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The Sexual Revolution in Mexican Studies: New Perspectives on Gender, Sexuality, and Culture in Modern Mexico

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DE LOS OTROS: INTIMACY AND HOMOSEXUALITY AMONG MEXICAN MEN. By Carrier James. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Pp. 231. $39.50 cloth, $16.50 paper.)
EASY WOMEN: SEX AND GENDER IN MODERN MEXICAN FICTION. By Castillo Debra A.. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Pp. 275. $47.95 cloth, $18.95 paper.)
IMAGEN DE LA PROSTITUTA EN LA NOVELA MEXICANA CONTEMPORANEA. By González María R.. (Madrid: Pliegos, 1996. Pp. 158.)

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Katherine Elaine Bliss
Katherine Elaine Bliss*
Affiliation:
The University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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Type
Review Essays
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , 2001 , pp. 247 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by the University of Texas Press

References

1. See Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, edited by Asunción Lavrin (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1989); Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574–1821 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988); Silvia Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 1790–1857 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985); Julia Tuñón, Las mujeres en México: Una historia olvidada (Mexico City: Planeta, 1987); Ana María Atondo Rodríguez, El amor venal y la condición femenina en el México colonial (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1992); Josefina Muriel, Los recogimientos de mujeres: Respuesta a una problemática novohispana social (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1974); Richard Boyer, Lives of the Bigamists: Marriage, Family, and Community in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995); Juan José Pescador, De bautizados a fieles difuntos: Familia y mentalidades en una parroquía urbana, Santa Catarina de México, 1568–1820 (Mexico City: Colegio de México and Centro para Estudios de Demografía y de Desarrollo Urbano, 1992); and Steve J. Stern, The Secret History of Gender: Men, Women, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).

2. Esperanza Tuñón Pablos, Mujeres que se organizan: El Frente Unico Pro Derechos de la Mujer, 1935–1938 (Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1992); Mary Kay Vaughan, The State, Education, and Social Class in Mexico, 1880–1928 (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University, 1982); Shirlene Ann Soto, Emergence of the Modern Mexican Woman: Her Participation in Revolution and Struggle for Equality, 1910–1940 (Denver: Arden Press, 1990); Anna María Macías, Against All Odds: The Women's Movement in Mexico to 1940 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1985); Lourdes Beneria and Martha Roldán, The Crossroads of Class and Gender: Industrial Homework, Subcontracting, and Household Dynamics in Mexico City (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1987); and Brígida García, Humberto Muñoz, and Orlandina de Oliveira, Hogares y trabajadores en la Ciudad de México (Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1982).

3. See, for example, Arthur F. Corwin, Contemporary Mexican Attitudes toward Population, Poverty, and Public Opinion (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1963); World Family Survey, La encuesta mexicana de fecundidad, 1976–1977: Resúmen de resultados (Voorburg, the Netherlands: Instituto Internacional de Estadística, 1980); Amado de Miguel, Ensayo sobre la población de México (Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 1983); La fecundidad rural en México (Mexico City: Colegio de México and Centro de Estudios Demográficos y de Desarrollo Urbano, 1983); Luis Leñero Otero, Investigación de la familia en México (Mexico City: Instituto Mexicano de Estudios Sociales, 1968); Frederick C. Turner, Responsible Parenthood: The Politics of Mexico's New Population Policies (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Insttute for Public Policy Research, 1974); Jeanne M. Simonelli, Two Boys, a Girl, and Enough! Reproductive and Economic Decisionmaking on the Mexican Periphery (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1986); Ana María Chávez Galindo, Migración, fecundidad y anticoncepción en Baja California: Algunas hipótesis de trabajo (Mexico City: Centro Regional de Investigaciones Multidisciplinarias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1987); María del Carmen Elu de Lenero, La salud reproductiva de la mujer en Oaxaca, México: Reflexiones y recomendaciones (Mexico City: Instituto Mexicano de Estudios Sociales and La Casa de la Mujer Rosario Castellanos, 1992); and Patrick Livenais, Comparación entre los niveles de la fecundidad y las características de la nupcialidad a nivel rural, Mexico, 1970–1976 (Mexico City: Colegio de México and Centro de Estudios Demográficos y de Desarrollo Urbano, 1987). A useful bibliographic orientation to the material published between 1968 and 1982 is Montserrat Lines, Libre elección o fecundidad controlada: 500 referencias bibliográficas sobre la planificación familiar en México, 1968–1982 (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1989).

