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Sexualities in Latin America and the Caribbean (La. Am. Std)

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  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. As elsewhere around the globe, diverse sexual practices and identities are found throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. During the last few decades, scholars and activists have come to view sexuality as critical to our understanding of difference and inequality across societies and through time. Like gender and race, sexuality is generally understood to be historically and culturally constructed, rather than as an essential and unchanging feature of human societies. Because attention to sexuality emerged principally from those concerned that heteronormative sexuality had been taken for granted and non-heteronormative sexuality had been viewed as deviant or as playing a minor part in Latin America and the Caribbean, recent scholarship has more often examined underrepresented groups, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender sexualities. In some times and places, where global, Western identity categories may be unknown or little used, it is more accurate to refer to same-sex sexualities. In what follows, themes taken up include foundational and historical works; ethnographic and cultural studies; research relating to gay men’s, lesbians’, and transgender experiences, reproductive health, and human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS); sex work and tourism; social movements; and transnational currents in Latin American and Caribbean sexualities. A number of the works included here could be cross-referenced in several sections. There is broad coverage of this growing scholarship, but it is worth noting that books are privileged over articles, and there is greater attention to the social sciences, cultural studies, and history than to literature and the arts. While a somewhat greater number of works examine men’s lives than women’s lives, this trend reflects the more public lives of men as well as the state of research, which in the case of lesbian/gay/bisexual/transsexual (LGBT) and same-sex sexuality in general gives more attention to men’s than to women’s experiences. For related works on women and gender in postcolonial Latin America, see the separate Oxford Bibliographies article on Gender in Postcolonial Latin America.
  4.  
  5. Foundational Works and Overviews
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  7. There are few works that seek to offer a broad overview of sexuality in Latin America and the Caribbean, but several of them offer a useful foundation for further reading. Of the following three works, Wade 2009 is the broadest in scope, introducing readers to the importance of race and sexuality in the region. Foster 1991 addresses themes relevant to gay men and lesbians in its discussion of the region’s literature. And Anzaldúa 1987 is a classic work by a feminist of color who theorizes about the US-Mexico borderlands and its meanings for those living in intersectional spaces.
  8.  
  9. Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands, La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1987.
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  11. Classical work embraced by feminists, Chicano/Chicana studies scholars, and queer activists for its poetic and passionate engagement with questions of gender, race, sexuality, and nation. In writing about the US-Mexican borderlands, Anzaldúa is particularly eloquent regarding the competing communities in which queer individuals of color find themselves in the Latino/Latina diaspora.
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  13.  
  14. Foster, David William. Gay and Lesbian Themes in Latin American Writing. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991.
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  16. Pioneering, foundational work of cultural criticism discussing Latin American literature that takes up LGBT issues. Foster aims to shed light on the Latin American region through his essays focusing mainly on Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Charted a needed course for further exploration and helped launch this area of inquiry.
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  18.  
  19. Wade, Peter. Race and Sex in Latin America. London: Pluto, 2009.
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  21. Pioneering source theorizing about the commingling of sexuality, gender, and race in Latin America, past and present and offering a broad overview of dynamics of power. Attention to afrodescendant and indigenous women viewed as “other” to dominant sectors; sex tourism; state regulation of sexuality; reproductive and sexual health; and sexual and racial landscapes in social movements.
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  23.  
  24. Anthologies
  25.  
  26. The edited anthologies in this section could, in some cases, also be listed elsewhere in this bibliographic article, but they were selected for their broad approach to sexuality in Latin America and the Caribbean. Araujo and Prieto 2008 is a valuable intervention from Latin America that takes stock of contemporary debates and contributes to new fields of knowledge. Green and Babb 2002 is a journal issue that maps the field and includes articles embracing gender and same-sex sexuality. Several works focus on literature of the region and beyond, with Bergmann and Smith 1995 and Molloy and Irwin 1998 embracing the Hispanic world past and present. Balderston and Guy 1997 is useful in drawing together approaches to history, literature, and cultural studies of diverse sexualities. And Corrales and Pecheny 2010 is a reader of collected work on LGBT activism around human rights.
  27.  
  28. Araujo, Kathya, and Mercedes Prieto, eds. Estudios sobre sexualidades en América Latina. Quito, Ecuador: Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales FLACSO, 2008.
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  30. Important collection of ethnography and analysis by scholars of gender and sexuality in Latin America. Provides cultural and historical context for debates on the production of diverse sexualities in relation to the state, democratization, and the quest for justice. Attention to masculinities, youth, afrodescendant populations, and the contentious politics of queer identity.
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  32.  
  33. Balderston, Daniel, and Donna J. Guy, eds. Sex and Sexuality in Latin America. New York: New York University Press, 1997.
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  35. Multidisciplinary approach to sexuality in Latin America, arguing for a departure from the dominant models of gender and sexuality from the global North. Organized around three central themes—control and repression, cultures of resistance, and sexual transgression as affirmation of marginalized identities—this collection adds significantly to LGBT studies in the region.
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  38. Bergmann, Emilie L., and Paul Julian Smith, eds. ¿Entiendes? Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995.
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  40. Rich, comprehensive volume of essays that reexamine the canon in Hispanic American literature and cultural studies and critically review histories of same-sex sexuality in relation to gender, ethnicity, class, and nation. Unlike some anthologies on sexuality in the region, this one includes significant attention to women’s writing and lesbian experience.
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  42.  
  43. Corrales, Javier, and Mario Pecheny, eds. The Politics of Sexuality in Latin America: A Reader on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010.
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  45. Broad and useful collection of short contributions by social scientists and others concerned with LGBT rights. The editors, political scientists, have brought together works published elsewhere so that they are available to students and others concerned with LGBT politics and 21st-century democratization. Will be of interest to scholars and activists.
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  47.  
  48. Green, James N., and Florence E. Babb, eds. Special Issue: Gender, Sexuality, and Same-Sex Desire in Latin America. Latin American Perspectives 29.2 (2002).
