TRANSNATIONAL DISCOURSE ON THE “MALA VIDA”: MALE HOMOSEXUALITY IN MADRID, BUENOS AIRES AND BARCELONA IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

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Notes

1. Reverte Coma (XIII) refers to the “inframundo” depicted in Bernaldo de Quirós and Llanas Aguilaniedo.

2. The focus here is on male homosexuality. Female homosexuality was referred to in the texts analysed here, but to a lesser degree, as a derivative of its male counterpart or as a separate phenomenon with distinct etiologies and social realities. Given these differences, and in order not to simply subsume female homosexuality into male homosexuality, this article explores the treatment of male homosexuality in “mala vida” texts, leaving the treatment of female homosexuality for analysis elsewhere.

3. This insight draws on the work of Michel Foucault, Mitchell Dean and Francisco Vázquez, amongst others. In an analysis of similar dynamics in Colombia made by Díaz, the author writes: “El problema central de toda biopolítica es la producción de un cuerpo social que debe ser gestionado y organizado en función del capital. Para el modo de producción capitalista es necesario un modo de vida capitalista” (43) (original emphasis). On Foucault's and others’ elaboration of “biopolitics” see Vázquez García (9–16). Here, the example of making the poor useful, rather than merely being the recipients of charity, is traced up to the eighteenth century when their poverty became an issue of state (71–80). On this question, see also the analysis provided by Trinidad Fernández “Asistencia”.

4. See the discussion of the moral, physical and intellectual elements of inheritance in the thought of Franz Joseph Gall in the 1820s and 1830s and of Humbert Laubergne and Mariano Cubí y Soler in the 1840s, as elaborated in Galera (10–11). Trinidad Fernández (La defensa 250–1) notes that Cubí believed that a damaged physiological base could give rise to criminal tendencies in his Sistema completo de Frenología (1846). He argued that there existed a strong relationship between poor social organization and physiological defects.

5. Trinidad Fernández (La defensa 236) argues that a qualitative change took place during the mid-nineteenth century when the statistical representation of crime became prevalent.

6. Luis Maristany remarks that Llanas Aguilaniedo was an “exalted propagandist” of modernism and his publisher, Bernardo Rodríguez Serra, was “el editor de los modernistas” (XXXIII), citing Melchor de Almagro San Martín, Biografía de 1900. Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1944 (91 and 96, respectively). Max-Bembo praised the Casa Editorial Maucci “que tanto ha hecho por la cultura española” (13).

7. The role of the criminological and other sciences in the identification of deviant strains in society is discussed in Álvarez-Uría, Galera and Trinidad Fernández, La defensa. For the more general European context, see Leps. On positivism in Spain, see Núñez.

8. Lombroso's L'uomo delinquente was published in 1876. The Spanish reception of this work is discussed in Maristany El gabinete.

9. The fifth of the articles by Pardo Bazán was “El error capital de Lombroso”. Davis also notes the critique of Lombroso in a work by Llanas Aguilaniedo, Alma contemporánea (1899), before his collaboration with Bernaldo de Quirós on the “mala vida” project. According to Davis, Llanas “se levanta contra algunos discípulos de Nordau que querían igualar arte, política y moralidad, defendiendo la independencia de la belleza y la del artista en nombre de la regeneración” (319), showing how art could become a focus for regeneration rather than its opposite, degeneration. On this work by Llanas, see Mainer.

10. It is interesting to note that Llanas viewed Nordau as old hat by 1899. In his Alma contemporánea he remarked: “Fíjese el lector en que cito a Max Nordau, no obstante haber pasado ya de moda el nombrarle” (Mainer 162, n. 9).

11. On the trope of the lack of differentiation and associated threats in Western societies, see Dollimore (133).

12. See the Introduction to this issue. Trinidad Fernández (La defensa 253–4) notes that Cubí believed that the result of poor social organization and defective physiology was a predisposition to crime; in England, Henry Maudsley (1835–1918) believed that madness resulted from moral degeneration. (see his Body and will, 1883).

13. On the complex significance of modernismo and its relation to modernity, decadence, positivist and scientific ideas, see the collection of essays in Cardwell and McGuirk.

14. At the time, other sources repudiated the theories of Lombroso. See the anarchist response by Ricardo Mella to Lombroso's classification of the anarchist as hereditary degenerate in Díaz Cesare Lombroso. Lombroso himself admitted (34) that some “anarchist delinquents” did not show signs of criminality in their physiognomy. Mella reinforces this point and provides an in-depth critique of the thought of Lombroso (147–58). This exchange is discussed in Galera (111–40), and in Trinidad Fernández (La defensa 259–61). Many figures broke away from the certainties provided by Lombroso on the relationship between the delinquent and physical traits, such as José María Escuder, once in favour of a Lombrosian interpretation to judge the case of the priest Galeote in 1886. Escuder, however, revised his views by 1895 (Galera 24, n. 30). Rafael Salillas focused on individual diagnosis and cultural conditions and refused to establish a direct link between ideology and delinquency; rather, such a judgement was to be made on the basis of the act committed.

