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Cabaretistas and Indias Bonitas: Gender and Representations of Mexico in the Americas during the Cárdenas Era*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2010

AMELIA M. KIDDLE
AMELIA M. KIDDLE
Affiliation:
Amelia M. Kiddle is an Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow in Latin American Studies at Wesleyan University. Email: akiddle@wesleyan.edu.
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Abstract

This article examines the promotion of Mexico's national image in the Americas during the Cárdenas period, using as a starting point a scandal arising from a 1940 performance of Mexican dancers at a cabaret in Panama. Mexican diplomats found the show objectionable because it clashed with the image of women that they used in their efforts to raise the country's reputation abroad. By investigating these efforts, as well as the career of Eva Pérez Caro, the dance troupe's leader, the article contributes to our understanding of the relationship between gender, cultural performance and nationalism, and the role that they played in Mexico's foreign relations.

Abstract

Este artículo examina la promoción de la imagen nacional de México en las Américas durante el periodo de Cárdenas, utilizando como punto de partida un escándalo surgido del espectáculo en 1940 de bailarinas mexicanas en un cabaret en Panamá. Los diplomáticos mexicanos encontraron la presentación como objetable debido a que chocaba con la imagen utilizada por ellos de las mujeres en sus esfuerzos por levantar la reputación del país en el extranjero. Al investigar tales esfuerzos, así como la carrera de Eva Pérez Caro quien era la directora del grupo de bailarinas, el artículo contribuye a nuestro entendimiento de la relación entre el género, el espectáculo cultural y el nacionalismo, y el papel que esto jugó en las relaciones exteriores mexicanas.

Abstract

Este artigo examina a promoção da imagem nacional do México nas Américas durante a era Cárdenas, tomando como ponto de partida um escândalo decorrente da apresentação de dançarinas mexicanas em cabaré panamenho. Por esta desafiar a imagem da mulher mexicana que promoviam ao tentarem elevar a reputação mexicana no exterior, diplomatas mexicanos opuseram-se à performance. Ao investigar estes empenhos e a carreira de Eva Pérez Caro, líder do grupo de dançarinas, o artigo contribui para o nosso entendimento da relação entre gênero, as performances culturais e o nacionalismo, e o papel desempenhado por estes elementos nas relações internacionais do México.

Keywords

Cárdenasdancediplomacygenderinter-American relationsMexican foreign relationsnationalismCárdenasbailediplomaciagénerorelaciones interamericanasrelaciones exteriores mexicanasnacionalismoCárdenasdançadiplomaciagênerorelações inter-americanasrelações internacionais mexicanasnacionalismo
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , May 2010 , pp. 263 - 291
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 For a description of the ficha system in the cabarets of Mexico City, see Katherine E. Bliss, Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public Health, and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City (University Park PA, 2001), p. 173.

2 This description is drawn from Silva and Hernández Velarde to Rosenzweig, all of whom use the term ‘cabaretistas’ instead of the standard cabareteras: 9 July 1940, Archivo Histórico Genaro Estrada, Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (hereafter AHGE-SRE), Mexico, ‘Trata de Blancas – Bailarinas mexicanas en Panamá’, exp. III-430-4.

3 There are also reports of theatrical troupes falling into the hands of white slave traders in early twentieth-century Argentina: Donna J. Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln NE, 1990), p. 149.

4 Salvatore, Ricardo D., ‘Imperial Mechanics: South America's Hemispheric Integration in the Machine Age’, American Quarterly, vol. 58, no. 3 (2006), pp. 662–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Carlos Marichal (ed.), México y las conferencias panamericanas, 1889–1938: antecedentes de la globalización (Mexico City, 2002).

6 For the Cárdenas government's limitations and achievements, see Knight, Alan, ‘Cardenismo: Juggernaut or Jalopy?’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 26, no. 1 (1994), pp. 73–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the uneven results of Cárdenas' reform programme, see Adrian Bantjes, As If Jesus Walked on Earth: Cardenismo, Sonora, and the Mexican Revolution (Wilmington DE, 1998); and Ben Fallaw, Cárdenas Compromised: The Failure of Reform in Postrevolutionary Yucatán (Durham NC, 2001).

