, Uncle Sam, was
often cast as a Semitic
villain in Mexican popular
culture, a traditional
masculine type associated
with blood libel and
usurious business
practices.26
Figure 6. La Guacamaya (The Macaw) newspaper,

August 18, 1904. University of Texas at Austin,
Benson Latin American Collection.
Deviant Masculinities
The development of new forms of hegemonic masculinity also produced new forms of
deviant masculinity. In many cases, these deviant masculinities emerged as protests
against the constraints imposed on men by the normative demands of the dominant
culture. And as protest masculinitiesanother term developed by R. W. Connellthey
deliberately rejected the core values associated with hegemonic masculinities. This often
meant embracing some unsavory aspects of traditional masculinities (as caricatured by
progressive social reformers). For example, the flashy bandit, El Zarco, mentioned earlier
in relation to competing modes of masculine consumption, embodies a classic protest
masculinity grounded in arrogance, irresponsibility, cruelty, and a preference for easy
money attained through robbery and extortion rather than an honest living earned
through hard work. Indeed, the rejection of modern values like industriousness, thrift,
hygiene, self-restraint, and delayed gratification formed the basis of most protest
masculinities.
Page 16 of 29


Other examples include much-maligned pelados like the drunken Lazarus in a Posada
illustration for La Guacamaya roused by an annoyed policeman while sleeping off a drunk
in the street.
Urban masculine types like

the pelado and ratero
represented a blatant
refusal to adhere to the
disciplinary norms of an
aspiring industrial society
on the part of working-
class men, many of whom
experienced the wrenching
disruptions of modernity
but few of its benefits.
Sometimes penny press
editors went so far as to
Figure 7. La Resurreccin de Lzaro (The
Resurrection of Lazarus), illustration from La suggest that working-class
Guacamaya (The Macaw) newspaper. University of male rowdiness, at least in
Texas at Austin, Benson Latin American Collection. the context of patriotic
celebrations like
Independence Day, was preferable to the passive propriety of bourgeois men who they
branded as catrines.
Page 17 of 29


On the other hand, self-

identified bohemios
(bohemians) from the
upper and middle classes
often labeled as catrines by
their working-class
brethrenshared some of
this deep distrust of
hegemonic masculine
ideals, which they
considered puritanical,
bland, and overly
materialistic.
Another protest
masculinity, the tenorio del
Figure 8. La Guacamaya (The Macaw) newspaper,
barrio (neighborhood
September 12, 1907. University of Texas at Austin,
Benson Latin American Collection. lothario) appeared in all
sectors of Porfirian
society, following proudly in the footsteps the notorious Don Juan Tenorio, whose
obsession with masculine honor, the seduction of women, and the deliberate flouting of
convention, had allegedly inspired generations of men to disrespect authority, women,
and any man who might challenge them.
Page 18 of 29


Male sexual inversionthe

late19th-century term for
men who took on female
gender and sexual
personaswas probably
the most stigmatized of the
deviant masculinities to
emerge during the
Porfirian era in Mexico,
perhaps because it was
seen as a modern
perversion rather than a
traditional throwback.
Ascribing alleged female
traits such as passiveness,
flightiness, pettiness,
Figure 9. Yo so Don Juan Tenorio y sin
Quimeras (I am Don Juan Tenorio without weakness, etc. to other
Chimeras). University of Hawaii, Jean Charlot men in order to demean,
Collection.
humiliate, undermine, or
dominate them was hardly
a 19th-century invention. Popular culture also had a centuries-old tradition of male cross-
dressing in the theater and circus and for special occasions like the carnival that marked
the coming of Lent. These longstanding theatrical traditions carried over into political
satire as when El Diablito Rojo ran a 1900 cover illustration, cross-dressing President
Porfirio Daz himself as a zarzuela (operetta) heroine being courted by his/her admirers.27
Page 19 of 29


