ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A draft of this paper was first presented at the 6th Association for Latin American Art Triennial, “Encounters with the Archive in Latin American and Latinx Art,” (Mexico City, March 15–18, 2023). I am grateful to the organizers of the event and the attendees, who offered crucial feedback. This research would not be possible without the generosity of Jesusa Rodríguez, Paloma Woolrich, Jimena Galindo Bermejo, Diana Taylor, Arturo Delgado, Pablo Ortíz Monasterio, and Shannon O’Neill. Finally, I express deep gratitude to Agustín Díez Fischer and the members of the Getty Foundation Connecting Art Histories initiative, “Narrating Art and Feminism: Eastern Europe and Latin America,” led by Andrea Giunta and Agata Jakubowska.
- 1 Rodríguez was a “senadora suplente” in the Morena Party (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional) from Nov (...)
1Since the late 1970s, the Mexican director, actress, and politician Jesusa Rodríguez has been a critical figure in the performance scene of Mexico and abroad. She has continuously challenged hegemonic power through activism and sharp humor, from her creation of the female theater group Divas A.C. (Las Divas) in 1980, her establishment of the experimental cabaret space El Hábito in 1990, to her position as the first openly lesbian Mexican senator from 2018 to 2021.1 In 2011, New York University bought the Jesusa Rodríguez Papers (JRP). Spanning from 1977 to 2019, the JRP contains photographs, newspaper clippings, scripts, and numerous other categories of documents. Among these items are materials dedicated to Rodríguez’s 1987–88 play El concilio de amor: tragedia celeste (The Council of Love: A celestial tragedy). An adaptation of the late-19th century theatrical work by German playwright Oskar Panizza (1853–1921), Das Liebeskonzil: Eine Himmels-Tragödie in fünf Aufzügen (The Council of Love: A Heavenly Tragedy in Five Acts, 1895), the pastorela cabaret, as Rodríguez has called it, tells the story of God, the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, and the Devil conspiring to punish humans by creating syphilis (J. Rodríguez, personal communication by the author, March 29, 2023). A comment on contemporary society that transcends generations, the play received significant backlash from the Catholic Church and politicians in both the 19th and 20th centuries.
- 2 “In the case of El concilio de amor, it was clear that our theater was beginning to have a social a (...)
2The JRP holds photographs, programs, and reviews of Rodríguez’s productions of El concilio de amor that help illuminate the play’s narrative, structure, and visual presentation. However, most of the documents contextualize the play as one of four artistic events that Provida and other Mexican conservative right-wing Catholic groups protested in early 1988; newspaper clippings, legal documents, and personal letters unfold a narrative of art and censorship in Mexico. The JRP provides a unique perspective on this rapidly developing moment in early 1988 that reveals a detailed picture of how El concilio de amor became part of a larger discourse on artistic censorship and freedom of expression. As Jean Franco concisely summarizes: “Panizza’s play proved to be as unpalatable in the 1980s as it was in the 1890s” (FRANCO, 1992: p. 50). Rodríguez herself explains that she began to save documents connected with this moment, which would eventually be included in her personal papers, when she realized the social and political impact of her play: “En el caso de El concilio de amor, era evidente que nuestro teatro comenzaba a tener un impacto social y político, entonces guardé información de esta obra pensando en que debía estar documentado para futuras amenazas de censura de cualquier índole” (J. Rodríguez, personal communication by the author, March 2, 2023).2 In this sense, she did not save documents with the intent to recreate the production but rather so that its entire socio-political relevance in cases of artistic censorship could be reinforced. Finally, in this essay, and in line with the motivations of the present dossier, I am interested in how Rodríguez’s act of saving documents was a response to the extreme forms of political and social violence that attempted to isolate her through censorship. As I will show at the end of this essay, the relationship between archives, history, and censorship continues to have relevance not just for women artists, but also for LGBTQ+ communities.
- 3 In fact, Franco’s article is accompanied by two photographs of El concilio de amor by Pablo Ortíz M (...)
3While there remains little scholarship on this theatrical production, Jean Franco and Laura G. Gutiérrez have contributed to an analysis of Rodríguez’s celestial tragedy, framing it within questions of censorship. In the introduction to her 1992 interview with Rodríguez, Franco—a pioneering scholar of Latin American literature and culture in the U.S.—summarizes the play and acknowledges the backlash it faced. In the interview, Rodríguez addresses how the threats lodged at the play “gave the work much greater power than when it was staged before the threat” (FRANCO, 1992: p. 53). Gutiérrez, on the other hand, mentions El concilio de amor in her reading of a related contemporaneous case of censorship at the Museo de Arte Moderno (GUTIÉRREZ, 2010). While both analyses have enriched the study of Rodríguez’s work, neither draws analysis from the Jesusa Rodríguez Papers, as both Franco and Gutiérrez’s research was published before the JRP was processed in 2019.3 Therefore, I propose a reading of El concilio de amor that expands our understanding of the work by arguing that the JRP shifts what it means to analyze a performance using an artist’s personal papers. In this essay, I will reconstruct and analyze the performance primarily through documents in the JRP, but also personal interviews, Panizza’s original script, and archival sources outside the scope of the JRP. Then, I will consider how the JRP provides the opportunity for a new revision of the play and the role of archives in relation to performance practices.
