Queer Places:
Av. Hidalgo 123, Centro Histórico de la Cdad. de México, Guerrero, Cuauhtémoc, 06300 Ciudad de México, CDMX, Mexico
Antonio Dodero (c.1885–1957) was born around 1885, and lived a life deeply intertwined with the early history of queer domesticity and intellectual networks in Mexico City, passing away in 1957. His life story is best known through his long-term partnership with Antonio Adalid Pradel, with whom he shared a life starting in the early 1900s. Their relationship weathered social pressures, financial upheaval, and exile. Around 1907, the couple was forced to leave Mexico due to Adalid's gambling debts, spending the period between 1907 and 1920 living together in Alameda, California.
They eventually returned to Mexico after Adalid was welcomed back into his prominent family on the condition that he enter a marriage of convenience. Utilizing a small inheritance and a position teaching English at the National Preparatory School, Adalid and Dodero reunited. To maintain appearances in a conservative society, the couple publicly posed as uncle and nephew while establishing a private life together. They set up a home in a subdivided one-bedroom apartment located at 123 Avenida Hidalgo, adjacent to San Fernando Square.
Their home became a celebrated cultural and social hub for Mexico City's hidden intergenerational homophile network. Meticulously decorated to reflect their travels and Adalid's family wealth, the apartment featured portraits of the couple on the walls and a curated collection of colonial antiques. In this refined setting, Dodero and Adalid frequently hosted dinners and evening gatherings. Memoirists and writers like Salvador Novo later fondly recalled how the couple would personally prepare snacks, lay the table, serve Chinese take-away, and wash dishes, establishing an enduring model of domesticity and queer kinship.
The Avenida Hidalgo apartment served as a vital meeting ground where older, well-established men introduced younger generations to networks of mentorship, patronage, intellectual exchange, and romance. Among the regular visitors to their home were high-ranking government officials such as cabinet ministers Luis Montes de Oca, Genaro Estrada, and Jaime Torres Bodet; prominent poets like Xavier Villaurrutia and Salvador Novo; and celebrated painters including Agustín Lazo Adalid and Roberto Montenegro. Through these gatherings, older friends passed down vital social knowledge, queer history, trusted medical contacts for treating venereal diseases, and guidance on how to navigate society safely, fostering a deep sense of community and belonging among gay men in mid-century Mexico. Dodero lived out his later years in Mexico City, remaining a steadfast partner to Adalid until his death in 1957, leaving behind a legacy as a quiet pillar of an underground elite social circle that helped shape modern Mexican letters and queer history.
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