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  50. Concerned with gender, same-sex sexuality, and power in Latin America. While more contributors address gay men’s experience, several focus on lesbian experience, as well as boundary-crossing transvestites and diasporic sexual minorities. Includes attention to gay writers, histories of LGBT social movements, and the status of queer studies in Latin America.
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  52.  
  53. Molloy, Sylvia, and Robert Mckee Irwin, eds. Hispanisms and Homosexualities. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998.
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  55. This anthology brings together diverse scholarship on Spanish and Latin American histories and cultures of sexual difference. Tracing the lives and writings of gay men and lesbians, and others who are sexually different, from 16th-century Spain to revolutionary Mexico to Latino queer identity, this book is an important contribution to emergent and politically engaged queer studies.
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  57.  
  58. Journals
  59.  
  60. Journal articles on Latin American and Caribbean sexuality are often scattered widely and appear in a number of venues. The journals that follow were selected as a mix of Latin American studies and sexuality studies publications that have included work relevant to the topic considered here. Latin American Perspectives and Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies are two area-focused interdisciplinary journals that have devoted space, including special issues, to gender and sexuality. The Journal of Homosexuality is one of the first periodicals to broadly address homosexuality freed of the older trappings of stigma. GLQ is a cutting-edge journal of gay and lesbian studies, which takes transnational matters seriously. The Journal of the History of Sexuality takes a historical approach to diverse sexualities across societies. And Differences is something of a hybrid, emerging to grapple with the often contentious cultural and political questions in feminist and queer studies.
  61.  
  62. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies.
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  64. Feminist journal that offers critical and nuanced treatment of markers of social difference, including gender, race, and sexuality.
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  66.  
  67. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies.
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  69. A leading journal of LGBT/queer studies, with some attention to international and transnational issues. Articles have addressed Latin American sexuality, gay tourism, and the arts.
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  71.  
  72. Journal of Homosexuality.
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  74. Covers research on same-sex sexuality and gender in historical, cultural, and interpersonal contexts. Occasional articles on Latin America and the Caribbean.
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  76.  
  77. Journal of the History of Sexuality.
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  79. Embraces the history of sexuality in all its forms, covering broad differences of time and place. Emphasis on historical and theoretical approaches across disciplines.
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  81.  
  82. Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies.
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  84. Cross-disciplinary journal of research on ethnicity, race, and indigenous peoples. Includes case studies, comparative studies, and theoretical and critical contributions.
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  86.  
  87. Latin American Perspectives.
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  89. Left-oriented journal with broad interdisciplinary approach; has had special issues devoted to gender and sexuality, including same-sex sexuality.
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  91.  
  92. Historical Approaches
  93.  
  94. Works in this section include those concerned with the impact of the conquest and colonialism in the lives of indigenous peoples, the changes brought about in sexuality and marriage in the colonial period, and the sometimes unintended consequences of clashing interests in the postcolonial formation of nation-states. Trexler 1995 is the most comprehensive, as it moves beyond Eurocentric approaches to understanding gender, power, and indigenous sexuality at the time of conquest in the Americas. Sigal 2000 is intent on examining colonialism’s impact on sexuality among indigenous Yucatecans, and Sigal 2003 broadens the frame to Latin America in order to consider impacts on men’s same-sex practices. French and Bliss 2007 is an anthology that embraces a host of questions relating to sexuality in the post-independence period. Guy 1991 is a classic monograph on prostitution in Argentina over a century ago as a window on gender, race, and citizenship in the making of the nation. González-Rivera 2011 gives attention to heterosexuality, prostitution, and state-sponsored rape during the Somoza era in 20th-century Nicaragua.
  95.  
  96. French, William E., and Katherine Elaine Bliss, eds. Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America since Independence. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
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  98. Foundational collection including work by historians and anthropologists who engage with past and present gender relations and sexuality, showing that these issues are central to social processes of change. Diverse themes range from midwifery and motherhood to cross-dressing, sexual violence, sexuality and revolution, and national identity, from independence onward.
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  100.  
  101. González-Rivera, Victoria. Before the Revolution: Women’s Rights and Right-Wing Politics in Nicaragua, 1821–1979. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011.
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  103. Significant foray into pre-Sandinista Nicaragua, giving needed attention to early women’s rights initiatives in a time of right-wing politics. One chapter examines sex during the Somoza era, focusing largely on prostitution and state-sanctioned violence against women. Useful analysis of women’s sexuality in relation to politics and work, occasionally mentioning non-heteronormative sexuality.
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  105.  
  106. Guy, Donna J. Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.
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  108. Well-known historian of gender in Argentina examines the pivotal part played by commercialized sexuality in the nation’s history. Prostitution in the late 19th to early 20th century shaped notions of family, work, and citizenship. Important to history of sexuality and sex workers in Latin America, notably immigrant women in “white slavery.”
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  110.  
  111. Lavrin, Asunción, ed. Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
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  113. Groundbreaking collection of essays largely by historians and ranging from sexuality and the Church to sexuality and illegitimacy, marriage and divorce, and women and sexual witchcraft during the colonial period in Spanish America. Focuses on gender analysis and attention to church and state in understanding (hetero)sexuality during this period.
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  115.  
  116. Sigal, Pete. From Moon Goddesses to Virgins: The Colonization of Yucatecan Maya Sexual Desire. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.
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  118. Sigal poses the question of how, during the 17th and 18th centuries in late colonial Yucatan, the indigenous Maya turned from reverence for moon goddesses to one for the Virgin Mary, and what this change signified. As a historian employing postcolonial and queer methodologies, Sigal uses Mayan texts to reveal shifting meanings in relation to gender, power, and sexual desire.
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  120.  
  121. Sigal, Pete, ed. Infamous Desire: Male Homosexuality in Colonial Latin America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
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  123. Collection edited by a leading scholar of colonial era sexuality, focusing on male homosexuality. Chapters examine the gendered meanings attributed to men who had sex with men, including representation and reception by both indigenous and Iberian groups. Contributors include historians, anthropologists, and literary scholars who address key debates in this young field.
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  125.  