That a lowly penny press

editor could cast Mexicos
powerful president as a
woman on the front page
of his newspaper without
landing in jail suggests
that the practice was
considered unremarkable.
Tolerance for these

traditional practices did
not carry over to men who
preferred sex with other
men, especially if they
openly solicited sex from
Figure 10. El Diablito Rojo (The Little Red Devil)
other men or took the
newspaper, July 2, 1900. University of Texas at
Austin, Benson Latin American Collection. female (passive) role in sex
acts. Historians have
begun to uncover evidence of what would now be called a homosexual subculture in
Porfirian-era cities, especially with regard to the modern bathhouses that began to
appear during the 1890s in order to promote hygienic habits.28 Although an undeniable
aspect of urban life and an area of official concern, for the most part this hidden world of
sexual inversion and homosexual practices was very much in the closet. That changed on
November 17, 1901, when Mexico City police raided a private dance and arrested 41
participants, half of whom were dressed as women. News accounts of the raid quickly
generated a public scandal that grew so big that the number forty-one became and
remains a code for male homosexuality throughout Mexico. For many critics, including
the moralistic Catholic newspaper El Pas, the raid revealed the state of immorality to
which the execrable influx of impiety has led.29 Indeed, most newspaper editorials
applauded the governments decision to deport the men who had dressed as women (but
not the others) to Yucatn to work in military mess halls (as servers rather than as
soldiers). For the satiric penny press editors, the forty-one scandal provided the perfect
opportunity to further attack the manhood of bourgeois catrines as effeminate,
narcissistic, weak-willed, and thus unfit to lead the nation. For instance, a 1907 cover for
La Guacamaya with the provocative title Feminism imposes itself depicted feminized,
presumably middle-class men positioned around a huge number forty-one, dressed in
womens clothing and performing a range of household tasks.
Page 20 of 29


The caption underneath

read:
While the woman goes

off
To the workshop and the
office
And dresses in cashmere
And abandons the home
And enters freely into
bars,
The clean-shaven man
Stays at home making
breakfast,
He sews, irons, and
cares for the baby,
Click to view larger And all of them with
Figure 11. La Guacamaya (The Macaw) newspaper, great affection (?)
July 25, 1907. University of Texas at Austin, Benson We call forty one.
Latin American Collection.
While there is no hint of

homosexual acts here, the modern middle class men that it represents at home doing
womens work while their wives are off at the office and entering freely into bars are
nonetheless stigmatized as sexual inverts by their association with the notorious number
forty-one. But if the forty-one scandal helped to alert authorities and the public to the
homosexual problem and to shape a particularly Mexican brand of homophobia, it also
gave gay men a sense of identity and common cause that some scholars have seen as the
birth of homosexuality in Mexico.30 And from that birth sprang a powerful new binary
opposition against (or through) which men could understand themselves and other men
as menan opposition that came not from traditional masculinities but from within
modernity itself.
Discussion of the Literature

The historical literature on men and modernity in the Porfiriato is spotty: relatively well
developed in some areas and virtually nonexistent in others. Regardless, it owes a huge
debt to several decades of important work by feminist scholars whose pioneering
histories of women, gender, and sexuality during the Porfirian era laid the theoretical and
contextual groundwork for these more recent efforts to historicize masculinity. Although
Page 21 of 29


space constraints make it impossible to discuss this extensive bibliography here, any
serious scholar would be advised to read deeply in this literature and consult it often.
Given its provenance in women, gender, and sexuality studies, it is hardly surprising that
the earliest systematic attempts to analyze Porfirian masculinity would be undertaken by
historians interested in homosexuality and homophobia. The seminal work in this sub-
field is The Famous 41: Sexuality and Social Control in Mexico, c. 1901, edited by Irwin,
et al., which includes several primary sources along with a range of historical essays on
the scandal and on the links between the policing of deviant sexualities and other forms
of social control in the Porfirian era. Articles and books by some of authors in that volume
(Irwin, Macas-Gonzalez, Macas-Gonzlez and Rubenstein, and Buffington); the work of
other historians of sexuality, such as Cano and Barrn Gavito; and a new dissertation by
Jones have given historians a solid foundation for future work on the history of
homosexuality in Porfirian Mexico. Another relatively well-developed sub-field that
emerged from feminist gender and sexuality studies involves the social construction of
modern hegemonic masculinities, through the widespread use of self-help manuals,
especially among the Porfirian middle-classes (see the work of Macas-Gonzlez and of
Barcel) and through cultural wars that pitted traditional masculine types such as the
bandit and the charro against their modern counterparts, explored by Vazquez M.,
Palomar Verea, and Dabove and Hallstead. Recent work by Piccato on changing notions
of masculine honor has revealed some of the challenges of hegemonic masculinity for
middle class men.
Cultural and legal historians focused on the social construction of deviance have also
made solid contributions to the study of Porfirian masculinities, especially official
concerns about the criminality of lower-class men and the degeneration of middle- and
upper-class men; see the work of Piccato, Buffington, and Speckman Guerra. Labor
historians interested in working-class culture, such as Miranda Guerrero, Buffington,
French, and Lear, have taken this work a step further by looking at other aspects of
working-class masculinity, including working-class perspectives on manhood. A final
important subfield involves the study of rural masculinities as revealed in court records,
especially with regard to issues of courtship, seduction, honor, and violence against
women (see the work of French and of Sloan).
As this brief overview of the literature on Porfirian masculinities reveals, the field is still
in its infancy. Not only does much work remain to be done in the sub-fields noted but
many important aspects of the impact of modernity on men during the Porfirian era have
yet to be explored in any detail. These include: upper-, middle-, and lower-class mens
responses to new patterns of leisure and consumption; the sexual politics of modern
sports; the way elite men negotiated and performed hegemonic masculinity; the
implications of new forms of hegemonic masculinity for middle-class men; and the impact
Page 22 of 29


