Local packages, intellectuals and brothers: nightlife cordoba during the 1960´s (Argentina)

Abstract

This work is part of an ongoing investigation that analyzes recreational practices and networks of sociability of a group of men and women in the city of Cordoba during the dictatorship and post-dictatorship period. This research describes those festive practices carried out in a number of bars and nightclubs that did not express rejection of nonheterosexual eroticism. In this paper in particular, we stop at a number of places inhabited by the subjects during the last military dictatorship, which brought together an audience of middle sectors associated with the Arts in general, and theater practices in particular. Bestiario, El Ángel Azul or Elodia were bars/ coffee-concert located in the city center, where the participants built a bohemian atmosphere, while taking part in political discussions of the era. In Elodia, Raul Ceballos personified Doña Rosa with his show. Through the practice of transvestism, Ceballos embodied one of the figures of the homosexual, the "inverted", but as it was reinscribed in the field of artistic performance, generated a space for parody. It should be noted that Ceballos/ Doña Rosa did not play only with gender, but the actor also put on stage class differences, as Doña Rosa was consumed by middle classes, but belonged to the popular sectors.