4There are a number of performance scholars and art historians who discuss the complex relationship between material remains and live performance. In her groundbreaking analysis of performance in the Americas, Diana Taylor distinguishes between two types of memory: the archive and the repertoire (TAYLOR, 2003). The former involves repositories of materials such as text, maps, or even bones, items that are supposedly unchanged over time. Alternatively, Taylor characterizes the repertoire as embodied knowledge that is transmitted orally or nonverbally through the body. Together, she argues, the archive and the repertoire transmit memory and allow for new understandings of cultural identity. Responding to Taylor, Philip Auslander sees the repertoire as available in both the live performance and the archival recording (AUSLANDER, 2018). Taking a different approach, Amelia Jones has argued that the specificity of experiencing the live performance should not be privileged over the knowledge that develops from encountering a performance through documentation (JONES, 1997). Finally, Rebecca Schneider interrogates why and how performance practice is constantly denied the framework of historical practice (SCHNEIDER, 2011). Here, Auslander, Jones, and Schneider focus on the question of performance in relation to the archive when the archive is used to historicize and/or reconstruct the content of the performance. My analysis in this text is more influenced by Taylor’s approach, which considers the archive and the performance in dialogue with one another. The JRP shows that the performance archive can be something that attempts to reconstruct the live performance but also, as I argue, one that expands the political scope of the performance by altering its interpretive framework. The question then becomes: how can we define the limits of the performance when it spills and seeps out of the “live” moment? This is the interrogation that I hope to clarify through an analysis of artistic censorship across the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
5Oskar Panizza first wrote Das Liebeskonzil in Zurich in 1893 and published it two years later. The script is set in Heaven, Hell, and the Palace of Pope Alexander VI in Rome in the spring of 1495, the year of the first recorded outbreak of syphilis in Europe. To regain their popularity with humans (whose religious piety is rapidly waning), the corrupt Holy Family recruits the Devil to advise them on how to re-indoctrinate the masses. Mary explains what they want:
6Something old fashioned... along the lines of the Flood or Original Sin. That’s why we consequently need someone, something, an influence, a force, a person, a disease, some little thing that will put a stop to the lewdness of humanity, especially of the Neapolitans and Romans ... from a sexual point of view (PANIZZA, 1973: pp. 84–87).
7The Devil suggests they create a beautiful woman who will spread a horrifying new disease through sex. The Holy Family hopes that the horrors of this “little thing that will put a stop to the lewdness of humanity” will terrify humans back to religion. The play was immediately banned in Bavaria, and Panizza was put on trial in April 1895 before the Royal Court of Munich. He was ultimately imprisoned for a year and charged with ninety-three counts of blasphemy.
- 4 The Foro Shakespeare opened its doors for the first time in 1983 and continues to stage production (...)
8For the first half of the twentieth century, Das Liebeskonzil fell somewhat into obscurity. It was rescued in 1951 when the German poet Walter Mehring referenced the play in The Lost Library: The Autobiography of Culture, which inspired a French translation of the script in 1964 accompanied by an introduction by the surrealist writer and poet André Bretón (KELLOGG-DENNIS, 1996). A 1969 production at the Théâtre de Paris, directed by Jorge Lavelli with costume and set designs by artist Leonor Fini, brought even further attention and scandal to the play during its three-month run. Das Liebeskonzil was then translated into Spanish by the editorial Icaria in 1977, and the French poet Chérif Khaznadar recommended it to Rodríguez while she was in Paris in 1983 (J. Rodríguez and L. Felipe, personal communication by D. Taylor, 2015; J. Rodríguez, personal communication by the author, March 29, 2023). Rodríguez and her performance group, Las Divas, were immediately fascinated. Rodríguez explains: “It was not the plot or the religion that were so important to us, but rather the manner in which the play represented the problem of corruption in the Church, in this case, the Catholic Church” (FRANCO, 1992: p. 52). Her first production of El concilio de amor opened at the Foro Shakespeare in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City on December 15, 1987.4 In May 1989, with most of the original cast intact, El concilio de amor toured to the D.B Clark Theater at Concordia University, Montreal, and then to the Theatre der Welt in Hamburg the following month.
- 5 The JRP is organized into four series: Theater, Publications, Activism, and 2022 Accretion. Series (...)
9Twenty-four years later, with the support of Diana Taylor, a friend of and the preeminent scholar on Rodríguez, the Jesusa Rodríguez Papers were sold to New York University’s Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, a collection that holds materials of all formats that document labor, the Left, radical politics, and social movements, especially anarchism, communism, and socialism (S. O’Neill, personal communication with the author, March 9, 2023). When the JRP was first processed in 2019, its documents were stored in the three-ring folders that Rodríguez had used to organize them in her home in Mexico City. During processing, various series were created and ordered “according to the natural intellectual arrangement of the collection,” as the JRP Finding Aid specifies.5 Significantly, all the papers that NYU bought were selected and saved by Rodríguez herself, which recalls Taylor’s argument that:
10The documents, remains, and artifacts that enter into the archive have undergone a process of identification, selection, classification, and so on that render them archival “sources.” This does not negate that they may be out-there-in-the-world, but it does remind us that they are, in fact, also the product of a system of selection (TAYLOR, 2006: p. 69).