  126. Trexler, Richard C. Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995.
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  128. Sex, gender, and power at the time of the conquest of the Americas. Attention to indigenous sexual practices as well as Iberian influence, and to homosexuality, transvestism, and sexual violence. Challenges Eurocentric views of native lives and sexualities. Most concerned with male experience, but recognizes women and gender difference as conditioning masculinity.
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  130.  
  131. Literature
  132.  
  133. While this article cannot do justice to the wide literature and critical analysis relating to sexuality in Latin America, this section includes several works that are often cited by interdisciplinary scholars working on sexualities in Latin America. These works generally bring cultural questions to bear along with literary analysis, and all address homosexuality or same-sex sexuality. Foster 1997 is the broadest in scope, as it calls for a queering of approaches to Latin American subjects, whether the subjects are themselves queer-identified or not, as in the case of icon Eva Perón, in order to develop more nuanced scholarship. Balderston 2004 and Balderston and Quiroga 2005 focus on leading writers, sexual meanings in their work, and critical reception. Sifuentes-Jáuregui 2002 is more narrowly focused on transvestism in literature, but this work sets the stage for a broad interpretation of gender and sexual difference across the Americas.
  134.  
  135. Balderston, Daniel. El deseo, enorme cicatriz luminosa: Ensayos sobre homosexualidades latinoamericanas. Rosario, Argentina: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2004.
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  137. Essays by a pioneer in Latin American sexuality studies, on leading writers whose work engages with sexual meanings and difference. The work of Borges, Puig, Donoso, Vallejo, and others is situated in relation to their nations’ cultural histories as well as the work’s critical reception.
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  139.  
  140. Balderston, Daniel, and José Quiroga. Sexualidades en disputa: Homosexualidades, liberatura y medios de comunicación en América Latina. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Libros del Rojas, 2005.
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  142. Essays on sexual diversity, literature, and communication in Latin America, with emphasis on negotiation and fluidity of desire, by two leading scholars in literary and cultural studies. Writers discussed include José Donoso, Gabriela Mistral, Jorge Luis Borges, and Silvina Ocampo.
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  144.  
  145. Foster, David William. Sexual Textualities: Essays on Queer/ing Latin American Writing. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997.
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  147. Pioneering scholarship on gay and lesbian sexuality in Latin American literature. Foster posits that a “queered” perspective can get at elements of literature that have so far gone unexamined. From a gendered and queered vantage point, Foster considers such subjects as Eva Perón as sexual icon; film, literature, and homoeroticism; and gay identity and politics.
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  149.  
  150. Sifuentes-Jáuregui, Ben. Transvestism, Masculinity, and Latin American Literature: Genders Share Flesh. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
  151. DOI: 10.1057/9780230107281Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  152. This work critically examines gender performance in literature and focuses on transvestism as a lens through which to question both gender and sexual identities in various national contexts. Broad reach and sophisticated interpretations of canonical texts, with useful discussion of approaches to sexual difference from US and Latin American shores.
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  154.  
  155. Culture and Society
  156.  
  157. The work in this section, with the exception of Montenegro 2000, is by cultural anthropologists and the approach is ethnographic. Gregor 1985 is one of the first works to take a broad approach to culture and sexuality in the Brazilian Amazon. Parker 1991 may have followed in Gregor’s footsteps but brings greater familiarity with a then-emergent field of sexuality studies. Both are attentive to gender and power. Likewise, Gutmann 1996 brings insights from feminism to work on masculinity in Mexico City, viewing the various dimensions of family, fatherhood, and sexuality. Gutmann 2003 is an anthology of writings on masculinity in diverse sectors of Latin America. Archetti 1999 is another in the small canon of writings on masculinities in Latin America; this monograph takes sport, dance, and culture as sites where gender identities are forged. Hernández Basante 2005 is a particularly important intervention insofar as it engages with contemporary questions of race, gender, and sexuality in an afrodescendant population. Weismantel 2001 is an exemplary work drawing on multiple sources to examine emblematic figures of the chola and the pishtaco to see how race, gender, and sexuality are mutually constituted. Fernandez 2010 brings detailed ethnography together with analysis of how race figures in the lives of heterosexual interracial couples in Cuba, where racial difference is often denied. And Montenegro 2000 uses sociological methods to undertake a broad account of sexual cultures in Nicaragua, setting the work in historical context.
  158.  
  159. Archetti, Eduardo P. Masculinities: Football, Polo and the Tango in Argentina. New York: Berg, 1999.
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  161. Innovative ethnography of sport, dance, and culture and the construction of masculine gender identities in Argentina. Archetti’s work is notable for his subtle grasp of the ways in which culture contributes to the making of nation. Theoretically rich, this ethnographic work is based on deep knowledge of the research setting and of Latin American masculinities.
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  163.  
  164. Fernandez, Nadine T. Revolutionizing Romance: Interracial Couples in Contemporary Cuba. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010.
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  166. Paradoxes of gender, race, and class in Cuba are revealed through interracial courtship and marriage, in a nation that often claims to be racially colorblind. Heterosexuality is the focus and the cultural politics of unions among white, mulatto, and black Cubans receives ample attention, though intimacies of sexual relations are not explored in depth.
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  168.  
  169. Gregor, Thomas. Anxious Pleasures: The Sexual Lives of an Amazonian People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
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  171. Pioneering ethnography of myth, ritual, and everyday sexual lives of the Mehinaku people of Brazil. Emphasizes internal contradictions as well as similarities to Western societies, with the appearance of anxieties expressed emotionally and sexually. Gives attention to women and men and to the relationship of sex to food in the culture.
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  173.  
  174. Gutmann, Matthew C. The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
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  176. An anthropological case study based in Mexico City, this work explores men’s gender identities, particularly in relation to family and fatherhood. The study argues for a less essentialist construction by exploring the multiplicity of identities the author discovered. Critically examines the concept of machismo and has a substantial chapter on men and sexuality.
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  178.  
  179. Gutmann, Matthew C., ed. Changing Men and Masculinities in Latin America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.
