The famous 41: the scandalous birth of modern Mexican homosexuality

R. Irwin

On 17 November 1901 Mexico City police raided a private party and arrested the forty-one men in attendance, half of them dressed as women. "The ball of the 41", as it became known, quickly became the scandal of the year, inspiring over a month of strident, often fanciful newspaper reporting; a barrage of corridos and poems; vociferous editorials and sermons; and several fictional narrations of the event, including a novel. Through all this clamor the party gained immense symbolic importance in Mexico as the number 41 itself came to signify homosexuality. Perhaps more important, the event initiated the first significant discussion of same-sex sexual relations in Mexico since colonial times and raised questions about sexuality, masculinity, and Mexicanness itself that are still debated nearly a century later.