7 Friedrich Katz, The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution (Chicago, 1981); Friedrich E. Schuler, Mexico between Hitler and Roosevelt: Mexican Foreign Relations in the Age of Lázaro Cárdenas, 1934–1940 (Albuquerque NM, 1997); Daniela Spenser, The Impossible Triangle: Mexico, Soviet Russia, and the United States in the 1920s (Durham NC, 1999). On Mexican–Latin American relations, see Jürgen Buchenau, In the Shadow of the Giant: The Making of Mexico's Central America Policy, 1876–1930 (Tuscaloosa AL, 1996); and Pablo Yankelevich, La revolución mexicana en América Latina: intereses políticos e itinerarios intelectuales (Mexico City, 2003); Miradas australes: propaganda, cabildeo y proyección de la Revolución Mexicana en el Río de la Plata, 1910–1930 (Mexico City, 1997); and La diplomacia imaginaria: Argentina y la Revolución Mexicana, 1910–1916 (Mexico City, 1994).

8 See, for example, Gilbert M. Joseph et al. (eds.), Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of US–Latin American Relations (Durham NC, 1998).

9 See, for example, Jocelyn Olcott et al. (eds.), Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico (Durham NC, 2006).

10 See Buffington, Robert, ‘La “Dancing” Mexicana: Danzón and the Transformation of Intimacy in Post-Revolutionary Mexico City’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, vol. 14, no. 1 (2005), pp. 87–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 See, for example, Mary Kay Vaughan and Stephen E. Lewis (eds.), The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920–1940 (Durham NC, 2006).

12 Vicente Estrada Cajigal to SRE, 10 Oct. 1938, p. 15, AHGE-SRE, exp. 30-4-3, IV parte.

13 Helen Delpar, The Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican: Cultural Relations between the United States and Mexico, 1920–1935 (Tuscaloosa AL, 1992).

14 On this homogenisation process, see Alex Saragoza, ‘The Selling of Mexico, Tourism and the State’, in Gilbert M. Joseph et al. (eds.), Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico since 1940 (Durham NC, 2001), pp. 91–115.

15 I thank the staff of the University of Texas at Austin Library for making this film available to me via inter-library loan.

16 Podalsky, Laura, ‘Disjointed Frames: Melodrama, Nationalism, and Representation in 1940s Mexico’, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, vol. 12 (1993), pp. 57–73Google Scholar; Tuñon, Julia, ‘Mexico and the Mexican on the Screen: The Construction of an Image’, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, vol. 10 (1991), pp. 329–39Google Scholar.

17 Falicov, Tamara L., ‘Hollywood's Rogue Neighbor: The Argentine Film Industry during the Good Neighbor Policy, 1939–1945’, The Americas, vol. 63, no. 2 (2006), pp. 245–60Google Scholar.

18 On women in film, see Joanne Hershfield, The Invention of Dolores del Rio (Minneapolis, 2000), and Mexican Cinema/Mexican Woman, 1940–1950 (Tucson AZ, 1996); Julia Tuñon, Los rostros de un mito: personajes femeninos en las películas de Emilio Indio Fernández (Mexico City, 2000); and Mujeres de luz y sombra en el cine mexicano: la construcción de una imágen (1939–1952) (Mexico City, 1998); and Ana M. López, ‘Tears and Desire: Women and Melodrama in the “Old” Mexican Cinema’, in John King et al. (eds.), Mediating Two Worlds: Cinematic Encounters in the Americas (London, 1993), pp. 147–63. On the role of film in US–Mexican relations, see Seth Fein, ‘Myths of Cultural Imperialism and Nationalism in Golden Age Mexican Cinema’, in Joseph et al. (eds.), Fragments of a Golden Age, pp. 159–98; ‘From Collaboration to Containment: Hollywood and the International Political Economy of Mexican Cinema after the Second World War’, in Joanne Hershfield and David R. Maciel (eds.), Mexico's Cinema: A Century of Film and Filmmakers (Wilmington DE, 1999), pp. 123–64; ‘Everyday Forms of Transnational Collaboration: US Film Propaganda in Cold War Mexico’, in Joseph et al. (eds.), Close Encounters of Empire, pp. 400–50; and ‘Transnationalization and Cultural Collaboration: Mexican Film Propaganda during World War II’, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, vol. 17 (1998), pp. 105–28. On the same subject, see also Rogelio Agrasánchez, Mexican Movies in the United States: A History of the Films, Theaters, and Audiences, 1920–1960 (Jefferson NC, 2007); Alex Saragoza, Mexican Cinema in Cold War America, 1940–1958 (Berkeley CA, 1983); and Laura I. Serna, ‘“We're Going Yankee”: American Movies, Mexican Nationalism, Transnational Cinema, 1917–1935’, unpubl. PhD diss., Harvard University, 2006.

