Home » Tracing the Transnational History of Gay Liberation: An Interview with Dr. Juan Carlos Mezo Gonzalez
Tracing the Transnational History of Gay Liberation: An Interview with Dr. Juan Carlos Mezo Gonzalez
Interview by Andi Schwartz
How did you get interested in studying periodicals? Can you describe your approach to the study of them?
This happened right before I started graduate school, when I began to read about LGBT history and, more specifically, about the gay liberation movement. This led me to the histories of the gay magazines that were published in the 1970s and 1980s. I found some issues online, which allowed me to see the kinds of stories, images, and content they featured. So, when I came to Toronto to pursue an MA in History at the University of Toronto, I already had an interest in gay periodicals, and I was fascinated to learn that The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives has one of the largest collections of queer periodicals in the world—quite possibly the largest. So, it seemed like Toronto was the perfect place for me to explore this history further. During my PhD, I conducted extensive on the histories of gay periodicals from Mexico, Canada, the United States, and other Latin American countries.
One of the things that caught my attention from the beginning was the letters section of magazines, as it gave me insight into the reception and distribution of gay periodicals. For instance, it was interesting to read what these periodicals meant to readers, as well as to appreciate what reasons motivated them to write a letter. On some occasions, readers were responding to some content they found particularly appealing or upsetting—photographs, articles, essays, news, etc. On other occasions, they simply wanted to express their gratitude to the editors and activists who put together those magazines. All this information shed light into how people interacted with queer periodicals and into how they understood important concepts such as “liberation” or “community.” Moreover, since most letters included readers’ location, this information also gave me insight into circulation patterns. So, the study of letters—those featured in periodicals and those unpublished but kept in archival collections—was quite central to my project.
At a time when most gay magazines were presenting white men as objects of desire, Macho Tips turned its attention to Mexican-looking men. This kind of erotic content gave the magazine an identity and cultivated a readership who craved for these kinds of representations.
Juan Carlos Mezo González
In addition to letters, images are also very central to my research. In my current book project, which emerges from my doctoral dissertation, I analyze the role of images in gay periodicals, offering close readings of them and discussing their production, reception, and meanings. Oral histories were also central to my research because there are many silences in the archival record. Some magazines, such as The Body Politic, are very well documented, while others, such as the Mexico City-based Macho Tips, left almost no archival records. Although I was able to locate every issue of this magazine, I was not able to find the administrative files, subscription lists, or correspondence of this magazine. Something similar happened with other periodicals, so I conducted interviews with activists, editors, photographers, readers, and anyone else who was involved in their production, to fill in the gaps.
One of the things that you write about is how periodicals created a community or culture. How have periodicals like The Body Politic or Macho Tips historically played a role in building queer community, or defining gay identity?
That’s a very good question. Indeed, one of the main areas of analysis in my work is precisely that: the role of these periodicals in building communities. Some people say that there is no “gay community,” or that we often use that term too loosely, and I guess that’s right to some extent. But at the same time, I think it is important to recognize that, back in the 1970s and 1980s, gay magazines were basically the most important resource for gay men to learn about the gay liberation movement, or to learn about the existence of other gay men in other parts of the world. Magazines were the medium or the vehicle that allowed people to imagine, but also to visualize that community. For example, one of the things that I analyze in my research is the visualization of community through photographs, drawings, and different kinds of illustrations. Photographs of protests, depictions of same-sex love and desire, as well as images showing queer individuals gathered and having fun, were published with the intention of visualizing the existence of gay communities and of offering positive depictions of those communities. The publication of letters from readers served a similar purpose. They suggested that there was a community of readers, and that this community crossed local and national borders.
Juan Carlos Mezo González is a historian of sexuality, race, and visual culture in Mexican and transnational contexts. He holds an Honors B.A. in History from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (2014) and an M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Toronto (2022). His research and teaching focus on Mexican, Latin American, LGBTQ+, and Indigenous history. His current book manuscript examines the relationship between transnational gay liberation politics, print culture, and images in Mexico, the United States, and Canada from the early 1970s through the mid-1990s.
As you’ve noted in your writing and as you describe when going to The ArQuives, The Body Politic is quite well-known and is obviously a quite well-preserved periodical. So, it is interesting to read your work about Macho Tips and the visual culture surrounding that periodical. Could you explain what was significant about Macho Tips and what kind of image of gay identity or gay community it cultivated, perhaps in contrast to like other periodicals like The Body Politic?