of new forms of hegemonic and protest masculinities on upper-, middle-, and lower class
women, to name only a few.
Primary Sources
Period newspapers, magazines, and broadsheets are essential sources for the study of
Porfirian-era masculinities. The two most comprehensive collections are in the
Hemeroteca Nacional Digital de Mxico, Mexico City and the Benson Latin American
Collection, University of Texas at Austin.
The work of master printmaker Jos Guadalupe Posada includes a wide spectrum of
masculine types, especially for the working classes. Important collections of Posadas
work can be found at the Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at
Austin; the Jean Charlot Collection, University of Hawaii at Manoa; the Fernando
Gamboa Collection of Prints, University of New Mexico; Special Collections & University
Archives, Stanford University Libraries; and the Art Institute of Chicago.
The autobiographies, diaries, and other writings of elite men are another useful source.
These men include Porfirio Daz, Francisco Bulnes (journalist and politician), Salvador
Daz Mirn (poet and notorious duelist), Heriberto Fras (soldier, journalist, and novelist),
Federico Gamboa (novelist, diarist, and diplomat), Emilio Rabasa (writer, diplomat, and
politician), and Justo Sierra (writer, educator, and politician). See also: Manuel Antonio
Carreo, Manual de urbanidad y buenas maneras para el uso del juventud de ambos
sexos;31 Julio Guerrero, Gnesis del crmen en Mxico: Estudio de psiquiatra social;32 and
Carlos Roumagnac, Los criminales en Mxico: Ensayo de psicologa criminal.33
Further Reading
Agostoni, Claudia, and Elisa Speckman Guerra, eds. Modernidad, tradicin y alteridad: La
Ciudad de Mxico en el Cambio de Siglo (XIXXX). Mxico: Universidad Nacional
Autnoma de Mexico, 2001.
Barcel, Raquel. El muro del silencio: Los jvenes de la burguesa porfiriana. In

Historia de los jvenes en Mxico: Su presencia en el siglo XX. Edited by Jos Antonio
Prez Islas and Maritza Urteaga Castro-Pozo, 114150. Mxico: Instituto Mexicano de la
Juventud, 2004.
Barrn Gavito, Miguel Angel. El baile de los 41: La representacin de lo afeminado en la

prensa porfiriana. Historia y Grafa 34 (2010): 4776.
Page 23 of 29


Buffington, Robert M. Criminal and Citizen in Modern Mexico. Lincoln: University of

Nebraska Press, 2000.
Buffington, Robert M. A Sentimental Education for the Working Man: The Mexico City
Penny Press, 19001910. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015.
Cano, Gabriela. Unconcealable Realities of Desire: Amelio Robless (Transgender)

Masculinity in the Mexican Revolution. In Sex in Revolution: Gender, Power and Politics
in Modern Mexico. Edited by Jocelyn Olcott, Mary Kay Vaughan, and Gabriela Cano, 35
56. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
Dabove, Juan Pablo, and Susan Hallstead. Pasiones fatales: Consume, bandidaje y
gnero en El Zarco. A Contracorrientes 7.1 (Fall 2009): 168187.
Fernndez Aceves, Mara Teresa, Carmen Ramos Escandn, and Susie Porter, eds. Orden
social e identidad de gnero: Mxico, siglos XIX y XX. Mxico: CIESAS, 2006.
French, William E. A Peaceful and Working People: Manners, Morals, and Class
Formation in Northern Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
French, William E. The Heart in the Glass Jar: Love Letters, Bodies, and the Law in
Mexico. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015.
Irwin, Robert McKee. Mexican Masculinities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,