4. Ford Foundation, Hispanics, Challenges, and Opportunities: A Look at the Demographic, Economic, Social, and Political Situation of Hispanics in the United States Today and at the Ford Foundation's Initiatives to Address the Needs and Impact of This Growing Population (New York: Ford Foundation Office of Reports, 1984); Paul Balaran, Refugees and Migrants, Problems and Program Responses: A Look at the Causes and Consequences of Today's International Population Flows and at the Ford Foundation's New Programs to Address the Problems of Refugees and Migrants in the United States and Elsewhere in the World (New York: Ford Foundation Office of Reports, 1983).

5. This was certainly true of the first work of this century to investigate prostitution in Mexico. See Luís Lara y Pardo, La prostitución en México (Mexico City and Paris: Ediciones de la Vda. de Ch. Bouret, 1908). Work on pimping (lenocinio), however, examined male involvement in sexual commerce from a legal perspective. See Mario Arriazola Alfaro, El lenocinio en el derecho nacional y la represión de la trata de personas y de la explotación de la prostitución ajena (Mexico City: privately printed, 1965). Sociologists in the 1970s also explored the question of male prostitution. See Francisco A. Gomezjara, Estanislao Barrera, and Nicolás Pérez, Sociología de la prostitución (Mexico City: Nueva Sociología, 1978). In his work on “the underground” in Mexico City, Sergio González Rodríguez considered the culture of attendance at male brothels around 1900, although this topic was not the focus of his study. See Sergio González Rodríguez, Los bajos fondos: El antro, la bohemia y el café (Mexico City: Cal y Arena, 1992).

6. Two recent volumes on homosexuality that are beyond the scope of this article are Claudia Schaeffer, Danger Zones: Homosexuality, National Identity, and Mexican Culture (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996); and Ian Lumsden, Homosexualidad, sociedad y estado en México (Toronto: Canadian Gay Archives, 1991). See also some of the numerous articles that have been published on homosexuality in the last decade: Clark L. Taylor, “Mexican Male Homosexual Interaction in Public Contexts,” in The Many Faces of Homosexuality, edited by Evelyn Blackwood (New York: Harrington Park, 1986), 117–38; Ana Alonso and María Teresa Koreck, “Silences: ‘Hispanics,‘ AIDS, and Sexual Practices,” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 1 (1989):101–24; Rob Buffington, “Los Jotos: Contested Visions of Homosexuality in Modern Mexico,” in Sex and Sexuality in Latin America, edited by Daniel Balderston and Donna J. Guy (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 118–31; and Serge Gruzinski, “Las cenizas del deseo: Homosexuales novohispanos a mediados del siglo XVII,” in De la santidad a la perversión: O de por qué no se cumplía la ley de Dios en la sociedad novohispana, edited by Sergio Ortega (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1986), 169–215.

7. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, vol. 1, translated by Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1978); Pierre Bourdieu. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (London: Polity, 1984); and Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).

8. Other authors who have investigated homosexuality in Latin America have reported similar distinctions. See Roger N. Lancaster, Life Is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992); and Richard G. Parker, Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions: Sexual Culture in Contemporary Brazil (Boston, Mass.: Beacon, 1991).

9. Jamaica Kinkaid, My Brother (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1997).

10. For an informative collection of essays on women and AIDS in Mexico, see Mujer y SIDA (Mexico City: Programa Interdisciplinario de Estudios de la Mujer, Colegio de México 1992).

11. A recent article examining historians' approaches to the study of prostitutes is Timothy J. Gilfoyle, “Prostitutes in History: From Parables of Pornography to Metaphors of Modernity,” The American Historical Review 104, no. 1 (Feb. 1999):117–41.

12. See, for example, William H. Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club and Other Episodes of Porfirian Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987); William French, “Prostitutes and Guardian Angels: Women, Work, and the Family in Porfirian Mexico,” Hispanic American Historical Review 72, no. 4 (1992):529–53; Pablo Piccato, “‘No es posible cerrar los ojos’: El discurso sobre la criminalidad y el alcoholismo hacia el fin del porfiriato,” in Prensa, criminalidad y drogas durante el porfiriato tardío, edited by Ricardo Pérez Montfort (Mexico City: Plaza y Valdés, 1997), 75–143; and Guadalupe Ríos de la Torre and Marcela Suárez Escobar, “Reglamentarismo, historia y prostitutas,” Constelaciones de modernidad (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Unidad Azcapotzalco, 1990), 127–50.

13. Other analyses of this popular novel include Jean Franco, Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989); and Carmen Ramos, “Del cuerpo carnal: Santa y La Calandria, o el inconsciente político de una sociedad reprimida,” Signos: Anuario de Humanidades 5, no. 1 (1991):193–223.