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  181. Valuable, self-consciously feminist contribution in the small body of work on men’s lives in Latin America. Authors from the United States and Latin America cover topics ranging from gender relations, sexuality, and power, to fatherhood, drinking, homosexual identity, and revolutionary masculinity.
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  183.  
  184. Hernández Basante, Kattya. Sexualidades afroserranas: Identidades y relacines de género. Quito, Ecuador: Ediciones Abya-Yala, 2005.
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  186. Rare book-length anthropological study of afrodescendant Latin Americans in relation to gender and sexuality. This ethnography based in Quito, Ecuador, is grounded in a theoretically informed discussion of race, gender, and power in a poor and socially marginalized urban population with rural roots. Emphasis on youth, family, and reproduction.
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  188.  
  189. Montenegro, Sofia. La cultura sexual en Nicaragua. Managua, Nicaragua: Centro de Investigaciones de la Comunicación, 2000.
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  191. Written by a well-known feminist intellectual and leftist journalist, this work aims to present a broad, constructivist approach to understanding diverse sexual cultures in Nicaragua. Montenegro locates sex, power, and pleasure in historical context and then presents findings from contemporary society that are based on focus groups and interviews.
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  193.  
  194. Parker, Richard G. Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions: Sexual Culture in Contemporary Brazil. Boston: Beacon, 1991.
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  196. Early work of a leading analyst of sexual diversity in Brazil. The ethnography, based on long-term research, understands sexuality as socially and historically constructed and as taking plural forms. Gendered and sexual meanings and practices, in all their ambiguity, are shown to reveal much about Brazilian lives and cultural identities.
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  198.  
  199. Weismantel, Mary. Cholas and Pishtacos: Stories of Race and Sex in the Andes. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
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  201. Drawing on ethnographic research along with literature and visual arts, anthropologist Weismantel analyzes the figures of Andean cholas, women situated in between Indian and white, and pishtacos, mythical male ogres said to steal fat from people’s bodies. Their sexualization and racialization are shown to have broad power in representing Andeans.
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  203.  
  204. Queer Lives and Sexualities
  205.  
  206. The use of the terminology of “queer” in place of LGBT or same-sex sexuality has been somewhat controversial in both the global north and the global south, because it may be viewed as homogenizing diverse sexual identities or as imposing an external episteme in places where there are other ways of knowing sexual experience. It is used here to suggest an overarching rubric that recognizes the fluidity of sexualities that are understood to be always in formation, and that counters the tendency to think in taxonomic, static, and binary ways about sexual identities and practices. In this section are several selections that grapple with the complex meanings of “queer” identity and politics in the Latin American and Caribbean region, and in the following three subsections, for the convenience of those seeking research on particular social-sexual and identity-based groups, are a wider number of writings emerging in this growing field. Íconos 2011 offers a cluster of articles in an Ecuadorian journal on the subject of queer theory and thought in Latin America. Cordero Velásquez 2011 takes a gender perspective to consider the saliency of queer politics and theory in Latin America. Viteri and Castellanos 2013 is an interview with Leticia Sabsay, a scholar prominently associated with queer studies in Latin America. All these works appearing in the journal Íconos enrich the transnational discussion of queer lives and sexual subjectivities.
  207.  
  208. Cordero Velásquez, Tatiana. “Comentarios desde el Sur.” Iconos: Revista de Ciencias Sociales 40 (May 2011): 129–135.
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  210. This article responds to Íconos 2011 which included a feature on “queer thought.” The author appreciates the importance of that issue but points to the lack of a gender perspective in some contributions on LGBT and queer politics. Useful to the ongoing discussion of whether scholars of feminist and queer studies can work more productively together.
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  212.  
  213. Íconos; Revista de Ciencias Sociales 39 (January 2011).
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  215. This journal issue includes several articles critically examining “queer thought” in Latin America. An article by María Amelia Viteri, José Fernando Serrano, and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz maps the interrogation of queer theory and practice as a form of resistance to the identity politics underlying “gay pride.” Other articles range from auto-ethnography to literary analysis.
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  217.  
  218. Viteri, María Amelia, and Santiago Castellanos. “Dilemas queer contemporaneous: Ciudadanías sexuales, orientalismo y subjetividades liberals; Un diálogo con Leticia Sabsay.” Íconos: Revista de Ciencias Sociales 47 (September 2013): 103–118.
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  220. An interview with well-known scholar Leticia Sabsay, who writes on queer identity, sexual citizenship, and subjectivity in Latin America. She comments on postcoloniality, the decolonial turn, and the value of a queer perspective for developing transnational solidarity—even as she acknowledges that “queer” itself has increasingly been glossed with gay and lesbian identity.
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  222.  
  223. Lesbian Identity and Experience
  224.  
  225. Until the late 20th century, there was almost no writing on lesbian lives and experience in Latin America. Now works are appearing in tandem with the increasing visibility of lesbians in the region. Two works presented here are anthologies that discuss lesbian writers and cultures, Martínez 1996 and Torres and Pertusa 2003; the latter has a broader reach that includes Spanish and US Latina writers. Wekker 2006 is in a class by itself as an ethnography with substantial attention to women’s same-sex relationships in Surinam and in the Afro-Surinamese diaspora in Europe. González-Rivera 2014 offers a rare glimpse at lesbian representation during the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, and Randall 1993 presents interview material gathered in Nicaragua a half century later, after the Sandinista revolution, when lesbians were coming out publicly. Bolt González 1996 also draws on interviews with lesbians in Nicaragua in order to assess their self-esteem and the obstacles they continue to face.
  226.  
  227. Bolt González, Mary. Sencillamente diferentes. . .: La autoestima de las mujeres lesbianas en los sectores urbanos de Nicaragua. Managua, Nicaragua: Fundación Xochiquetzal, 1996.
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  229. First book-length study of the experiences of lesbians in Nicaragua, by a feminist psychologist and activist. Draws on detailed interviews conducted in urban areas and emphasizes personal experiences of discrimination and levels of self-esteem among lesbians within families, communities, and the wider society.
