La Liga de la Decencia: Performing 20th Century Mexican History in 21st Century Texas
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In addition, I became very interested in investigating the political climate in which these characters, tropes, and dances began to develop given how long they have remained on the theatrical stage and how integral they have become to nationalistic and popular conceptions of mexicanidad (Mexican identity). The 1940s was a decade of complicated social relations between classes in Mexico, and the policies of the time reflected such conflicts. Because the play’s development took place in Austin, TX, moreover, I felt compelled to look closely at the changing relationship between Mexico and the United States during this period, specifically after U.S. involvement in the Second World War. After careful consideration, I decided to examine three important political and social themes of the 1940s: the hegemonic dominance of the ever-ruling Partido de la Revolución Mexicana (PRM, now Partido Revolucionario Institucional or PRI), the social control of La Legión Mexicana de la Decencia (or La Liga de la Decencia), and the Mexico–US relationship, specifically related to immigration.
The 1940s, Class Tensions, La Liga de la Decencia, and WWII
The first half of the twentieth century was a time of notable social transformation in Mexico. After the armed phase of the revolution had ended (1910–1920), thousands and eventually millions of people migrated from the pueblos to the city. The economic growth generated by industrialization produced a blossoming middle class that became better positioned to access recreation. In Mexico City, entertainment became polarized between those activities referred to as “sano divertimento,”6 such as parks, theaters, and art galleries, and those associated with vice and sin, such as dance halls, cabarets, and nightclubs (Ceja Andrade 2019).
Torn between adapting to the global trends that pushed for a modern Mexico while preserving “buenas costumbres” or traditional moral values, Mexican society started establishing a series of binaries that reinforced class systems, such as feminine/masculine, national/international, decent/indecent, and moral/immoral. Those seen in public places during nighttime, such as vedettes, padrones (pimps), and homosexuals, among others, were characterized as “immoral” for ostensibly contributing to society’s downfall. Thus, the cabaret became synonymous with the brothel and the dancer with the sex worker (Ceja Andrade 2019, pp. 281–82).
Popular media, such as newspapers and magazines, served as means to educate the masses on the difference between what became categorized as “decent” and “indecent” behavior. In her book El mapa “rojo” del pecado. Miedo y vida nocturna en la Ciudad de México 1940–1950, historian Gabriela Pulido Llano explores how a discourse of fear permeated not only people’s imaginary, but also the press and the prolific film industry in Mexico. More than one hundred films were released throughout the 1940s that furthered the idea that people, especially women, who followed a path of vice and sin were destined to a disastrous demise. These films belonged to a genre that came to be known as cabaretera or fichera and which contributed to Mexico’s época de cine de oro (golden age of film). Some of the examples of these films include Mientras México duerme, La insaciable, Pecadora, Mujeres de cabaret, La bien pagada, and Aventurera, among others. The films featured the character of the fallen woman, a fragile being in need of a benevolent, strong male figure—often representing the state—who would save her from the dangers of the nightlife. Most frequently, these films concluded with the female protagonist experiencing a tragic end (Pulido Llano 2018).
One of the organizations that rigorously regulated societal behaviors during this period was La Liga de Decencia. Following the Cristero Rebellion (1926–1929), the Catholic Church sought to fortify its position in Mexico in response to the separation of church and state established by the 1917 constitution. In 1929, Mexico’s Archbishop, Monsignor Pascual Díaz y Barreto, founded Acción Católica Mexicana (ACM). Shortly thereafter, the Legión Mexicana de la Decencia (Mexican Legion of Decency or LMD) was established through the initiative of the Orden de Caballeros de Colón (Ramírez Bonilla 2023, pp. 124–25). According to Pope Pius XI, the Legión was a “crusade for public morality aimed at revitalizing the ideals of natural and Christian righteousness” (Pulido Llano 2018, p. 55). Historian Laura Camila Ramirez Bonilla asserts that the Legión was the ACM’s branch responsible for overseeing culture, entertainment, and general conceptions of the family, based on the moral surveillance of the film industry. From 1931 to 1954, the Legión classified 10,826 films, documentaries, and theater performances, with 20 percent assigned the category “C” (reproachable for indecency). Motives for categorizing a spectacle under this classification included attacks on the family unit (adultery, divorce, and free love), offenses to the Catholic faith, crude language, nudity, depictions of suicide, and inappropriate diversions (such as dancing). To enforce censorship, the Legión asked its devotees to sign a promise to reject “malos espectáculos” (evil or bad spectacles). As a result of the activism of the predominantly conservative laity, the Legión gained significant traction in both public and political spheres, solidifying the place of the Catholic Church in Mexican society. Through the strict categorization and censorship of spectacles, the Legión aimed to strengthen the Catholic Church’s tenuous relationship with the state and to “re-Christianize” the Mexican population in an era of modernization (Ramírez Bonilla 2023, pp. 135–37.)