19 For the exhibition of Allá en el Rancho Grande (directed by Fernando de Fuentes, 1936) in Buenos Aires, see AHGE-SRE, Archivo de la Embajada Mexicana en Argentina (AEMARG), leg, 48, exp. 1. Estrada Cajigal's reports from 1938 include an enormous number of clippings: AHGE-SRE, exp. 30-4-3, X partes.

20 This connection is made explicit in the special issue that the magazine Social Cine (published by the newspaper Panamá América) dedicated to Mexico. This included several articles about independence, the Revolution and the oil expropriation, as well as articles on film. Advertisements indicate that the company that distributed these films in Panama was the Distribuidora Hispano Mexicana: see Social Cine, vol. 3, no. 51 (10 Sep. 1938).

21 ‘Hay entusiasmo en Colón por un concurso’, La Estrella de Panamá, 4 Oct. 1938.

22 López, Rick A., ‘The India Bonita Contest of 1921 and the Ethnicization of Mexican National Culture’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 82, no. 2 (2002), pp. 291–328CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ruiz, Apen, ‘“La India Bonita”: National Beauty in Revolutionary Mexico’, Cultural Dynamics, vol. 14, no. 3 (2002), pp. 283–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ricardo Pérez Montfort, Estampas de nacionalismo popular mexicano (2nd edition, Mexico City, 2003), pp. 171–7.

23 Estrada Cajigal to SRE, 10 Oct. 1938, p. 15, AHGE-SRE, exp. 30-4-3, IV parte.

24 ‘El lunes será presentada en el Cecilia “La India Bonita”’, La Estrella de Panamá, 25 Sep. 1938.

25 Dina Berger, The Development of Mexico's Tourism Industry: Pyramids by Day, Martinis by Night (New York, 2006); Eric Zolov, ‘Discovering a Land “Mysterious and Obvious”: The Renarrativizing of Postrevolutionary Mexico’, in Joseph et al. (eds.), Fragments of a Golden Age, pp. 234–72; Saragoza, ‘The Selling of Mexico’, pp. 91–115.

26 Berger, Mexico's Tourism Industry, pp. 93–6. See Berger's analysis of the image that appeared on the cover of the Mexican Tourist Association's ‘Mexico – The Faraway Land Nearby’ (Mexico City, 1939).

27 Because of their proximity, Guatemala and Cuba seem to have contributed the largest number of tourists from the region. In 1934–5 the government of Jorge Ubico even tried to deter Guatemalans from visiting Mexico because of the drain on the local economy. On Guatemala, see AHGE-SRE, exp. 34-6-12; on Cuba, see AHGE-SRE, exp. 34-6-18; and on Mexico's participation in the tourism exposition held in Rio de Janeiro in 1935, see AHGE-SRE, exp. 27-26-19.

28 Both Dina Berger and Alex Saragoza make a distinction between the periods before and after 1940, when the images of women used in tourist literature became much more sexualised: Berger, Mexico's Tourism Industry; Saragoza, ‘The Selling of Mexico’, pp. 91–115.

29 Alex Saragoza describes the complex process whereby local representations were subsumed by lo mexicano in the government's cultural project in ‘The Selling of Mexico’, pp. 95–101. On local challenges to the educational programme, see Mary Kay Vaughan, Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930–1940 (Tucson AZ, 1997).