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  231.  
  232. González-Rivera, Victoria. “The Alligator Woman’s Tale: Remembering Nicaragua’s “First Self-declared Lesbian.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 18.1 (2014): 75–87.
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  234. This article considers the life of a woman in mid-20th century (Somoza-era) Nicaragua who chose to live as a man with a female partner. It explores the ambiguous public designation of the nation’s first declared lesbian when the individual in question might be considered transgender, at least by today’s standards.
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  236.  
  237. Martínez, Elena M. Lesbian Voices from Latin America: Breaking Ground. New York: Garland, 1996.
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  239. This work of literary criticism aims to bring lesbian writers and those whose writing represents women who have erotic interest in other women from relative invisibility into view. Considers the diversity and sensibility of several writers whose work ranges from the autobiographical and reflexive to the sociopolitical.
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  241.  
  242. Randall, Margaret. “To Change Our Reality and the World: A Conversation with Lesbians in Nicaragua.” Signs 18.4 (1993): 907–924.
  243. DOI: 10.1086/494848Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  244. A well-known writer and activist who lived for a time in Nicaragua returns to interview a small group of lesbians there, including several from outside the country. Useful reflections on a period when lesbians and gay men were just coming out publicly and the Sandinista leadership was slowly overcoming its homophobia.
  245. Find this resource:
  246.  
  247. Torres, Lourdes, and Inmaculada Pertusa, eds. Tortilleras: Hispanic and U. S. Latina Lesbian Expression. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003.
  248. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  249. A landmark collection of essays spanning Spanish, Latin American, and US Latina lesbian literature and culture. Feminist contributors influenced by the work of Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga consider subjectivities and representations of lesbians, with attention to gender and sexual identity, race, class, and nationality—revealing a diversity of experiences.
  250. Find this resource:
  251.  
  252. Wekker, Gloria. The Politics of Passion: Women’s Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
  253. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  254. An intimate monograph on women’s same-sex relationships in the fuller context of their working-class families and communities. Traditional Afro-Surinamese practices of forming alternative families coexist with these women’s heterosexual relationships. Wekker traces the movement of women who migrate to the Netherlands and encounter lesbian identities there.
  255. Find this resource:
  256.  
  257. Gay Men’s Identity and Experience
  258.  
  259. By the 1990s, there was a notable growth in research and writing on gay and same-sex experience in Latin America and the Caribbean. A number of sources in this section were published during that decade, though more recent and related work on men’s lives and identities appears in other sections. Among the first studies published was Carrier 1995, based on ethnographic work that began decades earlier (before Stonewall) with homosexuals in Mexico. Lumsden 1996 is similar insofar as it is written by a gay author offering a close account of the lives of gay men, in this case in Cuba, where he is also interested in the contradictions faced by sexual outsiders to the revolutionary society. Lancaster 1992 offers an important discussion of same-sex relations among Nicaraguan men during the first period of Sandinista revolutionary government, though the author missed the stirrings of political organizing in the LGBT community at that time. Murray 1995 is a broad cataloguing of male homosexuality in Latin America, but it suffers from rather scant treatment in places. As an insider to the formation of gay political organizing in Brazil in the 1970s, the author of Green 1999 has a valuable vantage point from which to delve into the movement’s earlier history. Parker 1999 brings keen insights to the author’s ethnographic work on men’s sexual cultures in Brazil, showing the diversity of local and global identities among them. Allen 2011, the most recently written of these works, brings a contemporary sensibility to the author’s work on Afro-Cuban experiences of racial and sexual difference.
  260.  
  261. Allen, Jafari S. ¡Venceremos? The Erotics of Black Self-Making in Cuba. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
  262. DOI: 10.1215/9780822393801Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  263. Ethnographic portrayal of Cuban men’s same-sex desire and subjectivity. Focusing largely on Afro-Cubans, Allen examines contradictory attitudes toward racial and sexual difference and the politics of resistance in everyday realms of experience, including domestic life, the social scene, and the broader community. Archival, literary, and other sources add to a rich cultural analysis.
  264. Find this resource:
  265.  
  266. Carrier, Joseph. De los Otros: Intimacy and Homosexuality among Mexican Men. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
  267. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  268. Groundbreaking ethnography of gay men’s experience, based on fieldwork first undertaken in Guadalajara, Mexico, during the pre-Stonewall period. Carrier lays the groundwork for understanding the cultural context, presents four profiles of the lives and sexual practices of homosexual men, and discusses the meanings of gay liberation in Mexico.
  269. Find this resource:
  270.  
  271. Green, James N. Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Brazil. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
  272. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  273. Pioneering work in gay history challenging the stereotype of Brazilian sexual culture as broadly tolerant of difference. Sheds light on the discrimination faced by homosexual men from the late 19th century through the 1970s, when a gay and lesbian rights movement emerged. Discusses little-known, yet often public, lives of gay men in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
  274. Find this resource:
  275.  
  276. Lancaster, Roger N. Life Is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
  277. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  278. Intimate portrait of a Managua barrio during the late 1980s, as support for the Nicaraguan revolution was waning. Focusing on working-class lives, Lancaster offers a subtle reading of race and sexual difference. Often cited for its discussion of indigenous categories of active and passive (penetrator and penetrated) male sex partners.
  279. Find this resource:
  280.  
  281. Lumsden, Ian. Machos, Maricones and Gays: Cuba and Homosexuality. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996.
  282. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  283. A gay Canadian sympathetic to the Cuban revolution travels to the island to try to understand the relationship of homosexuality and the revolution. His portrait of a nation broke new ground for others when few book-length projects on gay sexuality had been undertaken.
  284. Find this resource:
  285.  
  286. Murray, Stephen O. Latin American Male Homosexualities. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995.
  287. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  288. In part a single-author work and in part an edited collection, this book includes essays that introduce male homosexuality in “Latino” and indigenous societies, with attention to language, culture, family and social relations, HIV/AIDS, discrimination, and gay movements. Discusses activo/pasivo roles and internacional/moderno influences.
  289. Find this resource:
  290.  