11In other words, rather than neutral repositories, archives always assert a subjective mechanism for shaping the world.
12Scheduled for 50 performances, Rodríguez’s El concilio de amor was produced on a smaller scale than the earlier productions, such as the one at the Théâtre de Paris, which had eighteen credited actors and staged the entire original five acts, details that are outlined in an article by journalist Mónica Mateos, found in the JRP (MATEOS). Rodríguez’s interpretation, on the other hand, had fewer actors who each played multiple parts. The script was also cut from five to three acts, and the production was conceived for a smaller stage. These decisions were both creative and practical. Due to budgeting, all the scenes on Earth were performed as a puppet theater, an element that added to the satirical presentation of the Pope and his family (P. Woolrich, personal communication by the author, June 23, 2023). According to Rodríguez, they chose the Foro Shakespeare—a smaller theater frequented by artistic intellectuals—because they knew that the play would be controversial:
- 6 “El concilio de amor is a scholarly work that should be presented in a space filled with educated p (...)
13El concilio de amor es una obra erudita que se debe presentar en espacios de gente ilustrada, no es una obra para públicos masivos, es la recomendación del autor Panizza. Aunque en mi experiencia, en cualquier momento en que se presenta El concilio de amor suscita reacciones porque es una obra profunda y subversiva (J. Rodríguez, personal communication by the author, March 2, 2023).6
14For each production, whether at the Foro Shakespeare from 1987 to 1988, in Montreal and Hamburg in 1989, or Mexico and France from 1994 to 1995, she altered the script to include specific allusions to contemporary politics, society, and literature.
- 7 For further research on political cabaret in Mexico, see Gastón A. Alzate, “Dramaturgy Citizenship, (...)
- 8 In 1990, Rodríguez and Felipe officially rented La Capilla in Coyoacán, which had been the home of (...)
15Like many of Rodríguez’s productions, especially those in collaboration with her wife, Liliana Felipe (a prominent Argentine composer and singer in her own right), El concilio de amor interspersed the play’s action with music. With various styles, such as the jota, bolero, and cabaret, the play is exemplary of Rodríguez and Felipe’s increasing use of music in their performances in the 1980s. In the years immediately preceding their interpretation of Panizza’s play, they adapted Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni as Donna Giovanni, which toured through Mexico, the U.S. and Europe.7 In fact, in 1990, just one year after El concilio de amor traveled to Montreal and Hamburg, Rodríguez and Felipe opened El Hábito, an independently-run theater in the Coyoacán neighborhood of Mexico City, where they performed hundreds of political cabarets over fifteen years.8
16The Jesusa Rodríguez Papers contains playbills for each iteration of El concilio de amor, which list the actors, character names, production staff, and other logistics. In particular, a playbill from when the production traveled to Montreal in May 1989 contains detailed scene descriptions. Act I begins in Heaven, where two sleeping angels are awakened by a third who has just arrived. The new angel tells the other two that she died at the age of 14, having been raped by a man who paid her mother to have sex with her. In Rodríguez’s production, the angels were imagined as well-known Hollywood “sex symbols,” such as Greta Garbo, Mae West, Bette Davis, and Marilyn Monroe.
- 9 Woolrich describes her interpretation of the Virgin as a “Señora rica que se hace manicure en su ca (...)
17The feeble, semi-blind Dios Padre (God), played by Adriana Olivera, enters the stage. Hunched over from his curving spine, he displays his bandaged limbs and complains about his physical ailments while a cherub attempts to comfort him. A messenger from Naples, played by Liliana Felipe, arrives to report that humans have been behaving blasphemously: they taunt the Ten Commandments, are engaged in a nonstop sexual frenzy, and worship false idols, among other sins. This angers God, and he calls a meeting with Jesús (Jesus Christ), played by Daniel Giménez Cacho, and María (The Virgin Mary), whom Paloma Woolrich interpreted as a salacious woman inspired by the housewives of Las Lomas and Tecamachalco, two wealthy neighborhoods near the center of Mexico City.9 Giménez Cacho’s Christ, on the other hand, is an asthmatic milquetoast who continues to carry the cross on his back, even when no longer necessary in Heaven. Mary and Christ eat oversized communion wafers topped with hot sauce while considering their options for dealing with humans. Because the following day is Easter, Christ dances a jota and complains through song about how Christians eat his flesh. The Holy Family agrees it is disadvantageous to exterminate humans completely (there would be no devotees left), so they decide to witness what is happening on Earth before making a decision about how to proceed. To close Act I, Felipe’s Messenger sings a tango about the Sixth Commandment: thou shalt not commit adultery.
18At the beginning of Act II, Atlas opens the Earth to show the Pope’s palace on Easter Day, 1495, represented in the form of puppet theater. The Holy Family watches from above as members of the Borgia family—Pope Alexander VI (credited as Papa), his daughter Lucrecia, and his mistress Giulia Farnese (credited as Sra. Farnesio)—ridicule the boring sermon they just heard. The Holy Family is horrified to see that the Pope cavorts with mistresses and courtesans and incites wrestling matches while the parishioners await the Papal blessing. Felipe appears again on stage, this time as a cabaret singer, reciting the evil that inhabits human beings.
