Bills

The LGBTQ+ impact of American Westerns on Congolese youths in the 1940s and 50s

When Angolan photographer Jean Depara first turned his lens on the citizens of Kinshasa in the colonial Democratic Republic of the Congo, he captured a reality fraught with sexual, gendered, and colonial tensions. 

In his images, greased bodybuilders, scantily clad women, and mixed-race couples are just some of the individuals Depara happens upon. Their confidence is readily apparent, but few of these characters appear as self-assured, or at least as camera-savvy, as the young men and women dressed in cowboy hats, checkered shirts, neck scarves, and the other particulars of cowboy regalia. 

These youths were known as 'Bills', named after William' Buffalo Bill' Cody, the plainsman turned performer whose wild west shows made the American cowboy go global. Like Cody, whose early life was marred by unemployment, Bills were similarly produced by a scarcity of work for non-white and non-European Kinshasans. 

Photo by Jean Depara

As explored in Didier Gondola's seminal book, Tropical Cowboys, Belgian authorities after World War II implemented a tiered system of citizenship for male Congolese. Évolués were men authorities thought 'civilized' enough to hold privileges often reserved for Europeans. Indigènes, the majority of men, were the ones conversely left to toil in factories and endure other such hard labor. Congolese women, doubly oppressed, did not factor into the colonial ego and were thereby swept aside. 

Westerns were all the rage in Congo, and cowboys provided these youths a channel for their discontent. The mystique lay in the cowboys' possession of all the unseemly qualities that young Congolese were denied from having: style, confidence, and, of course, sexuality. 

The first Bills to adopt this practice obtained their clothes from American soldiers stationed in Kinshasa in the mid-1940s. These exchanges took the form of bartering goods and, oftentimes, services (sexual and otherwise) for used articles of clothing. 

By the time Depara started photographing Bills around a decade later, the subculture had matured into a lifestyle replete with dress and behavioral codes. Standard cowboy attire, such as hats, checkered shirts, and boots, were accessorized by scarves and fake pistols. None of Depara's subjects cracked a smile, characteristic of the attitude required for being a Bill. It was common for Bills to form their own gangs and for gang members to assume tough nicknames. They even went as far as donning their own steeds in the form of bicycles wheeled about their home turf. 

Other rituals Bills partook in included scarification, fighting, and committing crimes for performative purposes. Their treatment of masculinity wasn't so much a treatment as much as it was a perversion. A manliness so turgid it unraveled at the seams, all in all, it was incredibly camp. 

It should come as no surprise, then, that to be a Bill was to also hold rather blasé and non-essentialist notions of gender. This leniency didn't erase gendered categories, but it did make them traversable. Some of these journeymen flit across Depara's photos as androgynous rogues grimacing at the camera; women dressed to the nines and swaggering in appropriate Bill attire. Like other Bills, they too reified their masculinities, notably through rituals involving the seduction of other women. 

An interview by Gondola in Tropical Cowboys conducted with a reformed female Bill attests to the relative ease with which Bills sloughed off gendered constraints: 

"Did you also dance with a girl," I [Gondola] asked. 

"Of course, I did," she replied. "I was a Bill!" 

"...but you were a girl, why not dance with a man?" I countered. 

"Because I was just like one of them. I was a Bill."

Photo by Jean Depara

 'Bill' was a sort of placeholder for sexual fluidity, too. One colonial study investigating the subculture reveals how homosexuality was present and normalized amongst the Bills. An aspect of cowboy culture that, along with gender nonconformity, was left undeterred by the process of cultural translation. As both sexual and gender differences were demonized in America and in Congo, it's apt that they flourished in places where lawlessness abounded. The Bills were anathema to all the restrictions that colonialism needed to survive. 

However, not all parts of being a Bill were heroic. Amongst their many arbitrary transgressions were the real crimes of their encouragement of sexual assault and the sequestering of women and young girls. Evidently, Bills were not the solution to Congo's ills, but their historic impact is notable. Almost 80 years later, they still remain a symbol of the thrilling, confusing, and often messy quest for agency amidst colonial repression.