  291. Parker, Richard. Beneath the Equator: Cultures of Desire, Male Homosexuality, and Emerging Gay Communities in Brazil. New York: Routledge, 1999.
  292. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  293. An exemplary study of the political economy and globalization of gay male identities in Brazil, with an ethnographer’s eye for complexity and nuance at the local level, based on research in Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza. Overcomes a common tendency to see only traditional sexual cultures or transnational ones. HIV/AIDS is discussed.
  294. Find this resource:
  295.  
  296. Transgender Identity and Experience
  297.  
  298. To date, most work relating to transgender experience concerns transvestite (travesti) performance and transgender sex workers, perhaps because they are the most visible and because prostitution is one of the few areas where transgender individuals find employment. Of two works appearing the same year, Kulick 1998 explores Brazilian transgender sex workers’ lives and the bodily transformations they undergo, and Prieur 1998 relates the experiences of a group of Mexican men who include homosexuals and transgender sex workers. Lancaster 1997 narrates a single episode of transvestic performance by a young man in Nicaragua and its reception, drawing on Bakhtin’s notion of the Carnivalesque. Howe, et al. 2008 traces the “sexual migration” of transgender sex workers from Mexico to the United States, where they are doubly illegal and vulnerable.
  299.  
  300. Howe, Cymene, Susanna Zaraysky, and Lois Lorentzen. “Transgender Sex Workers and Sexual Transmigration between Guadalajara and San Francisco.” Latin American Perspectives 35.1 (2008): 31–50.
  301. DOI: 10.1177/0094582X07310956Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  302. This article tracks the movement, or “sexual migration,” of transgender sex workers between Guadalajara, Mexico, and San Francisco in the United States, two relatively tolerant areas for such sexual minorities. This nuanced portrait shows that the workers are nonetheless living precariously on the margins of society.
  303. Find this resource:
  304.  
  305. Kulick, Don. Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
  306. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226461014.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  307. Pioneering ethnography of transgendered sex workers in the Brazilian city of Salvador. Focuses on bodily transformations and gender performances of travestis at work and in personal relationships with boyfriends, who generally identify as heterosexual. Rich interview material is presented in detail, in Portuguese and English.
  308. Find this resource:
  309.  
  310. Lancaster, Roger. “Guto’s Performance: Notes on the Transvestism of Everyday Life.” In Sex and Sexuality in Latin America. Edited by Daniel Balderston and Donna J. Guy, 9–32. New York: New York University Press, 1997.
  311. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  312. Drawing from ethnographic research in a barrio in Managua, Nicaragua, Lancaster questions the possible meanings of a young man’s spontaneous transvestic performance and the response it received. He examines the politics of play within a culture that evinces ambivalence concerning gender and sexual difference.
  313. Find this resource:
  314.  
  315. Prieur, Annick. Mema’s House, Mexico City: On Transvestites, Queens, and Machos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
  316. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  317. Sociologist Prieur, who conducted in-depth fieldwork, provides a detailed account of the lives of a group of men living in a poor, marginal neighborhood in Mexico City. Sharing a household are homosexuals, transvestites, and sex workers, and occasionally their masculine-identified boyfriends. The author examines gender, sexuality, and class intersectionality.
  318. Find this resource:
  319.  
  320. Sex Work and Tourism
  321.  
  322. For some time, the Caribbean has been well known as a site for sex tourism, and for what is often termed romance tourism. Kempadoo 1999 and Kempadoo 2004 are among the most cited sources, offering broad coverage of sexual commodification and commerce in the Caribbean. Brennan 2004 and Cabezas 2009 are more focused ethnographic studies of the Dominican Republic and Cuba; both present nuanced feminist analyses that recognize the agency of sex workers and the structural constraints on their lives. Elsewhere, we now have two case studies from Mexico that appeared in the same year, Kelly 2008, which offers a rich discussion of a state-sponsored brothel and the interactions of sex workers, clients, and officials, and Katsulis 2008, which focuses on health, regulation, and prospects for change. Babb 2011 includes a chapter on sex and romance tourism in Nicaragua and Cuba, emphasizing postrevolutionary efforts to refashion nations.
  323.  
  324. Babb, Florence E. The Tourism Encounter: Fashioning Latin American Nations and Histories. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011.
  325. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  326. Comparative work on tourism in postrevolutionary and postconflict nations in Latin America and the Caribbean, with attention to gender and sexuality. One chapter discusses sex and romance tourism in Nicaragua and Cuba as a window on the paradoxes of revolutionary nations that have relied on the commodification of bodies and cultures to recover from economic hardship.
  327. Find this resource:
  328.  
  329. Brennan, Denise. What’s Love Got to Do with It? Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.
  330. DOI: 10.1215/9780822385400Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  331. An engaging ethnographic study of Dominican women sex workers and foreign clients participating in sex tourism. Explores sex tourism not solely as means of survival, but also as a strategy for social mobility dependent on sex workers’ ability to perform love and form long-term relationships that may lead to marriage and migration.
  332. Find this resource:
  333.  
  334. Cabezas, Amalia L. Economies of Desire: Sex and Tourism in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009.
  335. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  336. Comparative work examining the often-blurred lines between sex work and romance tourism in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. On the basis of long-term field research, Cabezas weaves a subtle and compassionate narrative that complicates earlier notions about women seeking intimacy with foreign men under conditions of neoliberalism, economic scarcity, and political uncertainty.
  337. Find this resource:
  338.  
  339. Katsulis, Yasmina. Sex Work and the City: The Social Geography of Health and Safety in Tijuana, Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008.
  340. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  341. Concise, systematic analysis of sex work in the US-Mexican border city, with attention to drug use and violence, the impact of police regulation on sexual practices and sexual health, and HIV/AIDS. Discusses male and transgender as well as female sex workers. Seeks to correct stereotypes and lend dignity to sex workers.
  342. Find this resource:
  343.  