- 10 “loving but venomous at the same time.”
19In Act III, back in Heaven, the Holy Family decides to summon El Diablo (the Devil), played by Rodríguez. They report what they have just seen and propose that the Devil works with them to punish humans so they are compelled to seek redemption through the Catholic faith (all the while, the sexually repressed Mary tries to flirt with the Devil). The Devil argues that the job is complex because the action they choose must be “cariñosa y venenosa al mismo tiempo.”10 The Holy Family sing a bolero to plead their case, and they settle on the idea that a disease should be introduced through sexual intercourse.
20Alone in Hell, the Devil recites a monologue in which he considers the Holy Family’s proposal. Wondering what he can ask for in return for this favor, he settles on two requests: a better passage to Heaven and the ability to publish his writing without censorship. Literary scholar Patricia Kellogg-Dennis describes the Devil’s monologue as “Marxian,” “directed against the complacency and idleness of the deities and their exploitation of him; nonetheless, he decides to “get to work,” and his monologue switches to a capitalistic speculation about the rewards he will receive from creating a perfect product” (KELLOGG-DENNIS, 1996: p. 1576). Following his capitalist turn, the Devil becomes disgusted with himself and materializes the possible mothers for his creation: Helen of Troy, Phryne of Athens, and Héloïse. He rejects them all. Helen for being too stupid, Phryne for being too innocent, and Héloïse for being too good. He settles on Salomé, the Jewish princess who requested the head of St John the Baptist. Mary arrives in Hell to find their poisonous progeny, credited as La Mujer (The Woman) and played by Jimena Galindo Bermejo. She walks across the stage slowly and silently to be inspected by the Virgin Mother (J. Galindo Bermejo, personal communication by the author, August 17, 2023). The Devil describes the symptoms that she will inflict on humanity as a deterioration of the physical and moral, which will push victims to the edge of death’s door, where their faith will re-emerge to save their souls. The last scene returns to the puppet theater in Rome, where the Pope and his family are at mass. La Mujer (also in the form of a puppet) appears, driving the Pope and congregants into a state of frenzied arousal.
Figure 1: Pablo Ortíz Monasterio. Paloma Woolrich as the Virgin Mary. c. 1987–88. Jesusa Rodríguez Papers, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University. Courtesy New York University/Pablo Ortíz Monasterio.
21In addition to the playbills and their scene descriptions, a series of black-and-white photographs in the Jesusa Rodríguez Papers by the acclaimed photographer Pablo Ortíz Monasterio provide particularly informative documentation of the 1987–88 production. One shows Paloma Woolrich as the Virgin Mary when she is first introduced in Act I Scene 4. She is in a niche, her hands clasped together in prayer and her head slightly bowed in reverence, as if she were a sculpture of the Virgin found in thousands of Catholic Churches across the globe (fig. 1). Another photograph pictures Adriana Olivera as the ailing God, whose legs and arms are wrapped in bandages while he supports himself with a crutch (fig. 2). There is also an image of Daniel Giménez Cacho as Christ when he first enters the scene, dramatically encumbered by the weight of the Cross that he could simply remove (fig. 3).
Figure 2: Pablo Ortíz Monasterio. Adriana Olivera as God. c. 1987–88. Jesusa Rodríguez Papers, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University. Courtesy New York University/Pablo Ortíz Monasterio.
22Figure 3 Pablo Ortíz Monasterio. Daniel Giménez Cacho as Christ. c. 1987–88. Jesusa Rodríguez Papers, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University. Courtesy New York University/Pablo Ortíz Monasterio.
Figure 4: Pablo Ortíz Monasterio. Puppet Theater. c. 1987–88. Jesusa Rodríguez Papers, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University. Courtesy New York University/Pablo Ortíz Monasterio.
23Another photograph illustrates how the production solved the issue of the scenes in the Papal court with puppet theater (fig. 4). Against a backdrop resembling the interior of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, three adorned hands make exaggerated gestures. The central hand is the Pope, recognizable by his mitre. To his left is the Bishop, and to the right, a courtesan bedecked in beaded necklaces and feathers. The first meeting between the Devil and the Holy Family is represented by a photograph of Rodríguez as the Devil and Woolrich as Mary (fig. 5).
Figure 5: Pablo Ortíz Monasterio. Rodríguez as the Devil and Woolrich as the Virgin Mary. c. 1987–88. Jesusa Rodríguez Papers, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University. Courtesy New York University/Pablo Ortíz Monasterio.
24Mary is seated on a swing in the shape of a cloud, a central element of the set design, and touches the hand of the Devil as she exudes a coquettish grin while the Devil, dressed in his formal wear to meet the Holy Family, laughs out loud. This attire is contrasted with a photograph from the following scene when the Devil returns to Hell and strips off his costume to reveal his horns and tail (fig. 6). Disrobed, he gestures wildly in a ring of fire as he considers whether to conspire with the Holy Family. Finally, photographs of Claudia Lobo as Phryne and Laura Sosa as Héloïse illustrate the scene when the Devil manifests the options for the mother of The Woman (figs. 7–8).
