Title of Research : Imagining Socialismo Sin Sexismo, Visualizing Gender, Erasing Sexuality, and Constructing Militancy in the Mexican Communist Party

Issues of the sex and sexuality have been in an uneasy, if not antagonistic, relationship with the revolutionary politics of the Mexican Communist Party (PCM) and other parties of the Marxist and nationalist left since their foundation. In this talk, Robert Franco (Duke University, History) interrogates how this antagonism was related to the intimate politics and practices in the Mexican Left. He argues that the surveillance and policing of sexuality by Mexican Communists were constitutive of a broader set of debates within the PCM about the relation of militancy to private life, morality, and behavior. For reference, please see the event flyer.