  344. Kelly, Patty. Lydia’s Open Door: Inside Mexico’s Most Modern Brothel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
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  346. Well-crafted ethnography of a government-controlled brothel in the capital city of the state of Chiapas, Mexico. Rich use of narratives of individuals, comparisons of formal and informal prostitution in the city, and discussion of so-called modern, hygienic sex work in neoliberal Mexico. Theorizes about sex work and its legal regulation in relation to the state and patriarchal social relations.
  347. Find this resource:
  348.  
  349. Kempadoo, Kamala, ed. Sun, Sex, and Gold: Tourism and Sex Work in the Caribbean. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.
  350. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  351. Includes landmark essays by Julia O’Connell Davidson and Jacqueline Sanchez-Taylor, Nadine Fernandez, Amalia Cabezas, Joan L. Phillips, and Kamala Kempadoo. Topics range from tourism and globalization, through hustlers and social struggle, to the sex trade and human rights. The central theme is the imbrication of tourism and sexual labor in Caribbean history and society.
  352. Find this resource:
  353.  
  354. Kempadoo, Kamala. Sexing the Caribbean: Gender, Race and Sexual Labor. New York: Routledge, 2004.
  355. DOI: 10.4324/9780203338087Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  356. Kempadoo’s reexamination of Caribbean sexuality suggests that the economy of Caribbean nations relies significantly upon the sexual labor of its citizens. Useful for exploring the nuances of the articulation of race and sexuality in the Caribbean and how sexuality may alternatively be used as a strategy of resistance against postcolonial structures.
  357. Find this resource:
  358.  
  359. Health, AIDS, and Reproductive Politics
  360.  
  361. A diverse body of work has taken up issues relating to sexual health and reproductive politics in Latin America and the Caribbean. Scheper-Hughes 1992 is a classic ethnography on poverty in Brazil, included here for its attention to the experience and responses of women who lose infants to death. Roberts 2012, at the other end of the spectrum, considers women making use of new reproductive technologies to have children in the Ecuadorian Andes. Gutmann 2007 concerns a minority of Mexican men who opt to have vasectomies, in the context of gender and sexuality. Ewig 2010 is a feminist political scientist’s broad and useful discussion of health policy reform in Peru, including family planning. Carrillo 2002 discusses sexuality in the age of AIDS in urban Mexico, both in terms of sexual desire and AIDS prevention.
  362.  
  363. Carrillo, Héctor. The Night is Young: Sexuality in Mexico in the Time of AIDS. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
  364. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  365. Ethnography based in Guadalajara, Mexico, showing the changing sexual norms and practices affecting the spread of AIDS. Discusses hetero- and homosexuality, though the diverse experiences of gay and bisexual men are more fully considered. Presents insights into desire in an age of globalization and into how best to approach AIDS prevention.
  366. Find this resource:
  367.  
  368. Ewig, Christina. Second-Wave Neoliberalism: Gender, Race, and Health Sector Reform in Peru. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010.
  369. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  370. Written by a political scientist, this book offers a feminist analysis of the second wave of neoliberalism in Fujimori’s Peru during the second half of the 1990s. Using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, she argues that health policy reform (including family planning) has brought only limited benefits and more inequality by class, race, and gender in rural and urban Peru.
  371. Find this resource:
  372.  
  373. Gutmann, Matthew. Fixing Men: Sex, Birth Control, and AIDS in Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
  374. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  375. Written by a leading anthropologist and Latin Americanist, this book focuses on men’s participation in reproductive decision making, and especially vasectomy. Based on ethnographic research in Mexico, the work gives close attention to male health and sexuality in the age of AIDS and family planning. Brings feminist analysis to men’s sexual and social lives.
  376. Find this resource:
  377.  
  378. Roberts, Elizabeth F. S. God’s Laboratory: Assisted Reproduction in the Andes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.
  379. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  380. Innovative scholarship by a medical anthropologist examining how in vitro fertilization in Ecuador is accepted despite poverty and the influence of the Catholic Church, as a window on understanding social life. Compelling ethnography of practitioners and patients in the Andean context of family, kinship, and racial history.
  381. Find this resource:
  382.  
  383. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
  384. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  385. Classic work in feminist and medical anthropology, based on ethnographic research in a northeastern Brazilian shantytown. Explores themes of death, poverty, and everyday violence by focusing on the experiences of the anthropologist and her informants. Particular emphasis on child mortality and maternity.
  386. Find this resource:
  387.  
  388. Sexual Citizenship and Social Movements
  389.  
  390. In some parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, feminist and LGBT movements emerged up to four decades ago, and elsewhere they are now appearing. Broad feminist concerns regarding women’s reproductive and sexual health, and sexual violence, are beyond the scope of this article, but several recent works on the rise of LGBT movements are included here. Lind 2010 takes the broadest approach to struggles for sexual rights in a time of globalization, with some focused attention to Latin America. Sabsay 2011 presents a feminist and queer theorization of post-1996 democratization in Argentina and debates over sex workers’ rights to urban space in Buenos Aires. Howe 2013 offers a rich ethnographic account of Nicaragua’s activism around rights to sexual citizenship and expression, mainly since 1990. Thayer 1997 is comparative, examining two Central American nations to see how well social movement theories can account for lesbian activism. Brown 2002 also employs social movement theory to examine the case of Argentina, finding that both local and global conditions need to be taken into account. Wright 2000 discusses a less successful effort on the part of government and nongovernmental organizations to develop a globalized gay identity in Bolivia.
  391.  
  392. Brown, Stephen. “‘Con discriminación y represión no hay democracia’: The Lesbian and Gay Movement in Argentina.” Latin American Perspectives 29.2 (2002): 119–138.
  393. DOI: 10.1177/0094582X0202900207Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  394. Examines the emergence of the lesbian and gay movement in Argentina, using social movement theory to show that a convergence of local and global factors led to activism in the late 1960s and 1970s. Argues that as a result of democratization, and the presence of international support and human rights discourse, another generation emerged in the 1980s.
  395. Find this resource:
  396.  
  397. Howe, Cymene. Intimate Activism: The Struggle for Sexual Rights in Postrevolutionary Nicaragua. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013.