30 See Rosenzweig's personnel file, AHGE-SRE, exp. 14-22-1, VI partes.

31 Silva and Hernández Velarde to Rosenzweig, 9 July 1940, AHGE-SRE, exp. III-430-4.

32 The following description is drawn from Silva and Hernández Velarde's report, as well as contemporary photographs of Eva Pérez Caro. There were no advertisements for or reviews of the performance in La Estrella de Panamá or its English version, The Panama Star & Herald. This suggests that The Alamo was a particularly low-rent establishment, as prominent theatres and cabarets all regularly took out advertisements for their performances. I thank Ryan Alexander for his assistance in consulting these sources.

33 See Anne Rubenstein, ‘The War on Las Pelonas: Modern Women and Their Enemies, Mexico City, 1924’, in Olcott et al. (eds.), Sex in Revolution, pp. 57–80.

34 See Joanne Hershfield, Imagining la Chica Moderna: Women, Nation, and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1917–1940 (Durham NC, 2008).

35 Silva and Hernández Velarde to Rosenzweig, 9 July 1940, AHGE-SRE, exp. III-430-4.

36 Rosenzweig to Hay, 11 July 1940, AHGE-SRE, exp. III-430-4.

37 Rosenzweig to Hay, 17 July 1940, AHGE-SRE, exp. III-430-4.

38 Rosenzweig to Hay, 23 July 1940, AHGE-SRE, exp. III-430-4.

39 Memorandum of the statement made by Eva Pérez Caro and company, 22 July 1940, AHGE-SRE, exp. III-430-4.

40 Rosenzweig to Hay, 23 July 1940, AHGE-SRE, exp. III-430-4.

41 Bliss, Compromised Positions, pp. 14–17.

42 For a discussion of the idea of white slavery as it related to Latin America, see Donna J. Guy, ‘Medical Imperialism Gone Awry: The Campaign against Legalized Prostitution in Latin America’, in Teresa A. Meade and Mark Walker (eds.), Science, Medicine, and Cultural Imperialism (New York, 1991), pp. 79–81.

43 Donna J. Guy, ‘“White Slavery”, Citizenship, and Nationality in Argentina’, in Andrew Parker et al. (eds.), Nationalisms and Sexualities (New York, 1992), p. 202.

44 Rosenzweig to Hay, 23 July 1940, AHGE-SRE, exp. III-430-4.

45 French, William E., ‘Prostitutes and Guardian Angels: Women, Work, and the Family in Porfirian Mexico’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 72, no. 4 (1992), pp. 529–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 In a similar incident, Mexicans in Los Angeles expressed dismay over the inappropriate use of the national anthem when Hollywood starlet Lupe Vélez, a former chorus girl from Mexico City's Teatro Lírico, entered a gala at the Chinese Theatre promoting her new film El Gaucho (directed by F. Richard Jones, 1928) as the national anthem played: Serna, Laura, ‘“As a Mexican I Feel It's My Duty”: Citizenship, Censorship, and the Campaign Against Derogatory Films, 1922–1930’, The Americas, vol. 63, no. 2 (2006), pp. 241–2Google Scholar. Evidence of broader concerns regarding the appropriate use of national symbols is also found in the DAPP's publication of works on the national anthem and the flag: Departamento Autónomo de Prensa y Publicidad, Himno nacional mexicano y cantos revolucionarios y deportivos (Mexico City, 1939); Roberto Guzmán Araujo, Departamento Autónomo de Prensa y Publicidad, Bandera, dama de seda (Mexico City, 1944).

47 Josefina Lavalle, En busca de la danza moderna mexicana (Mexico City, 2002). I thank Mary Kay Vaughan for drawing my attention to this source and for encouraging me to seek out information on Eva Pérez Caro's career as a dancer.

48 Katherine Bliss graciously offered to check her research notes for references to Eva Pérez Caro and was unable to find any evidence that she had been involved in prostitution.

