“Siluetas tapatías” in the newspaper “El Kaskabel”. Moralizing sketches of manners in the last years of the Porfiriato

Abstract

This article identifies, in the context of the ‘costumbrist’ satire of the press during the porfiriato, the most outstanding mental representations in the class and gender dynamics that occurred in the daily life of Guadalajara’s sociabilities. This identification is made on the urban environments of these dynamics, specifically around the clothing and general appearance of its protagonists. The main objective is to demonstrate how clothing, daily interactions in public and private spaces, and humorous texts can contain – if one knows how to read between the lines – keys to better understand the conflicting relationships that exist between social classes and genres. For this, I analyze a series of brief articles published in the Guadalajara newspaper El Kaskabel, in the years 1906, 1907 and 1908. The analysis is supported by the conceptual framework of the history of representations, and by consulting other textual sources.