Tales from the Mexican underworld: sex, crime, and vice in Porfirian Mexico City, 1876-1911

Abstract

Mexico City during the rule of Porfirio Diaz underwent a transformation from a sleepy capital to a bustling modern metropolis. Population increases, technological modernization, and geographical urbanization changed the face of the city and led to the creation of an ideal world where the Porfirian values of order and progress held true. Nevertheless, hidden from view was an underworld where criminality flourished. This subculture contained its own language and customs. It acted in opposition and in tandem to the ordered world of the upper class and on occasion threatened to invert that world. Rape, murder, theft, assault, and police corruption were the hallmarks of the Porfirian underworld. Across the surface of the capital, criminals and victims struggled to exist amid rapid social change. Their narratives reveal true aspects of everyday life in a Latin American capital on the verge of a new century.