Popularly known as La Liga de la Decencia, the Legión gained significant influence during this period, partly attributed to President Manuel Ávila Camacho’s (1940–1946) more permissive stance regarding the Catholic Church’s role in the public sphere and the membership of his wife, the first lady, Soledad Orozco. One of the most well-known actions taken by La Liga, for instance, was the prohibition of the screening of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for how the protagonist of the animated film incited a life of immorality by living with seven men. They had a similar response to the statue “Diana Cazadora” by artist Juan Fernando Olaguibel. Originally commissioned by Ávila Camacho, La Liga de la Decencia believed that the figure of a nude woman in public would incite lasciviousness, so they ordered that the statue be covered with a loincloth.7 (Figure 3) La Liga de la Decencia championed other principles including indecency in live performance and film, a strict dress code for men and women, and the eradication of the “sin” of homosexuality (Rangel 2023).
For the middle class, it became imperative to stay as distanced from the life of sin and immorality as possible to maintain social ranking. María Fernanda Lander explains that buenas costumbres helped urbanites feel closer to Europe by emulating their code of conduct in a time where an increasing kinship to Europeans elevated status. In postrevolutionary Mexico, this desire translated to the need to demonstrate a specific set of characteristics that could help the new nation thrive in a modern future. For middle-class Mexicans, Lander wrote, “morality, virtue and good customs would become the instruments of the regulatory character that the cultured Hispanic American society imposed on itself.” One of the most influential guides for good customs was El Manual de urbanidad y buenas maneras (1854) by Venezuelan author Manuel Antonio Carreño (1812–1874). Carreño’s manual, however, did not seek to educate the working class so that they, too, could become “virtuous.” Rather, the meticulous code of conduct aimed to differentiate who, among the middle class, was capable of giving the nation a “civilized identity” (Lander 2002, pp. 85–86).
Given the growing gap between the middle and the working class, there were two types of places where people could go for entertainment: the great theaters in the west of the city and las carpas and teatros de revista. Regarded as “el género chico” (low brow), these popular theaters became a space to call out politicians, present risqué musical numbers featuring female nudity, and serve the nationalist sentiment of the postrevolutionary period. After the period known as “el porfiriato” ended in 1911,8 actors began to utilize their platform with more liberty in the carpas of neighborhoods such as Tepito, Garibaldi, Santa María La Redonda, and the markets of Lagunilla and La Merced. Sometimes precariously erected on electrical cables and with very poor sanitation, carpas became the space where anyone from a housewife to a sex worker could enjoy themselves. It was not only a sociable place, but it was also where actors and spectators could subvert gender roles and, most importantly, express their political discontent (Sluis 2016, p. 53).
Derived from the Spanish Zarzuela9 and the French revue, teatros de revista (which began appearing in the late 1870s) served as the spaces where everyday folks could see themselves reflected on stage (Vázquez 2020). Following the print magazine format, revistas did not follow a single unifying theme, but presented individual acts that included comedy, dance and musical numbers, satire, and the introduction of stock characters that mocked politicians and the elites. Opposite to the “high art” performed in the theatres of the west of the city, the revista genre was crude, overtly political, and unafraid to challenge the status quo (Sluis 2016, pp. 46–47).
In teatros de revista, a “jefe de familia”10 would direct, perform, produce and “would even sweep the floor”.11 The audience, well versed in the matters discussed on stage, would yell, whistle, and show antipathy to the actors. The musicalípticos (musicals) presented in these theaters, scandalized La Liga de la Decencia because of how much skin the female dancers showed on stage. For the critics of the time, revistas represented a threat to the social order for how they created new, diverse publics hailing from disparate social and racial backgrounds, which disrupted established gender and class norms. The City’s Departmento de Diversiones Públicas (Department of Public Diversions), for instance, worked with the Department of Public Health to regulate spectacles to ensure that the spaces conformed to not just health and safety regulations, but that their content also adhered to moral standards (Sluis 2016, p. 49).