49 Alberto Dallal, La danza en México en el siglo XX (Mexico City, 1994), pp. 40–5; Pérez Montfort, Estampas de nacionalismo, pp. 131–3.

50 Lavalle, En busca de la danza, pp. 30–1.

51 Dallal, La danza en México, p. 31.

52 Digital copies of these photographs were provided by the Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información de la Danza José Limon (CENIDI-Danza). The originals can be found in the Fondo Compañía Industrial Fotográfica in the Fototeca at the Archivo General de la Nación (AGN).

53 Celia's last dance took place on 14 January 1926 in Santiago de Chile, where she eventually succumbed to the disease on 6 December 1926: Toro, Oliverio, ‘La última danza sobre la tierra’, Revista de Revistas (9 Nov. 1930), pp. 36–7Google Scholar.

54 The Mexican ambassador to Chile wrote to the SRE in January 1932 that he had received a communication from the cemetery to the effect that Celia's remains were to be removed from their resting place due to non-payment. Eva and Alicia immediately presented themselves at the SRE with a copy of the receipt they had retained that clearly stated that they had paid for her to remain in the cemetery ‘in perpetuity’. The ambassador wrote back, apologising on behalf of the cemetery for the regrettable ‘clerical error’: AHGE-SRE, exp. IV-369-35.

55 AGN, Ramo Presidentes, Fondo Obregón–Calles, Caja 261, exp. 805-P-300.

56 The title loosely translates as ‘Whoopee’. ‘Mexican Show Girls Join Easter Parade’, New York Times, 10 April 1939.

57 The production of Upa y Apa in Mexico City was fraught with disaster. Celestino Gorostiza of the Departamento de Bellas Artes contracted with Sam Spiegel of International Shows Ltd. for the production of the extravaganza. The Austrian-born impresario was paid 160,000 pesos (more than US$ 50,000) to mount the production and take it on the road, but allegations of fraud surfaced when several of the artists' pay cheques were returned due to insufficient funds. Moreover, there were considerable protests against the fact that Bellas Artes had hired a foreigner to produce the show when so many able and out-of-work Mexicans were available to mount the revue: ‘Protesta de los actores’, Excélsior, 13 March 1939, p. 1.

58 ‘Los diecinueve cuadros de Upa y Apa a juicio del cronista’, Excélsior, 16 March 1939, 2nd section, p. 2.

59 Aurelio, Marco, ‘El espectáculo “Upa y Apa” estrenado en el Palacio de Bellas Artes’, Ilustrado, vol. 21, no. 1142 (10 March 1939), p. 16Google Scholar. I thank Sophia Koutsoyannis for bringing this source to my attention.

60 Biblioteca de las Artes, Centro Nacional de las Artes (CENART), Colección Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información Musical Carlos Chávez (CENIDIM), Programas de Mano, Upa y Apa (Mexico City, 1939), p. 2.

61 Eva Pérez Caro was not listed as having supported the document, which was signed only by men, but a celebrated composer, Silvestre Revueltas, who had contributed several pieces to the show, joined in the appeal: ‘Los autores, compositores e escenógrafos del “Upa y Apa” hacen defensa su labor’, El Nacional, 17 March 1939, p. 9. Sam Spiegel would not be among those who presented the new and improved version of the show on Broadway. His company's accounts were frozen following an investigation by the Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, which found that Spiegel had lined his own pockets with money intended for the production. The government was forced to put up additional funds to pay the passages and guarantee the wages of the artists, who after considerable delay left for New York in April: Jorge Piñó Sandoval, ‘Cosmópolis’, Excélsior, 13 April 1939.

62 The handbill lists Pérez Caro as having danced in five of the 19 routines, and having choreographed three.

63 ‘News of the Stage’, New York Times, 19 April 1939, p. 21; ‘Mexico to Present Show This Evening’, New York Times, 21 April 1939, p. 26.

64 John Martin, ‘Notes of the Dance World’, New York Times, 7 May 1939, p. X3.

65 Ibid.

66 Internet Broadway Database, www.ibdb.com/production.php?ID=12447, accessed 6 March 2009. Officials reportedly suggested that the show might reopen after some changes were made to the routines, but that does not appear to have occurred: ‘Six Shows in City to Close Tonight’, New York Times, 20 May 1939, p. 16.