2003.
Irwin, Robert McKee, Edward J. McCaughan, and Michelle Roco Nasser, eds. The
Famous 41: Sexuality and Social Control in Mexico, c. 1901. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003.
Jones, Ryan. Estamos en todas partes: Male Homosexuality, Nation, and Modernity in
Twentieth-Century Mexico. PhD Diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012.
Lear, John. Workers, Neighbors, and Citizens: The Revolution in Mexico City. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 2001.
Macas-Gonzlez, Vctor M. Apuntes sobre la construccin de la masculinidad a travs

de la iconografa artstica porfiriana, 18611914. In Hacia otra historia del arte en
Mxico: La amplitud del modernism y la modernidad (18611920). Edited by Stacie G.
Widdifield, 329350. Mxico: CONACULTA, 2004.
Macas-Gonzlez, Vctor M., and Anne Rubenstein, eds. Masculinity and Sexuality in
Modern Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2012.
Page 24 of 29


Miranda Guerrero, Roberto. Exploraciones histricas sobre la masculinidad. La Ventana

8 (1998): 207247.
Miranda Guerrero, Roberto. Gnero, masculinidad, familia y cultura escrita en

Guadalajara, 18001940. In Hombres y masculinidades en Guadalajara. Edited by
Roberto Miranda Guerrero and Luca Mantilla Gutirrez, 189249. Guadalajara:
Universidad de Guadalajara, 2006.
Palomar Verea, Cristina. El charro: Masculinidad y nacionalismo. In Hombres y

masculinidades en Guadalajara. Edited by Roberto Miranda Guerrero and Luca Mantilla
Gutirrez, 157188. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2006.
Piccato, Pablo. City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 19001931. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2001.
Piccato, Pablo. The Tyranny of Opinion: Honor in the Construction of the Mexican Public
Sphere. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
Sloan, Kathryn A. Runaway Daughters: Seduction, Elopement, and Honor in Nineteenth-

Century Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008.
Speckman Guerra, Elisa. I Was a Man of Pleasure, I Cant Deny It: Histories of Jos de
Jess Negrete, a.k.a. The Tiger of Santa Julia. In True Stories of Crime in Modern
Mexico. Edited by Robert M. Buffington and Pablo Piccato, 57105. Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 2009.
Notes:
(1.) R.W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt, Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the
Concept, Gender & Society 19 (2005): 846 (829859).
(2.) Ibid., 838 (829859).
(3.) On bandits as the constitutive outside of the modern nation-state see Juan Pablo
Dabove, Introduction, in Nightmares of the Lettered City: Banditry and Literature in
Latin America 18161929 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007), pp. 140. On
elite concerns about urban rateros see Pablo Piccato, The Invention of Rateros, in City
of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 19001911 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001),
pp. 163188.
Page 25 of 29


(4.) By 1992 Carreos Manual de urbanidad had gone through 47 editions. Elsa Muiz,
Cuerpo, representacin y poder: Mxico en los albores de la reconstruccin nacional,
19201934 (Mxico: Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana, 2002), p. 29. See also:Victor
M. Macas-Gonzlez, Hombres de mundo: la masculinidad, el consume, y los manuales
de urbanidad y buenas maneras, in Mara Teresa Fernndez Aceves, Carmen Ramos
Escandn, and Susie Porter, eds. Orden social e identitdad de gnero. Mxico, siglos XIX
y XX (Mxico: CIESAS/Universidad de Guadalajara, 2006), pp. 267297; and Valentina
Torres Septin, Manuales de conducta, urbanidad y buenas modales durante el
Porfiriato: Notas sobre el comportmento feminino, in Claudia Agostoni and Elisa
Speckman, eds. Modernidad, tradiccin y alteridad: La Ciudad de Mxico en el cambio
del siglo (Mxico: Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico, 2001), pp. 271289.
(5.) Manuel Antonio Carreo, Manual de urbanidad y buenas maneras (Mxico: Librera
de la Vda. de Ch. Bouret, 1920), p. 5.
(6.) Raquel Barcel, El muro del silencio: Los jvenes de la burguesa porfiriana, in Jos
Antonio Prez Islas and Maritza Urteaga Castro-Pozo, eds. Historia de los jvenes en
Mxico: su presencia en el siglo XX (Mxico: Instituto Mexicano de la Juventud/Centro de
Investigacin y Estudios sobre Juventud/Archivo General de la Nacin, 2004), pp. 114
150.
(7.) Macas-Gonzlez, Hombres de mundo, pp. 280285.
(8.) Elisa Speckman Guerra, Las tablas de la ley en la era de la modernidad: normas y
valores en la legislacin porfiriana, in Claudia Agostoni and Elisa Speckman, eds.
Modernidad, tradiccin y alteridad: La Ciudad de Mxico en el cambio del siglo (Mxico:
Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico, 2001), pp. 241270.
(9.) Author unknown/Jos Guadalupe Posada (illustrator), Nuevos y divertidos versos de