By the mid-1940s, however, teatros de revista began shutting down due to various factors, including the pressure exerted by La Liga de la Decencia and the city inspectors, who believed that revistas exhibited “vulgar dancers, bad music, and grotesque dance”.12 In addition, the overtake of the American-imported sketch shows and the growing popularity of television and film contributed to their downfall. Since actors started migrating to film and television, publics, too, began enjoying the comedy offered in the teatros through their own home screens, thus, teatros de revista slowly began to disappear.13
Some of the images that circulated in popular culture, including in “el género chico,” were inspired by the nationalist sentiment of the postrevolutionary period. Adapted from westernized conceptions of Mexico, such representations came to embody the nation as “domestic exotics” for national and international dissemination. The domestic exotic was a source of inspiration for indigenismo and mestizaje ideologies. Indigenismo, on one hand, asserted that the roots of modern Mexican identity lied in its Indian culture (Hershfield 2008). Described by J. Jesús María Serna Moreno, indigenismo is a “group of policies developed concerning Indigenous people by national powers, constituted or not in nation state” (Serna Moreno 2001, p. 87). Influenced by indigenismo, artists began incorporating images of the “domestic exotic” into their works. Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, for example, painted emblematic murals in places such as the National School of Agriculture at Chapingo near Texcoco (1925–1927), in the Cortes Palace in Cuernavaca (1920–1930), and the National Palace in Mexico City on commission by the national government (1929–1935) (Biography n.d.). The muralists, inspired by the image of the “Indian” as imagined by the cultural elites, portrayed Indigenous men and women in relationship to colonization and the revolutionary movement (Hershfield 2008, p. 138).
The image of the Tehuana and her traje (regalia), for instance, was incorporated into the insurgent national identity through film and printed media. Non-Indigenous women began wearing the emblematic traje and were featured in postcards, posters, magazines, and movies as markers of Mexico’s pre-colonial past. One of the most notable examples is Hollywood star Lupe Velez, who personified a Tehuana in the popular film La Zandunga (1938), directed by Fernando de Fuentes (Figure 4). Scholars such as Francie Chassen-López and Alexa Matta-Abbud have concluded that this popularized image of the Tehuana, however, was constructed for a male gaze that not only exoticized Zapotec women but also essentialized and mythified their famous clothing (Abbud 2021, pp. 86–106; Chassen-López 2014, pp. 281–314). As a former ballet folklórico dancer, I myself wore the traje to perform the cuadro de Oaxaca, the dance suite representing the region. I was not aware at the time, regrettably, of how the Tehuana and her image had been appropriated for decades by elite Mexicans. My current artistic work addresses such issues of cultural travesty—which I will describe later.
On the other hand, Mestizaje became the most powerful and dominant ideology of the postrevolutionary period. Arguing that the mixing of indigenous and Spanish roots would give way to a new race, mestizaje influenced the creation of characters such as el charro and la china poblana, which placed the mestizo as another type of “domestic exotic.” Maria del Carmen Vázquez Mantecón notes that la china poblana, as a symbol of Mexican identity, represented the “grace and virtue of the Mexican woman”, who served as the object of heterosexual male desire by balancing a dichotomy between wife or prostitute (Vázquez Mantecón 2000, p. 124). This character also appeared frequently in the writing of 19th-century authors who described her as a mestizo woman who did not conform to social standards but rather enjoyed the freedom of her love encounters. Similar to how la china poblana became a romanticized version of the Mexican woman, el charro became “the symbol of the ideal Mexican man” (Mendoza-García 2016, p. 319). After the revolution ended in 1920, a nationalistic discourse called for the romanticized construction of a specific image of the charro as a strong, skilled, hard-working man to represent male vigor. The images of la Tehuana, el charro, and la china poblana circulated widely in popular media, thus influencing popular conceptions of Mexican identity.