67 ‘Mexican Show Girls’, p. 18.

68 The New York World's Fair also included a pavilion that featured ‘prohibited Cuban dancers’: Robert W. Rydell, World of Fairs: The Century-of-Progress Expositions (Chicago, 1993), p. 142.

69 Martha Gil-Montero, The Brazilian Bombshell: The Biography of Carmen Miranda (New York, 1989), p. 84.

70 The story of Miranda's departure from Rio de Janeiro to star in Lee Shubert's production of The Streets of Paris (1939), and her subsequent rise to stardom, is well known. Vargas had considered sending her to New York to perform at the opening of the Brazilian pavilion at the World's Fair before Shubert offered her a contract on Broadway: Gil-Montero, The Brazilian Bombshell, pp. 69–70.

71 On Carmen Miranda's experiences in Argentina see Ana Rita Mendonça, Carmen Miranda foi a Washington (Rio de Janeiro, 1999), ch. 3. Miranda's films and songs contributed to the homogenisation of Latin American culture in the eyes of the North Americans for whom she performed: see Walter Aaron Clark, ‘Doing the Samba on Sunset Boulevard: Carmen Miranda and the Hollywoodization of Latin American Music’, in Walter Aaron Clark (ed.), From Tejano to Tango: Latin American Popular Music (New York, 2002), pp. 252–76. Accusations that she had become ‘Americanised’ marred her subsequent performances in Brazil: Bryan McCann, Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil (Durham NC, 2004), pp. 148–50.

72 Her band's passage to New York was paid for by the Brazilian government, and the band performed at the opening of the Brazilian restaurant at the Fair on 17 May 1939: Gil-Montero, The Brazilian Bombshell, p. 70.

73 Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, Mexico at the World's Fairs: Crafting a Modern Nation (Berkeley CA, 1996), p. 23.

74 Several authors have shown that ideas of progress, imperialism and modernity have all played important roles in creating the national representations presented at universal expositions: Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World's Fairs, 1851–1939 (Manchester, 1988); Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge, 1988); Rydell, World of Fairs; Tenorio-Trillo, Mexico at the World's Fairs.

75 ‘Weather Brings Out a Throng of Fairgoers; the Mexican Pavilion is Dedicated’, New York Times, 28 May 1939, p. 20.

76 Francisco Sarabia, a Mexican pilot who had recently flown non-stop from Mexico City to New York, also spoke at the event, calling his journey one of goodwill: ibid.

77 On the exhibition see AHGE-SRE, exp. III-413-19. As president of the Museum of Modern Art and a charter member of the New York World's Fair, Rockefeller understood the publicity opportunity that the fair represented: Francis Edmonds Tyng, Making a World's Fair: Organization, Promotion, Financing and Problems, with Particular Reference to the New York World's Fair of 1939–1940 (New York, 1958), p. 115. The Museum of Modern Art also hosted an exhibition of the work of Brazilian painter Cândido Portinari: see Museum of Modern Art, Portinari of Brazil (New York, 1940).

78 James Oles, ‘For Business or Pleasure: Exhibiting Mexican Folk Art, 1820–1930’, in Susan Danly (ed.), Casa Mañana: The Morrow Collection of Mexican Popular Arts (Albuquerque NM, 2002), pp. 11–30.

79 Rydell analyses the famous Midway at the Columbian Exposition of 1893, where fairgoers could ride the Ferris wheel, purchase refreshments and see ‘hootchy-kootchy’ dances: Robert W. Rydell, All the World's a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916 (Chicago, 1984), pp. 60–71.

80 Rydell, World of Fairs, pp. 136–7. For the second season of the fair in 1934, Rand upped the ante and danced in a custom-designed giant bubble. Rand's brand of eroticism became a feature of expositions throughout the United States, sometimes clashing with the wholesome family environment that fair organisers hoped to provide for their patrons: Matthew F. Bokovoy, The San Diego World's Fairs and Southwestern Memory, 1880–1940 (Albuquerque NM, 2005), pp. 219–21.