Figure 6: Pablo Ortíz Monasterio. Rodríguez as the Devil. c. 1987–88. Jesusa Rodríguez Papers, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University. Courtesy New York University/Pablo Ortíz Monasterio.
Figure 7: Pablo Ortíz Monasterio. Claudia Lobo as Phryne. c. 1987–88. Jesusa Rodríguez Papers, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University. Courtesy New York University/Pablo Ortíz Monasterio.
Figure 8: Pablo Ortíz Monasterio. Laura Sosa as Héloïse. c. 1987–88. Jesusa Rodríguez Papers, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University. Courtesy New York University/Pablo Ortíz Monasterio.
25The JRP also contains various versions of the script, which include Rodríguez’s own handwritten notations for pronunciation and translations. The playbill from the production at the Foro Shakespeare shows that Rodríguez chose to include Spanish translations of a quote from Ulrich von Hutten’s 1519 detailed publication about his experience with syphilis, as well as a quote from Oskar Panizza’s epilogue to later editions of El concilio de amor, in which he addresses the censorship he faced. There is also a Run of Show and a clipping of a positive review by Sergio García Gómez, published on January 18, 1988, which is characteristic of the initial press in its analysis of the play for its content and production.
- 11 “How can we respond to the Vatican Catholic Church by using its own weapons?”
26El concilio de amor is one of Rodríguez and Felipe’s pastorela cabarets, which they began to stage annually once El Hábito opened. The genre draws from the Catholic pastorela, a short religious play about the birth of Christ that is performed around Christmas time. Intended to evangelize and convert, these plays often attempt to teach morality by creating a clear distinction between good and evil. Referring to this tactic as “sinister,” Rodríguez turns the genre on its head to interrogate religious fundamentalism across the Americas. Later pastorelas performed at El Hábito, such as Pastorela genética: Fue niña (Genetic Pastorela: It was a girl, 1992), El derecho de abortar (The Right to Abort, 1998), and Pastorela terrorista (Terrorist Pastorela, 2004), all depart from Catholic narratives to address contemporary politics, social issues, and an astute reinterpretation of good and evil. In an interview with Taylor from 2004, Rodríguez explains that in deciding to use the pastorela, she asked herself, “¿Como responderle a la Iglesia Católica Vaticana con sus mismas armas?” (J. Rodríguez, personal communication by Diana Taylor, 2004).11
- 12 Here, the decision to use the term gay rather than the more inclusive LGBTQIA+ or related acronym i (...)
27The topics of Catholicism and disease in El concilio de amor were especially potent in 1987 as the AIDS crisis decimated the gay community and gained increasing visibility in the media.12 While some members of the Catholic Church advocated for compassion for AIDS patients, others, including Pope John Paul II, used the disease to condemn homosexuality. The same year that El concilio de amor premiered at the Foro Shakespeare, the Pope proclaimed that the Church was “doing all that is possible [...] to heal and especially prevent the moral background” of AIDS, a statement interpreted to mean that the autoimmune disease was rooted in immorality (REINHOLD, 1987: 33). The visibility of the AIDS crisis at the time El concilio de amor premiered combined with the play’s prominent LGBTQ+ audience meant that the parallel with syphilis in Panizza’s script was abundantly clear.
- 13 “And although the production does not mention the word ‘AIDS,’ it is the presence of this current p (...)
- 14 “Jesusa constructs an enjoyable show, one that is linked to the best traditions of cabaret, the cla (...)
28Reviews of the play written soon after its premiere (which are included in the JRP) demonstrate that, during the first couple months of the play’s run, responses were generally positive and critics recognized the contemporary references. For example, theater critic Malkah Rabell wrote: “Y aunque la puesta en escena no menciona la palabra “si da” [Sic], es la presencia de tal peste actual que se presenta a la mente de un auditorio contemporáneo” (RABELL, 1987: n.p.).13 Rabell and other critics writing in December 1987 found in the JRP praised the play for its originality, and especially Rodríguez’s performance as the Devil. Nevertheless, Rabell criticized its two-hour run time, which did not include an intermission, as well as what she called the exaggeration of certain scenes and lines. Sergio García Gómez’s appraisal for El Universal on January 18, 1988 was more favorable: “Jesusa construye un gozoso espectáculo, que está emparentado con la mejor tradición del cabaret, las figuras clásicas de las pastorelas y sus obsesiones, que giran en torno al poder, la seducción y el placer” (GARCÍA GÓMEZ, 1988: n.p.).14 Whatever the reviews were, the audience kept coming and the show was often sold out during its first weeks.
29However, just five days after El Universal published García Gómez’s review, the press’ treatment of El concilio de amor would drastically change.
- 15 In 2009, Jorge Serrano Limón was detained and sentenced to four years in prison and a fine of 2.5 m (...)
30Suddenly, it focused less on the content of the play and more on the controversy surrounding it. On Saturday, January 23, two coalitions of extreme Catholic right-wing groups—the Comité Nacional Provida (led by Jorge Serrano Limón) and the Unión Nacional Sinarquista (led by Víctor Atilano Gómez)—organized a demonstration at the Museo de Arte Moderno (MAM) in Mexico City.15 They were joined by the Unión Nacional Estudiantil, Grupo Acción, Grupo Metas, the Asociación Juvenil Naucalpense, the Unión de Escuelas Particulares de Tlalnepantla, and el Instituto Juventud de Santa María la Ribera (ROSAS, 2017: p. 310).