un valiente del Bajo a sus valedores (Mxico: Antonio Venegas Arroyo, 1902). Courtesy
of the Jean Charlot Collection, University of Hawaii (JCC.JGP:V47).
(10.) On the charro as national symbol see Cristina Palomar Verea, El charro:
masculinidad y nacionalismo, in Roberto Miranda Guerrero and Luca Mantilla
Gutirrez, eds. Hombres y masculinidades en Guadalajara (Guadalajara: Universidad de
Guadalajara, 20069, pp. 157188.
(11.) On the social meaning of sports in Porfirian Mexico see William H. Beezley, Judas at
the Jockey Club and Other Episodes of Porfirian Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1987), pp. 1367.
Page 26 of 29


(12.) Although social reformers looked disparagingly on blood sports such as

cockfighting and bullfighting, the Daz regime lifted an earlier ban on bullfighting in
1886. On the competing masculine styles of Mexican matadors see Mara del Carmen
Vzquez M., Charros contra gentlemen: un episodio de identidad en la historia de la
tauromaquia mexicana moderna, 18861905, in Claudia Agostoni and Elisa Speckman
Guerra, eds. Modernidad, tradicin y alteridad: la Ciudad de Mxico en el Cambio de
Siglo (XIXXX) (Mxico: Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mexico, 2001), pp. 161193;
and Patrick Frank, Posadas Broadsheets: Mexican Popular Imagery, 18901910
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), pp. 129165.
(13.) Juan Pablo Dabove and Susan Hallstead, Pasiones fatales: consume, bandidaje y
gnero en El Zarco, A Contracorriente, 7.1 (Fall 2009): 174. The article also deals
centrally with unproductive female consumption in El Zarco.
(14.) Steven B. Bunker and Vctor M. Macas-Gonzlez, Consumption and Material

Culture from Pre-Contact through the Porfiriato, in William H. Beezley, ed., A
Companion to Mexican History and Culture (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), p. 72.
(15.) Pablo Piccato, The Tyranny of Opinion: Honor in the Construction of the Mexican
Public Sphere (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), p. 83.
(16.) Pablo Piccato, The Tyranny of Opinion: Honor in the Construction of the Mexican
Public Sphere (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 88 & 95.
(17.) For useful overviews of the history of the word macho, see Carlos Monsivis,
Escenas de pudor y liviandad (Mexico City: Editorial Grijalbo, 1981), pp. 103117; and
Matthew C. Gutmann, The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996), pp. 221232.
(18.) Consecuencias, El Diablito Rojo, April 2, 1900. The original poem has an internal
rhyme scheme that gives it a charm lacking in translation. See Robert M. Buffington,
Towards a Modern Sacrificial Economy: Violence Against Women and Male Subjectivity
in Turn-of-the-Century Mexico City, in Vctor M. Macas-Gonzlez and Anne Rubenstein,
eds. Masculinity and Sexuality in Modern Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 2012), p. 166.
(19.) Ego, Consejos, El Diablito Rojo, March 4, 1901. See Buffington, Towards a
Modern Sacrificial Economy, p. 179.
(20.) See especially Jennifer S. Hirsch, A Courtship after Marriage: Sexuality and Love in
Mexican Transnational Families (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
Page 27 of 29