Contrary to the recurrent social changes, the political sphere was much more unyielding. Partido de la Revolución Mexicana or PRM (now Partido Revolucionario Institucional or PRI) dominated the political landscape from the end of the revolution around 1920 to the end of the twentieth century. In 1940, for instance, PRM candidate Manuel Ávila Camacho became President Lázaro Cárdenas’ pick to continue the hegemony of his party. Even though Cárdenas had promised the country fair elections, he decided to secure the party’s continued mandate through the appointment of Ávila Camacho as his successor, which made voters suspicious of the transparency that the PRM had claimed. According to Albert L. Michaels’s account, Cárdenas thought that Ávila Camacho, popularly known for being “moderate,” was the only candidate capable of keeping the different military and working-class factions united under the threat of fascism from Europe (Michaels 1971). With his election, PRM remained in power until the end of the century and thus, censorship and repression perdured as the norm through many more decades.14
World War II, in fact, had become highly relevant to Mexican politics. The sinking of two Mexican tankers by German U-boats in 1942 led Mexico to declare war to the Axis powers. Even though the relationship between Mexico and the U.S. had deteriorated after President Cárdenas expropriated oil from American companies in 1938, the U.S. invited Mexico to train Mexican combat flyers. In 1944, with President Ávila Camacho’s blessing, Mexican pilots of Escuadrón 201 joined their American counterparts in training and then in combat in the final months of the war, forever changing the military and political relationship between two neighboring countries. Escuadrón 201 has been Mexico’s only military unit to ever engage in combat outside the country’s national borders (Malloryk 2021).
Using the historical and political atmosphere of Mexico as background, I began to think how one event related to the next and, especially, how they affected the real bodies of the people living under the PRM’s regime. While La Liga de la Decencia certainly established moral and social codes, it was the state that actively enforced policies to secure Mexico’s position, especially in relation to the U.S., during a time of global tensions. How could I incorporate such research into a festival piece? Moreover, how could staging a fictional theatrical work help me make sense of a period that continues to impact the way we perceive ourselves as Mexicans and Mexican Americans? I began writing monologues and short scenes that explored some of the events I was encountering as means to complicate the notions of Mexican identity that were often set to erase and oppress the bodies of Indigenous, femme, and queer folks. Below is a continuation of the script, in which I satirize some of the guidelines imposed by La Liga de la Decencia.
EMCEE
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s offer a round of applause to the señoritas! Aside from being the most sensual dancers of the Mexican film industry, they are the unofficial ambassadors of La Liga de la Decencia!
| The four dancers curtsy first to the right, then to the left, |
| then they turn around and bow facing the back, their |
| butts to the audience. |
EMCEE
Muy decentes nuestras señoritas. Now, please tell me, Miss Pons: what is La Liga de la Decencia’s mission? Para los que no lo sepan aún.
MARIA ANTONIETA PONS
(Reciting into the microphone) To preserve the morals and good customs of Mexican society.
| The dancers pantomime the next section. |
EMCEE
That’s right. Miss Pons and her rumberas are making sure we go back to the old days, you know? The days of virtue and morality, the days of the buenas costumbres. We mustn’t forget that the most important thing that will keep our nation strong is our values. Yes! Yes! We must strive to preserve our integrity, our rectitude…
| With this last word, the dancers make a gesture |
| suggesting anal coitus. |
EMCEE
It’s important that we bring back order to this decaying society… the film industry is polluting our minds and hearts with images of immorality… sensual touching and caressing on the screen! No, no, no! And here in the city, los hombres… que andan con otros hombres! Los homosexuales!
| Dancers gasp! Then wink at the audience. |
EMCEE
Dios nos libre de esas joterías (he crosses himself). Y lo peor… qué es eso de que women want to wear pants! Imagínense.
| Dancers show off their butt (they are not wearing pants, all right!) |
EMCEE
But how will we ever become an upstanding society, Miss Pons? Aren’t we doomed already?
MARIA ANTONIETA PONS
We are working on three basic principles to bring back decency to our society. Please welcome the Board of education!
| The dancers produce paddles and look menacingly at the audience. |
EMCEE
¿Y cuáles son esos principios?
| The dancers pantomime the following principles. |
MARIA ANTONIETA PONS
Number one: To prohibit the showing of kisses on the mouth in the movies!
EMCEE
Me parece muy bien…
MARIA ANTONIETA PONS
Number two: to establish a moral dress code different for men AND women.
EMCEE
Excelente…
MARIA ANTONIETA PONS
And number three: to absolutely eradicate the disease of homosexuality.
EMCEE
(Relieved) Ah… of course, of course! La Liga de la Decencia has a sound plan to keep our society afloat! Muchísimas gracias for all your charity work, Miss Pons. ¡Qué haríamos sin usted!
María Antonieta Pons shrugs.
EMCEE
We’d be lost, that’s for sure. Démosle un fuerte aplauso, a big round of applause to Miss Pons and her rumberas: the unofficial ambassadors for La Liga de la Decencia!
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