- 16 The Salón Nacional de Artes Plásticas was a new section that exhibited installations or other forms (...)
31Close to 1000 people arrived at the MAM to demand the closure of the “Arte Alternativo” section of the Salón Nacional de Artes Plásticas (MANRIQUE, 2011).16 The catalyst for the protest was an installation that opened in November 1987 titled Real templo / Templo real (1987) by Rolando de la Rosa. The multi-part installation included a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper with Christ’s face substituted by that of Pedro Infante, the famed Mexican singer and actor. Nevertheless, the image that received the most attention featured the Virgin of Guadalupe, whose likeness was replaced by Marilyn Monroe’s. Referring to these works, Laura Gutiérrez argues that Rosa’s collages are:
...a direct criticism of the ways in which religious representations coexist in a society that is dominated by mass-mediated images that have opened up social and cultural spaces so that these secularized mythologies flourish and, in some instances, supersede the religious ones. Moreover, if taken as a whole, the installation can be, and could have been, read as a criticism of cultural imperialism... (GUTIÉRREZ, 2010: p. 43).
32Although the MAM exhibition had already been open for a month and a half, it came to the attention of Provida and the UNS when the newspaper Excelsior published an article in January 1988 that condemned the show as blasphemous. Tabloids quickly picked up the story, and protestors argued that the work insulted both religious Mexicans and national symbols. The exhibition was closed, yet this event led Provida and the other radical right-wing groups to turn their attention to Gustavo Monroy’s exhibition Autorretratos religiosos y otras series at the Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City, the student exhibition El luto humano at the Instituto de Artes Visuales in Puebla, and, of course, El concilio de amor.
33The scandal unfolded at a moment when the place of Catholicism in Mexican politics was being widely debated. Even though over 90% of Mexicans identified as Catholic in the 1980s, Mexico and the Vatican had broken diplomatic relations in the mid-19th century (GOLDEN, 1992). Nevertheless, beginning in the 1970s, under the presidency of Luis Echeverría, the weakening Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) began to reestablish its connections with the Church to gain a wider body of supporters. For example, in 1973, to advocate for population control, Echeverría framed “responsible paternity” within the Catholic doctrine of Humanae Vitae, which rejects artificial contraception (LOAEZA, 2013). The following year, Echeverría was the first PRI president to visit Rome. Soon after, he supported the construction and consecration of the New Basilica of Guadalupe on the Plaza Mariana in Mexico City in 1976, the same year that Provida first formed. This embrace of Catholicism in Mexican politics continued in the following years with Pope John Paul II’s visit to Mexico in 1979 under President José López Portillo, and a general increasing focus on opposition to family planning, divorce, and abortion. During his presidency from 1982 to 1988, Miguel de la Madrid attempted to legalize abortion in certain cases (LAMAS, 2009), which undoubtedly incensed the Catholic right in the years immediately preceding the premiere of El concilio de amor, and the openings of Real Templo/Templo Real, Autorretratos religiosos y otras series, and El luto humano.
34The scandal also unfolded during the last months of the presidency of Madrid, a time that is widely considered to be the beginning of the end of the PRI’s stronghold over Mexican politics (CANTÚ, 2019). Facing an extreme financial crisis, high rates of unemployment, and recovering from the 1985 earthquake that devastated Mexico City, Mexican citizens’ discontent with the longtime ruling party became increasingly evident. This rejection of the status quo culminated in the Presidential Elections of July 1988, which were not only the first competitive elections since the PRI took power in 1929 but also defined by electoral fraud that placed the PRI candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, in the presidency (CANTÚ, 2019; ORTEGA ORTIZ, 2017). Although it postdates the moment under consideration, it is worth noting that in 1992, under Salinas de Gortari, Mexico re-established formal diplomatic ties with the Vatican, ushering in a new era of Catholicism in politics (GOLDEN, 1992).
35The censorship that El concilio de amor faced is abundantly represented in the Jesusa Rodríguez Papers. It contains the front page of the Cultural Section of Excelsior from Tuesday, January 26, 1988, just three days after the first protest at the Museo de Arte Moderno, which includes a four-point statement by Jorge Alberto Manrique, then Director of the Museo de Arte Moderno, in which, among other topics, he asserts that the quick closure of Rolando de la Rosa’s exhibition was for the safety of the work, the museum, and the public, rather than an act of censorship or concession to the protestors (MANRIQUE, 1988). Another article on the same page details Rodríguez’s and Las Divas’s response to the threats launched at them by Provida (ROSALES DE ZAMORA, 1988). Reaffirming the theater as a space for artistic expression, Rodríguez is quoted:
- 17 “We do not propose to offend any Catholics nor has it been our intent to consider theater as a subs (...)