81 See Schantz, Eric Michael, ‘All Night at the Owl: The Social and Political Relations of Mexicali's Red-Light District, 1913–1925’, Journal of the Southwest, vol. 43, no. 4 (2001), pp. 549–602Google ScholarPubMed; and ‘From the “Mexicali Rose” to the Tijuana Brass: Vice Tours of the United States–Mexico Border, 1910–1965’, unpubl. PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2001.

82 See Pierce, Gretchen K., ‘Parades, Epistles and Prohibitive Legislation: Mexico's National Anti-Alcohol Campaign and the Process of State-Building, 1934–1940’, Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, vol. 23, no. 2 (2009), pp. 151–80Google Scholar; and ‘Sobering the Revolution: Mexico's Anti-Alcohol Campaigns and the Process of State-Building, 1910–1940’, unpubl. PhD diss., University of Arizona, 2008. Also see Fallaw, Ben, ‘Dry Law, Wet Politics: Drinking and Prohibition in Post-Revolutionary Yucatán, 1915–1935’, Latin American Research Review, vol. 37, no. 2 (2001), pp. 37–64Google Scholar.

83 On women's participation in the temperance movement, see Stephanie Mitchell, ‘Por la liberación de la mujer: Women and the Anti-Alcohol Campaign’, in Stephanie Mitchell and Patience A. Schell (eds.), The Women's Revolution in Mexico, 1910–1953 (Lanham MD, 2007), pp. 165–86.

84 Cabarets were closed in 1931 under the Mexico City Reglamento de Cafés Cantantes, Cabarets y Salones de Baile, and again in 1937 under the Departamento de Salubridad Pública: Bliss, Compromised Positions, pp. 173–5, 197, 201–5.

85 Dina Berger, ‘A Drink between Friends: Mexican and American Pleasure Seekers in 1940s Mexico City’, in Nicholas Dagen Bloom (ed.), Adventures into Mexico: American Tourism beyond the Border (Lanham MD, 2006), pp. 13–34.

86 Ten years after requesting assistance from Calles, Pérez Caro wrote to President Cárdenas requesting a meeting: Eva Pérez Caro to Cárdenas, 4 Feb. 1938, AGN, Ramo Presidentes, Fondo Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, caja 32, exp. 111/2258.

87 ‘Cine Roma Mañana’, El Universal, 27 Feb. 1940, p. 8.

88 ‘Cine Roma Hoy’, El Universal, 28 Feb. 1940, p. 8.

89 Eva Pérez Caro to Cárdenas, s/f [1940], AGN, Ramo Presidentes, Fondo Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, caja 32, exp. 111/2258.

90 On declarations of honour among prostitutes and other women workers, see Bliss, Compromised Positions; Pierce, ‘Sobering the Revolution’; Guy, Sex and Danger; Susie S. Porter, Working Women in Mexico City: Public Discourse and Material Conditions, 1879–1931 (Tucson AZ, 2003); Sueann Caulfield, In Defense of Honor: Sexual Morality, Modernity, and Nation in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil (Durham NC, 2000); Joel Wolfe, Working Women, Working Men: São Paulo and the Rise of Brazil's Industrial Working Class, 1900–1955 (Durham NC, 1993); Margareth Rago, Os prazeres da noite: prostituição e códigos da sexualidade feminina em São Paulo (1890–1930) (São Paulo, 1991).

91 The wording of Pérez Caro's appeal is similar to that of the ‘daughters of disgrace’ analysed in Bliss, Compromised Positions, pp. 1–7; see also María del Carmen Nava Nava, Los abajo firmantes: cartas a los presidentes, 1934–1946 (Mexico City, 1994).

92 ‘Sally Rand tomará parte en la Fiesta de Cuauhtémoc’, Excélsior, 10 April 1940, pp. 1, 4. Fashion shows were typical of the commodification of women at the New York World's Fair: Rydell, World of Fairs, pp. 143–6.

93 Internet Broadway Database, www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=1028 and www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=9382, accessed 6 March 2009.