The Imagined Underworld: Sex, Crime, and Vice in Porfirian Mexico City

3. Love, Betrayal, and Death in the Underworld

3 Love, Betrayal, and Death in the Underworld Do not ever give yourself to a woman because they are always the ruin of men.—Verse from the corrido “Reflections after the Execution,” author unknown, 1908 one fall a ft e rn oon in Mexico City, persons walking along San Jeronimo Street in District Three were startled by several gunshots coming from inside a parked coach. As onlookers gathered , the coach sped off. A police officer walking his beat managed to stop the driver and, as he looked inside, saw a young woman lying on the floor bleeding from several gunshots. Above her sat a nervous-looking young man with, quite literally, a smoking gun by his side. This scene represents our first glimpse into the account of Luis Yzaguirre and María Piedad Ontiveros. On October 13, 1890, Yzaguirre shot Ontiveros after an argument sparked by his anger over her impending breakup with him. Apparently, Yzaguirre and Ontiveros had carried on a secret love affair for over a year. Increasingly frustrated by Ontiveros’s refusal to leave her longtime lover, Carlos Rodríguez, a man who was also Yzaguirre’s friend and coworker , Yzaguirre acted in an apparent fit of jealous rage. It would be a decision with lasting consequences.1 For the capital’s residents the story of Luis and Piedad presented a 72 Love, Betrayal, and Death in the Underworld dilemma. Although the case had all the makings of a typical crime of passion, including forbidden love, illicit sex, and murder, it was not the typical crime frequently associated with the underclass. Instead, both perpetrator and victim were educated, albeit members of the lower middle class. For this reason the case received extensive newspaper coverage, possibly reflecting the Porfirian elite’s discomfort with the murder as well as with its implied sexual history. Mexicans were definitely interested and must have wondered what exactly drove the young clerk to kill his lover. Further, what of Ontiveros? What has her exact role in the incident? These and other questions aroused public opinion. The answers would prove to be uncomfortable reminders to the elite that perhaps, just perhaps, the criminal underworld also had a hold on the supposed beneficiaries of moral progress. For the most part educated Porfirians as well as the press believed that crimes of passion were the exclusive domain of poor Mexicans such as Francisco Guerrero. Gente decente simply did not kill each other in fits of jealous rage. Therefore, the case of Luis and Piedad troubled those who pretended to direct the moral future of the nation and imperiled the construction of the imagined underworld. To understand this case and its broader implications for the Porfirian elite, we must also take into account the growing power of the Mexico City press in shaping public opinion. By the beginning of the 1890s the capital’s newspapers had undergone an important transformation. No longer did the historical conflicts revolving around nineteenthcentury politics dominate its columns. Instead, the press increasingly focused on a growing urban population that was interested in local news and sensational stories. As we saw in the Guerrero case, celebrated criminal trials attracted popular attention from the general population and drew the interest of government officials and intellectuals . For the elite these cases provided an opportunity to educate the public on the imagined moral evils of the day: prostitution, gambling , and pulque. Moreover, as show trials they proved invaluable in drawing a deep distinction between the ideal behaviors espoused by the elite and the behaviors of the underclass.2 In particular, cases centered on so-called crimes of passion deeply interested all levels of Porfirian society. Joëlle Guillas, in his study on 73 Love, Betrayal, and Death in the Underworld nineteenth-century France, noted that crimes of passion were distinctly private affairs and took place mostly in the sanctity of homes, where intimate acts were hidden from outsiders. As the middle class retreated into the domestic private sphere, crimes of passion increasingly remained hidden and not likely to be publicly viewed.3 It was this last point that made these incidents popular in the Porfirian capital. When passions flared and violence erupted, crimes of passion suddenly became public dramas. Yet while Ontiveros’s murder provided Porfirians with only a glimpse of personal turmoil, we are more fortunate since we are privy...