No nos proponemos ofender a los creyentes católicos ni nunca ha sido nuestra intención considerar el teatro un sustituto de la religión. Para nosotros, el teatro es un lugar de creación artística donde las representaciones simbólicas cumplen diferentes cometidos, ninguno de ellos relacionado, ni de lejos, con el culto religioso (ROSALES DE ZAMORA, 1988, p. 3).17
- 18 In conversations with both Paloma Woolrich and Jesusa Rodríguez, they each refer to the fear that t (...)
36As the article explains, shortly after the January 23 protest, members of Provida broke into the Foro Shakespeare, causing vandalism and stealing costumes and wigs. In response, Rodríguez requested high-level security from the Delegado de Cuauhtémoc, which ultimately provided a patrol and metal detectors (J. Rodríguez, personal communication, March 2, 2023; P. Woolrich, personal communication, June 23, 2023).18 The JRP also holds the letters between Las Divas’s legal counsel and the Secretary of Public Education, in which Las Divas requested security protection following the threats from Provida (GONZÁLEZ AVELAR, 1988), and an article published on February 5 by Rubén Álvarez for El País, which outlines the court case between Serrano Limón and Rodríguez (ÁLVAREZ, 1988).
37Documents in the JRP such as an opinion piece from January 28, 1988, published in La Jornada, represent the public actions taken by Mexico’s artistic community, where numerous members of the art world denounce the “intimidating and repressive actions” of the protestors on January 23 (“A la opinion pública,” 1988). Carlos Monsivais, photographer Graciela Iturbide, journalist Elena Poniatowska, and feminist political scientist Marta Lamas, among many other major figures and organizations, signed the document. They also rallied in the media to denounce the forced resignation of Manrique from the Museo de Arte Moderno on February 25. For example, the art critic Teresa del Conde submitted an opinion representing the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, as did a group of artists from Xalapa, which included Mayra Landau (“A la opinión pública” and “Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas,” 1988).
38Additionally, the JRP traces the formation of the Comité de Trabajadores de las Artes Visuales en Defensa de la Libertad de Expresión (Committee of Visual Art Workers in Defense of Freedom of Expression). On February 18, the well-known journalist Patricia Vega wrote an open letter to Las Divas, arguing that the play should close for the safety of the performers because of the threats from Provida. However, she asks how the play can end in a way that does not legitimize and encourage more censorship. As a solution, she proposes the creation of a committee for the freedom of artistic expression (VEGA: 1988). Viewing a forced closure of El concilio de amor as another form of censorship, Rodríguez and the rest of the production refused to do so, ultimately completing all 50 scheduled performances even as they faced violent threats.
- 19 “In Mexico, we have already become accustomed to talking about fascism as something far away that o (...)
39In addition to the founding documents of the Comité de Trabajadores de las Artes Visuales en Defensa de la Libertad de Expresión, the JRP includes a flyer that announced a Festival Artístico por la Libertad de Expresión (Artistic Festival for Freedom of Expression) in the Plaza de Santo Domingo on March 21 (fig. 9). There, Elena Poniatowska denounced intolerance and censorship and inquisition-style tactics. Proclaiming “En México ya nos habíamos acostumbrado a hablar del fascismo como algo lejano que solo ocurría en Chile o en Paraguay. En México no se puede revivir, con el pretexto de una ofensa religiosa que nunca existió, una censura y una inquisición” (PONIATOWSKA, 1988: p. 26).19 The text of this speech was published the following day in La Jornada, an issue that is in the JRP.
Figure 9: Flyer promoting the Festival Artístico por la Libertad de Expresión (March 21, 1988). The Jesusa Rodríguez Papers, Box 2, Folder 2. The Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Bobst Special Collections, New York University. Courtesy New York University.
- 20 “Catholic Mexicans ask for forgiveness for the jokes and blasphemy that the pseudo artistic work El (...)
40Rodríguez also saved many documents from the conservative right-wing groups who threatened and protested her. One by the Comité Organizador de Instituciones Católicas (Organizing Committee of Catholic Institutions) announces a misa de desagravio (Mass for Reparations) on March 5 to ask for, “perdón por la serie de burlas y blasfemias que se están haciendo a la santísima Trinidad y a nuestros valores más sagrados, en la obra pseudoartística “Concilio de amor” (“Misa de desagravio”).20 Rodríguez even found and saved documents that reference earlier productions of El concilio de amor that faced censorship, such as an interview with the Spanish director Pere Planella from 1980, when the Catalonian government canceled his production of El concilio de amor at the Teatro Lliure in Barcelona (MESALLES, 1980).
41Given the ephemeral nature of the performance and the fact that Rodríguez’s cabarets often morphed and changed, even on a nightly basis, it is nearly impossible to reconstruct in detail the production of the play from the documents in the Jesusa Rodríguez Papers. Pablo Ortíz Monasterio’s photographs, the program, and the Run of Show certainly help us understand certain characteristics of the play. However, there is something ungraspable about the performance, which aligns with Taylor’s argument that “The live performance can never be captured or transmitted through the archive” (TAYLOR, 2003: p. 20). As she has proposed, video, photographs, or even a review of the performance are part of the archive, while the embodied actions performed live on through the repertoire. Nevertheless, the JRP’s numerous documents addressing the series of political events that unfolded around and in response to the play help to analyze and contextualize El concilio de amor, while also expanding the definitions of what it means to use archival documents to reconstruct a performance. Returning to my initial question about defining the limits of the performance when it exceeds the live moment, I think it is also important to note that the mission of the archival institution supports the idea that an archival context impacts performance documentation. For example, as an entity dedicated to histories of left politics and labor history, rather than art or performance, The Tamiment Library & Wagner Labor Archives, as the holding body, presents the JRP, and specifically the documents on El concilio de amor, through the lens of radical politics.