(21.) Cited in Roberto Miranda Guerrero, Gnero, masculinidad, familia y cultura escrita
en Guadalajara,18001940, in Roberto Miranda Guerrero and Luca Mantilla Gutirrez,
eds. Hombres y masculinidades en Guadalajara (Guadalajara: Universidad de
Guadalajara, 2006), pp. 213214.
(22.) See William E. French, A Peaceful and Working People: Manners, Morals, and Class
Formation in Northern Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), pp.
6385.
(23.) Cited in William E. French, The Heart in the Glass Jar: Love Letters, Bodies, and the
Law in Mexico (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2015), p. 182.
(24.) Dr. de Belina, Influencia de altura sobre la vida y la salud del habitante de
Anahuac, Boletn de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografa y Estadstica 4.45 (1878), p.
303. Cited in Robert M. Buffington, Criminal and Citizen in Modern Mexico (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 2000), p. 146.
(25.) Justo Sierra, The Political Evolution of the Mexican People, trans. Charles Ramsdell
(Austin: University of Texas, 1976), p. 368.
(26.) See for example, the Posada illustrations in Rafael Barajas Durn, Posada mita o
mitote (Mxico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 2009), pp. 216 & 242244.
(27.) Robert M. Buffington, Homophobia and the Mexican Working Class, 19001910, in
Robert McKee Irwin, Edward J. McCaughan, and Michelle Roco Nasser, eds. The Famous
41: Sexuality and Social Control in Mexico, c. 1901 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2003), p. 202.
(28.) See especially Vctor M. Macas-Gonzlez, The Bathhouse and Male Homosexuality
in Porfirian Mexico, in Vctor M. Macas-Gonzlez and Anne Rubenstein, eds. Masculinity
and Sexuality in Modern Mexico (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press,
2012), pp. 2552.
(29.) The Nefarious Ball, El Pas, November 22, 1901, in Robert McKee Irwin, Edward J.
McCaughan, and Michelle Roco Nasser, eds. The Famous 41: Sexuality and Social
Control in Mexico, c. 1901 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 23.
(30.) Carlos Monsivis, The 41 and the Gran Redada, in Robert McKee Irwin, Edward J.
McCaughan, and Michelle Roco Nasser, eds. The Famous 41: Sexuality and Social
Control in Mexico, c. 1901 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 139167.
(31.) Mexico: Librera de la Vda. de Ch. Bouret, 1920.
Page 28 of 29


(32.) Mxico: Librera de la Vda. de Ch. Bouret, 1901.
(33.) Mxico: Tipografia El Fnix,) 1904.
Robert M. Buffington
Women and Gender Studies Program, University of Colorado at Boulder
Page 29 of 29


Men and Modernity in Porfirian Mexico

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Men and Modernity in Porfirian Mexico

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Men and Modernity in Porfirian Mexico

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American

Summary and Keywords

The Porfirian era (18761911) marked a watershed in social understandings of manhood.

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY

date: 19 February 2017

A Conceptual Framework for Studying Men as

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY

date: 19 February 2017

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY

date: 19 February 2017

A final concept essential to understanding Porfirian masculinities is modernity, a

A Model for Modern Manhood

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date: 19 February 2017

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date: 19 February 2017

After decades of political turmoil in Mexico, Porfirian letrados found Carreos

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY

date: 19 February 2017

These images suggest that

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY

date: 19 February 2017

Ghosts in the Machine

The modern masculine ideal prescribed by self-improvement manuals and referenced in

For proponents of the reformation of manhood, the struggle to supplant traditional

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date: 19 February 2017

The broadside derives its

The binary opposition

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date: 19 February 2017

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY

date: 19 February 2017

The conspicuous consumption essential to constructing and projecting a modern

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date: 19 February 2017

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY

date: 19 February 2017

The dialogue below the

Man: Where are you

Man: Its that Im crazy

Figure 4. El Chile Piqun (The Spicy Pepper), Woman: Dont be such

Man: And you dont be

Woman: (How smooth this guy is.)

Woman: Yes, Perfirio even into hell.

Man: Well now, I really am going to laugh at the harshness of winter.

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date: 19 February 2017

persona or to pretend to self-mastery along the lines suggested by Carreos Manual of

One explanation for this counterintuitive view of working-class men as harbingers of

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date: 19 February 2017

In both instances, they

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date: 19 February 2017

Even the symbolic

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Figure 6. La Guacamaya (The Macaw) newspaper,

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date: 19 February 2017

Urban masculine types like

PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY

date: 19 February 2017