It’s very different from The Body Politic or Gay Sunshine or Gay Community News. Those were magazines from a previous generation of gay periodicals published in the 70s that were very committed to a politics of gay liberation—very leftist and radical. There were a few magazines in Mexico that had similar content, but they didn’t survive for too long. Macho Tips was kind of an heir to that tradition of Mexican gay liberation periodicals, but it was very different in terms of content and formal features: it barely published content on the gay liberation movement, it was not interested in promoting a leftist discourse—quite the opposite, it had an assimilationist rather than a radical approach to gay politics—and one of its main purposes was to commercialize gay erotica. I do think that publishing Macho Tips was a form of activism, but one that was very different from the activism of the previous generation of gay publications. With the previous magazines, there was a balance between the political content and the erotic content, but in Macho Tips the erotic content was much more central.
Publishing these magazines in the 1970s and 1980s was no small feat. But many activists were willing to take the risk because they recognized the importance of periodicals in the struggle for gay rights and liberation.
Juan Carlos Mezo González
Another thing that made it different was the celebration of masculinity. That is something that was not present in the more political gay liberation magazines published in Mexico in the late 1970s and early 1980s—they had a very different discourse around gender and gender expression. They were more committed to feminism and women’s liberation, and they opposed machismo, sexism, and the celebration of gay masculinity. In contrast, Macho Tips did promote a discourse of gay masculinity. It also celebrated and idealized the Mexican (racialized) masculine body. At a time when most gay magazines were presenting white men as objects of desire, Macho Tips turned its attention to Mexican-looking men. This kind of erotic content gave the magazine an identity and cultivated a readership who craved for these kinds of representations.
Could you say a little bit more about the impact that periodicals have had on gay liberation, or what we might call like queer activism?
Well, the fact that some people were publishing these magazines in the 1970s and 1980s was no small feat. Being so public about your sexuality and politics could put you in a very difficult situation with your family, employer, and with the state. There are many examples of people who were fired or faced criminal charges because of their work with gay periodicals. But many activists were willing to take the risk because they recognized the importance of periodicals in the struggle for gay rights and liberation. Visibility, coming out, and community-building were central to the gay liberation movement, and the press was an effective vehicle to promote all of them. Periodicals also connected people and facilitated the circulation of information across borders. And they offered powerful images and discourses of sexual liberation, gay pride, and community which were incredibly important for readers. And as I said before, even the magazines that seemed less committed to activism, such as Macho Tips, were still participating in gay activism. Publishing this magazine in 1980s Mexico was a big accomplishment, and it was risky, too. So, I really admire all the work that that these people did.
What are some of the conflicts or tensions that have come from the relationship between periodicals and queer liberation movements?
People experience and understand their oppression and liberation in various ways, so there were indeed various conflicts and tensions around those ideas and experiences. For example, some years ago I published an article that examined the debates on nudity, sexism, and pornography in The Body Politic. Those debates emerged precisely because of the various ways in which people defined liberation and oppression. Over the years, readers praised or condemned the erotic imagery in The Body Politic, arguing that it was either sexist and objectifying, or liberating and exciting. But beyond these debates, there are other conflicts and tensions in the history of The Body Politic, particularly around race. In 2016, there was a symposium for the 45th anniversary of The Body Politic, and scholars like Rinaldo Walcott, Lali Mohamed, and Syrus Marcus Ware shared very critical perspectives on the paper’s race politics. I was there in that symposium, and I was a little shocked. I was just starting my research, so I was very surprised to see the reactions that some people had about the history, politics, and legacy of The Body Politic. It gave me a different perspective and encouraged me to approach the histories of the gay press from a more critical point of view.
Thinking about the transnational focus of your work, what is the intervention that you hope to make in these histories?
The fact that I’m looking at the relationship or the interactions between gay publishing communities in Mexico, Canada, the United States, and other Latin American countries is one of my main contributions. Queer historians often use newspapers and magazines as sources but not always as the object of analysis. And those who have focused on the history of the gay press often centre their work on anglophone contexts only. My project focuses on the histories of gay periodicals published in the Americas and examines the role of these publications, and of their visual content, in the transnational history of gay liberation. In doing so, I show how gay periodicals were instrumental in building transnational communities, in constructing gay identity, and in advancing projects of gay liberation at local, national, and international levels. I make other important interventions that I discuss in more detail in my forthcoming book!
