José Gómez Robleda
(July 24, 1904 - December 4, 1987) was a writer. In 1940, while
Salvador Novo
explored his prospects as a Hollywood film scriptwriter, he resided in
Pasadena, California, and established a household that replicated the domestic
arrangements he had made for his boyfriend Carlos in 1934. Novo, now
thirty-six, installed himself in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment with
his twenty-one-year old boyfriend – and driver – the wrestler Francisco
‘Panchito’ Urrutia. Their class differences burdened their relationship. What
Novo needed, he confided in a letter, was for physical ideals to match the
intellectual and emotional companionship he craved: ‘I need a congenial friend
here, someone to make me feel young and enterprising’. Novo’s friend,
anthropologist
José Gómez Robleda,
urged Novo to use the time alone to explore and become comfortable with himself.
Gómez Robleda, the only Mexican scholar of homosexuality at that time, argued that
the environment and companions conditioned whether individuals acted on their innate
homosexuality or not, suggesting that Novo should make the best of being in the
United States.
José Gómez Robleda was born in Orizaba on July 24, 1904. Doctor from the National School of Medicine of the UNAM. In 1930 he was professor of biology, medicine and psychology at the National School of Medicine and in 1934 secretary of the same school. In 1940 he headed the Department of Scientific Research of the SEP and in 1942 the Department of Medical-Biological Studies of the National School of Medicine. In 1947 he was a member of the Coordinating Committee of the Popular Party and in the same year general secretary of the aforementioned party; the following year he served as secretary of the SEP Technical Education Committee. In 1950 he assumed the direction of the Institute of Statistical Research of the UNAM. Undersecretary of Public Education in 1952. He was a candidate for federal deputy for the FOURTH District of Mexico City.
He died in 1987.
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