MORAL HIGIENISM, HUMOUR AND HOMOSEXUAL MEMORY IN LA LAGUNA DE BARRANCO’S EPISODE (LIMA, PERÚ, 1959)

Castro M.V. · Metafora (2025) · DOI: 10.36286/mrlad.v3i6.242

Resumen

The Ball of La Laguna de Barranco (1959) constitutes a significant event in the history of homosexuality in Lima. In a context of aparent modernization and a slight increase of sexual freedom, the event movilized the repressive aparatus (both policial and judicial) and was represented as a “scandalous” and “provoking” incident by the serious and the sensationalist press, which retrieved the language linked to moral higienism in order to condemn it. The present article seeks: a) to explain the different perspectives in press representations acording to the nature and ideological position of the diaries that covered it; b) to analize a humoristic text by Sofocleto on the event, which ratifies the patriarchal moral values of traditional society; c) to review the role of catholic-inspired civil associations that condemmed the event, and the conflict with the only liberal association that defended it; and d) to identify the cultural strategies of memorialization from the homosexual comunity through a fictional tale. We conclude that the moral higienism discourse acquired strenght against the threat of the hegemonic gender-sexual values; that humour was employed by the press as a dispositive for repression and denigration of the homosexual individual; and that the episode’s relevance can be perceived in its inclusion on an emergent archive of homosexual memory that recreates it.

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos