Mission Across the Tracks: The Unspeakable Number Cuarenta y Uno

Almost everybody reading this has heard or been called a slur, something related to your race, religion, sexuality, politics or identity. Have you ever heard an insult so obscure you knew it meant something but you couldn’t tell what it meant?

During my 1960s days at William Jennings Bryan Elementary School in Mission, Texas, boys regularly invoked the number "41" to signify that something. What, nobody knew. But the implication spanned rude to vile to shameful. I never asked, and I wonder if anybody, kid or adult in my town on the Rio Grande knew. Some did, I'm sure, but nobody was talking.  

 

When smirked on the playground, it had vague but alarming vibrations, something best avoided. The forbidden number sank like a stone to the bottom of my consciousness. But it's there. To this day I can't see the number on a sports uniform or license plate without a tiny shiver of recognition. There’s 41. 

Almost 50 years later, at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts, I read all about what it meant at an exhibit called "Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910–1950." The exhibit showed a poster with the title "Los 41 [Quarenta y Uno] Maricones" and below that a poem "Aqui Están Los Maricones . . . Muy Chulos y Coquetones," based on a 1901 high-society scandal in Mexico City where 41 men were arrested at a private social event where 19 dressed as women. The exhibit translated the title as "The 41 Faggots . . . Very Cute and Coquettish." 

So 41 is a direct allusion to homosexuality that nobody, but nobody, back then on the border would explain or acknowledge. The number and the episode behind it referred to matters far beyond social propriety. It made sense to encounter this jagged edge of Mexican culture in South Texas, given that Mission was three miles from the border. 

I can't imagine the pressures facing friends with questions about their sexuality back then. I had changed my religious identity in high school; acknowledging my Jewishness was hard enough in the Valley. Dealing with a sexual identity outside the norms? I knew nothing definitive about friends' experiences--and why would I? Some people stayed in the area, others moved as far away from the Valley as possible. I understand that urge to leave, since I did the same thing.

June being Pride Month, I did more research. Netflix just released a fictional movie about the episode, called “Dance of the 41.” Few facts are known about the episode. Still, the core is there: an ambitious politician, Ignacio, marries Amada, the daughter of the Mexican president, Porfirio Diaz, but his heart’s not into straight marriage and sex. REALLY not into it. Dance of the 41 has the most painfully awkward wedding night scenes since the hit Jewish-themes Netflix series “Unorthodox.” Miserably vacant and distant with his wife Amada, Ignacio only comes alive with his lover, a lawyer named Evaristo, who he calls Eva. You can imagine the rest. You don’t screw around with men and make the autocratic president’s daughter deeply unhappy.

The 1901 scandal still resonates in Mexico, as an insult. One essayist said in 1965 hotels and hospitals lack a room 41, military units, street addresses and license plates do not use the number. People don’t celebrate their 41st birthday! Could that (still) be true?

But change does come, as Netflix showed with its Mexican-made movie. In the U.S., one group even took the number as its name to invert the number's shameful meaning into an affirmation. Honor41.org is a Latino LGBTQ group that says this:

The number 41 has a derogatory connotation in Mexican culture. For over 100 years calling someone “41” or associating anyone or anything with that number labeled them maricon/joto which in English translates to calling someone faggot/gay.

By adopting 41 in our name, we take away the negative, oppressive power associated with the number; we educate others about this important moment in LGBTQ history; we honor their legacy; and honor our own lives and contributions to society.

I like that approach. Take the term, turn it around, own it, use it for good. Take all the other 41s, crackers, bitter clingers, honkies, kikes, sheenies, fascists, wops, guidos, dagos and others and nullify their sting. In this polarized time, turning insults back on the haters makes a lot of tactical sense.

And if somebody throws a slur at me, my response would be, “Thanks! From you, I take that as a compliment.”