42In an interview with Jean Franco, Rodríguez elaborates on the meaning that El concilio de amor developed amidst the 1988 controversy through a reference to the Devil’s monologue. When speaking about what he will ask of God in return for creating syphilis, the Devil decides he will request to freely print and circulate his books because, as he says: “This censorship stuff has got to stop! My books have got to be free to circulate in Heaven as well as on Earth! That must be an absolute condition! Otherwise, I don’t go to work. It’s an outrage not to be able to share your thoughts with others!” (PANIZZA, 1973: p. 102). Rodríguez explains that “to say this on stage when the problem was being discussed in the newspapers gave the work a much greater power than when it was staged before the threat” (FRANCO, 1992: p. 167). Given Rodríguez’s statement and the numerous articles in the JRP that refer to the censorship, it becomes evident that the articles published in the media, the protest flyers, and the legal documents requesting protection from Provida—these “archival” documents—all become part of the work as well as documents of it. They allow an audience to imagine what the work was like because the work became inseparable from the case of artistic censorship developing throughout Mexico City. The archive, therefore, is part of the performance.
43To take this argument one step further, I would like to suggest that Rodríguez chose to interpret Panizza’s El concilio de amor not just to reconstruct the play’s content. Rather, she did so because of the archival documents that expand our understanding of the 1895 political context. She has said on more than one occasion that Panizza’s self-defense in court was inspirational to her (J. Rodríguez, personal communication by D. Taylor, 2004). In fact, the transcription of Panizza’s self-defense is so tied to the play that it is printed at the end of many editions of The Council of Love. At the conclusion of his defense, Panizza cites evidence of spreading religious skepticism in order to ask the jury, “Do you believe that today the times are such as to permit more rigorous censorship...?” (PANIZZA, 1973: p. 162). Therefore, Rodríguez’s interpretation of El concilio de amor was not solely intertwined with the play’s script, scenography, or staging, but on the political moment that encapsulated its original release.
44Although Rodríguez has not performed El concilio de amor since 1995, the play and the topics it raises remain critical today. As a coda to this text, I would like to ask what El concilio de amor and the JRP can say about cases of censorship in the 21st century. In Mexico City, this is especially crucial when considering the case of the 2019–20 exhibition at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Emiliano. Zapata después de Zapata (Emiliano. Zapata After Zapata). On Tuesday, December 10, 2019, a few weeks after the exhibition’s opening, representatives of the farmworkers union staged a large-scale demonstration at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. They formed to protest Fabián Cháirez’s painting, La revolución (2014) (fig. 10), which had circulated via social media as part of the exhibition’s promotion. The painting shows Emiliano Zapata, a revolutionary war hero and symbol of machismo in Mexico, as a nude pinup model wearing high heels, a pink sombrero, and riding a horse with an erect penis.
Figure 10: Fabián Cháirez. La Revolución. 2014. Oil on canvas. 30 x 40.5 cm. Collection "Censored" by Tatxo Benet. Museu de l’Art Prohibit. Courtesy the artist.
45Members of the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores Agrícolas (UNTA) and the descendants of Zapata condemned the painting for characterizing the revolutionary hero as “effeminate,” challenging the traditionally “masculine” representation of the Mexican icon. The protest escalated into a violent confrontation with LGBTQ+ activists. As the exhibition’s curator, Luis Vargas Santiago, has summarized, ultimately, the Secretaría de Cultura did not defend creative freedom. Instead, the government body agreed to add an additional wall label to La revolución, where the family of Zapata denounced Cháirez’s interpretation (VARGAS SANTIAGO, 2020).
46The case of the exhibition Zapata después de Zapata demonstrates that over thirty years since the events surrounding El concilio de amor, freedom of artistic expression in Mexico still faces threats of censorship, especially when it comes to interpretations of the country’s national heroes, be they religious or revolutionary. It is important to point out the obvious: the attempts at censoring both La revolución and El concilio de amor stem from their challenges to heterosexual norms through national heroes, which evidences the ongoing and often increasing violent homophobia and transphobia that we see in Mexico, the U.S., and beyond. Here, Diana Taylor’s proposal that “History, like performance, is never for the first time, but it too is actualized in the present” (TAYLOR, 2006: p. 83) seems to be all too true, especially in cases of artistic censorship.
47In considering the connections between 1988 and 2019, a quote by Vargas Santiago is particularly relevant. Talking to the digital art forum Hyperallergic, he stated: “They wanted to censor the painting. Instead, they’ve ensured that it will be inscribed in history” (DI LISCIA, 2019: n.p.). This gets at the very heart of how we need to reconsider archives of artistic practice: as more than the materials we use to reconstruct a performance or painting, but that reformulate art over time in relation to the events and reactions it provokes.