  398. DOI: 10.1215/9780822378969Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  399. Howe’s ethnography of the emergence of Nicaragua’s LGBT community is particularly successful in assessing how local subjectivities and activism are shaped but not determined by global currents in struggles over sexual citizenship. Emphasis on organizing against a harsh sodomy law, consciousness raising among lesbians, and feminist nongovernmental organization-sponsored media activism.
  400. Find this resource:
  401.  
  402. Lind, Amy, ed. Development, Sexual Rights and Global Governance. New York: Routledge, 2010.
  403. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  404. This valuable collection by a scholar who has been active in discussions of gender, sexuality, and development, particularly in the Andean region, takes a global approach to sexual citizenship and has a novel perspective on “queering” development. Several chapters specifically examine Latin American cases of struggles for sexual rights and gender justice.
  405. Find this resource:
  406.  
  407. Sabsay, Leticia. Fronteras sexuales: Espacio urbano, cuerpo y ciudadanía. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Paidós, 2011.
  408. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  409. This work by a leading sociologist of gender and sexuality studies in Latin America draws together feminist, postcolonial, and queer perspectives to critically examine post-1996 democratization in Argentina. Examines the fierce debates that emerged in Buenos Aires over regulation and decriminalization of transgender sex workers in the public urban space.
  410. Find this resource:
  411.  
  412. Thayer, Millie. “Identity, Revolution, and Democracy: Lesbian Movements in Central America.” Social Problems 44.3 (1997): 386–407.
  413. DOI: 10.2307/3097184Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  414. Drawing on case studies from Costa Rica and Nicaragua, this work critiques new social movement theory for not getting at the differences among identity-based movements. Other theoretical frameworks are shown to be more useful in examining state-civil society relations, economic development, and lesbian movements in Central America.
  415. Find this resource:
  416.  
  417. Wright, Timothy. “Gay Organizations, NGOs, and the Globalization of Sexual Identity: The Case of Bolivia.” The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 5.2 (2000): 89–111.
  418. DOI: 10.1525/jlca.2000.5.2.89Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  419. Ethnographic account of sexual practices, identities, and social relations of men who have sex with men in Bolivia. Discussion of unsuccessful efforts by government and international development agencies to create a globalized category of “gay” Bolivians, as only a narrowly defined segment of these men were attracted to or welcomed into a gay community center.
  420. Find this resource:
  421.  
  422. Transnational Currents and Diaspora
  423.  
  424. Increasingly, movements of populations within and beyond Latin America and the Caribbean have captured the attention of scholars seeking to better understand the consequences for individuals, families, and communities. Some of the best work has examined “sending” populations and tracked their experiences in “receiving” nations. Hirsch 2003 is an insightful account of the intimate lives and experiences of Mexican families experiencing the often difficult transition as some individuals relocate to the United States. Gregory 2007 and Padilla 2007 present rich case studies of the impact in the Dominican Republic of globalization, sex tourism, and HIV/AIDS. Quiroga 2000 spans Latin America (especially Cuba) and Latinos in the United States, in essays that offer penetrating observations about queer sexual cultures and sexual icons. Puar 2002 is a special journal issue focusing on queer tourism in the region and its transnational dimensions. Babb 2003 suggests that scholars will benefit from a closer examination of the transnational aspects of LGBT culture and politics in Nicaragua, as global gay culture is selectively appropriated there.
  425.  
  426. Babb, Florence. “Out in Nicaragua: Local and Transnational Desires after the Revolution.” Cultural Anthropology 18.3 (2003): 304–328.
  427. DOI: 10.1525/can.2003.18.3.304Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  428. Examines the decade 1990–2000, when the Sandinistas had been voted out of power but autonomous social movements emerged in Nicaragua, notably the LGBT movement. Argues that while earlier scholarship emphasized the indigenous character of same-sex sexuality, transnational currents played a significant part during that period.
  429. Find this resource:
  430.  
  431. Gregory, Steven. The Devil behind the Mirror: Globalization and Politics in the Dominican Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
  432. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  433. Engaged research highlighting how sexuality and gender within the context of Dominican sex work are informed by global and local economic policies. Useful for exploring how globalization, structural adjustment, and neoliberal policies structure local identities.
  434. Find this resource:
  435.  
  436. Hirsch, Jennifer S. A Courtship after Marriage: Sexuality and Love in Mexican Transnational Families. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
  437. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  438. One of the first ethnographic accounts of love, marriage, and sexual intimacy among transnational families who span the US-Mexican border. Engaging narrative of the everyday meanings of migration from small Mexican towns to Atlanta, with attention to gender differences, reproduction, and romance as women and men navigate new waters.
  439. Find this resource:
  440.  
  441. Padilla, Mark. Caribbean Pleasure Industry: Tourism, Sexuality, and AIDS in the Dominican Republic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
  442. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226644370.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  443. Ethnographic account of male sex workers in the Dominican Republic who seek out gay male tourists yet self-identify as heterosexual. Padilla addresses how global political structures and tourism have transformed local sexual identities and strategies for earning livelihoods, and the increasing spread of HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean.
  444. Find this resource:
  445.  
  446. Puar, Jasbir Kaur, ed. Special Issue: Queer Tourism: Geographies of Globalization. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 8.1–2 (2002).
  447. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  448. This issue of a leading journal in LGBT studies includes several prominent articles on Latin America and the Caribbean. Puar’s introduction is valuable in setting out a conceptual frame for examining gay tourism in the age of globalization, and articles by La Fountain-Stokes, Cantú, and others map a useful theoretical terrain for understanding transnational sexualities.
  449. Find this resource:
  450.  
  451. Quiroga, José. Tropics of Desire: Interventions from Queer Latino America. New York: New York University Press, 2000.
  452. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  453. Essays by a leading scholar of Latin American literature and sexual cultures. Attention to Cuban literature and film, Mexican poets, and Latino icon Ricky Martin. Quiroga argues for a subtle reading of the codes by which the sexual subjectivities of gay men and lesbians can be understood as political interventions across the Americas.
  454. Find this resource:
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