of his homosexuality began in the court of Brussels, where his wife, the princess Carlota Amalia, came from. The conclusive breakup between Maximilian and Carlota was during a stopover in Madeira, where the future emperor made a famous escape for the homosexual underworld of the island. In Mexico, Carlota became pregnant, possibly by the baron Alfred Van der Smissen, who formed part of the queen's guard, while the emperor was surrounded by his male friends, like the prince Félix Salm-Salm or the colonel López, who were loyal to the end. The French invasion introduced the Napoleonic code in Mexico. The code does not mention sodomy, for it had ceased to be a crime. Nevertheless, in 1871 the new Penal Code introduced "attack on morality and proper customs", a relatively vague concept whose interpretation was left to the police and the judges, and which was used against homosexuals. Thus, in the late 19th century a homosexual subculture had already formed in Mexico City, similar to that existing in other large American cities such as Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Havana, New York City, and Toronto. The work of historians like Victor M . Macías-González, Pablo Picatto, and Robert Buffington, among others, has identified areas such as gay bathhouses, prisons, and some squares and avenues of the capital. The work of criminologist Roumagnac, for example, gives details of homosexual practices in the country's prisons. In the spring of 1918, Manuel Palafox, secretary general of Emiliano Zapata, was accused by political enemies within the Zapatista camp of having leaked information through his homosexual relationships. Put under the watch of Gildardo Magaña, he escaped and sought to bring together the Zapatista leaders around him, in which he failed. Palafox died in 1959 without revealing his homosexuality. In the 1930s there already existed some bars and baths for homosexuals in Mexico City, in the areas around Alameda, Zócalo, Paseo de Reforma and Calle Madero. In the next decade, during World War II, the city had ten to fifteen bars, and dancing was permitted in El África and El Triumfo. This relative permissivity ended in 1959, when the mayor Uruchurtu closed all the city's gay bars after a triple crime. Dance of the forty-one On the night of 20 November 1901, Mexico City police raided an affluent drag ball, arresting 42 men, half of them dressed as women, and dragging them off to Belón Prison. The