Gay Guide to Mexico City
On 17 November 1901 police raided a private dance in Colonia Tabacalera and arrested the men they found there, some of them in dresses, many of them from the capital's elite. It became known as El Baile de los 41, the Dance of the 41. Those who could not bribe their way out were conscripted and sent to the Caste Wars in Yucatán. The scandal was enormous, and the number stuck: for more than a century afterwards, 41 was Mexican slang for a gay man. Buildings skipped it. Regiments avoided it.
Mexico City has spent the time since turning that around. The first gay pride march here drew about a thousand people in 1979, among the earliest in Latin America, organized by a coalition of gay liberation and lesbian feminist groups. In December 2009 the city's legislature voted to allow same-sex marriage, and the law took effect the following March, the first anywhere in Latin America.
Zona Rosa has been the gay quarter since the 1980s, a compact grid in Cuauhtémoc around Amberes and Florencia. It is dense, loud and unambiguous, with bars, clubs, cabaret and drag stacked along a few blocks, and it runs very late.
Roma and Condesa hold the quieter, more mixed end of things, and the venues there tend to be places you would go for dinner and stay at rather than places you go to dance.
Mexico City Pride in June is one of the biggest marches in the Americas, filling Paseo de la Reforma end to end.