15. This interventionist move, driven by a particular interpretation of Krausist juridical theory, together with an acceptance of the correctional rather than purely punitive theories of C.D.A. Roeder, displaced initial enthusiasm for Lombroso: “El contraste era obvio, por tanto, con los postulados de criminalidad innata de Lombroso, cuya influencia, pese a las polémicas desatadas y a las manías antropométricas y tipológicas que invadieron la cultura jurídica española, no pasó de ser superficial” (Uría 127). The works of Roeder—for example, Estudios sobre derecho penal y sistemas penitenciarios (1875)—were translated into Spanish and enjoyed great influence in the 1870s (Trinidad Fernández La Defensa 151)

16. These logics, or changing technologies of “the government of men”, are understood by Foucault as “governmentality”. See Dean, Critical, and Governmentality.

17. For a psychiatric source that articulates this danger with respect to the “sexual perversions” in which homosexuality was included, see Juarros. After discussing the perversions Juarros sums up his argument and states: “En nuestra primera conversación dijimos, y es este momento de recordarlo, que nuestra orientación criminológica había de ser, no la responsabilidad, que ésta nada tiene que resolver en la práctica, sino la temibilidad, el peligro que el delincuente supone para la sociedad” (56).

18. José de Letamendi, Professor of General Pathology and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Madrid, was the author of the Curso de Clínica General o Canon perpetuo de la práctica médica (1894), where he elaborated a complex schema of the “para-aphrodisias” or atavistic returns to “primitive” forms of sexuality when discussing “sexual deviance”. On Letamendi as an “in-between” figure who articulated opposition to positivism from a natural philosophical perspective tending towards a Catholic, but liberal stance on social life, see Peset.

19. Bernaldo de Quirós and Llanas Aguilaniedo also employed the terms “feminismo en el hombre” and “masculinismo en la mujer” to denote gender and sexual deviance, taken from the work by Hans Kurella in the early 1890s (269).

20. Gonzalo Rodríguez Lafora was one of the relatively few at the time of the publication of his Los niños mentalmente anormales (1917) to use the term “homosexuality” (79).

21. The class divisions in homosexual subcultures have been remarked upon in various studies. Chauncey discusses these in the case of New York and Matt Houlbrook (167–94) analyses this aspect for London.

22. For the changing fortunes of regulation and prohibition of prostitution in Spain, see Guereña and Alcaide González. On venereal disease in Spain, see Castejón Bolea.

23. A further European–Latin American connection is provided by Dr. Looyer, Los grandes misterios de la mala vida en Buenos Aires comparada con la de las grandes capitales europeas, Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos de Rafael Palumbo, 1911, which I have not consulted. In the field of psychiatry and sexology, to name two areas, bidirectional transnationaltraffic was common; I do not wish to suggest that these were one-way scientific processes.

24. This relationship with respect to prostitution in particular is analysed in Guy 5–35 and passim.

25. On Ferri and his contribution to criminology, see Pick (129–30, 140–7). One of his ?rst and most famous works was Socialismo e criminalità (1883) with his Criminal Sociology translated into English in 1897.

26. See Max-Bembo, Introducción. Max-Bembo is mentioned briefly in McDonogh (178). See also Ealham.

27. In this way, Max-Bembo was following on from previous work such as his Miseria y filantropía.

28. Max-Bembo notes that there was a question mark over how many inverts actually existed. Authors differed on this point: “Yo, a mi vez, intenté fijar el número aproximado de estos anómalos en Barcelona, y he renunciado por las dificultades que surgen a cada paso. Con todo, mis datos son suministrados por los mismos uranistas. A los que he tratado, que son en gran número y de todas condiciones, he preguntado siempre la población uranista barcelonesa …” (Max-Bembo 39); the response was anything between 6000 and 30,000.

29. For example, Sereñana y Partagás commented that: “Existe otra clase de prostitución, que pudiéramos llamar masculina, o sea, el cenydismo o pederastia. Afortunadamente escasa entre nosotros, esta forma especial es asquerosa e indigna de la especie humana” (125).

30. “Doubling up” as waiters was apparently a common practice and some inverts in Bernaldo de Quirós and Llanas Aguilaniedo's work were identified as “sirvientes de mancebía”. Cf. the “ordenanza de Cádiz” of 1889 prohibiting the presence of male homosexuals as waiters in prostitution houses as discussed in Moreno Mengíbar and Vázquez García (177).

31. A similarly complex vision of this “gay world” was depicted, according to Salessi “The Dissemination”, in the work of Ingegnieros, “Patología de las funciones sexuales – Nueva clasificación genética”, Archivos de Criminología y Psiquiatría 9 (1910): 3–80 [published as Ingenieros]. A short account of Spanish gay subcultures, drawing on Hirschfeld's work and specifically on Bernaldo de Quirós and Llanas Aguilaniedo's La mala vida en Madrid, can be found in Aguiar (546–8).

32. Max-Bembo had discussed this possibility earlier in his work. A study of the history of homosexual practices would allow for a positive take: “a pesar de las vicisitudes, el instinto sexual se normaliza; el pudor se erige en sistema de conducta; el nivel moral está más elevado; la moralidad pública ha progresado; las leyes reprimen vigorosamente todo atentado a nuestra normalidad” (28).

33. This kind of shift is further illustrated in the views of Marañón and Jiménez de Asúa, who in the late 1920s opposed the re-criminalization of homosexuality under the Primo de Rivera regime. See Cleminson “Medicine”.

34. Despite his focus on earlier periods, the reference to Elias here is clear. The discrimination between “pleasure-promising drives” and “pleasure-denying taboos and prohibitions” characterized society's move towards civilization: “But the strength attained in societies such as ours by this differentiation and the form in which it appears are reflections of a particular historical development, the results of a civilizing process” (160).