Jacobo Schifter - Public Sex in a Latin Society

Latin Sexuality
Jacobo Schifter, PhD, Senior Editor

Public Sex in a Latin Society by Jacobo Schifter

The Sexual Construction of Latino Youth: Implications for the Spread of HIV/AIDS by Jacobo Schifter and Johnny Madrigal

Jacobo Schifter, PhD

First Published by

The Uaworth Hispanic/Latino Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580

Transferred to Digital Printing 2010 by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

2000 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover design by Jennifer M. Gaska.

Cover photo Steven Underhill, www.steven-underhill.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schifter, Jacobo.

[Caperucita Roja y el lobo feroz. English]
Public sex in a Latin society / Jacobo Schifter.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56023-985-9 (hardcover: alk. paper).ISBN 1-56023-986-7 (pbk. : alk. paper).

1. Homosexuality, MaleCosta Rica. 2. Gay menCosta RicaSexual behavior. 3. Public spacesHealth aspectsCosta Rica. 4. AIDS (Disease)Costa Rica. 5. Safe sex in AIDS prevention Costa Rica. I. Title.

HQ76.2.C6713S353 1999
306.76 62 097286dc21 99-16945
CIP

Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.

Jacobo Schifter, PhD, is the Regional Director of ILPES (the Latin American Health and Prevention Institute), an AIDS-prevention program financed by the Netherlands' government. One of the most prolific writers in Latin America, Dr. Schifter wrote books on the Costa Rican civil war, U.S.-Costa Rican relations, and Costa Rican anti-Semitism before shifting his interests when AIDS started to affect the Central American region. He then established the first regional institute to fight the epidemic and created dozens of innovative programs, such as AIDS hotlines and AIDS-prevention workshops for Latin gays, prisoners, street children, Indians, male sex workers, and other minority groups. Dr. Schifter also started to publish controversial books on AIDS, including The Formation of a Counterculture: AIDS and Homosexuality in Costa Rica (1989), Men Who Love Men (1992), Eyes That Do Not See: Psychiatry and Homophobia (1997), Lila's House (1998), From Toads to Queens (Haworth, 1999), and Macho Love (Haworth, 1999). These books have become best-sellers in the region and have also played a part in changing many Latin governments' discriminatory policies against people with AIDS.

This book seeks to answer several key questions. What could have made a traditional gay Latin culture drastically change the rules of the game and take over public places to exhibit what was once forbidden? What factor or factors have triggered this change? Do these public places constitute a danger for the spread of HIV? How was Costa Ricas gay community able to reduce HIV infection and the numbers of gay men with AIDS? Is it possible for homosexuals to significantly change their desires and sexual practices? What are the typical public sex places in a Latin American setting, how do they work, and how do they evolve? Who are the main actors, and what are their motivations and their problems? How do the different groups that participate interact and influence one another and what are the main communication problems? Why are gay men murdered and how could these killings be prevented? Is public sex in a Latin country always progressive?

To answer these questions, the Research Department of ILPES began a qualitative and quantitative investigation in 1989 which has taken almost a decade. Our main mission, as always, was to investigate patterns of gay behavior in order to take effective prevention measures against HIV infection. It has never been our interest to denounce these activities nor to persecute those who practice them. On the contrary, we believe that public sex provides a number of opportunities that enable a sector of the population to "work through" certain problems of sexual communication and even to learn about safe sex. Therefore, we use fictitious names for people and places and have changed the locations and some of their characteristics to protect the people who have helped us so much in this investigation. We are also aware of the great dangers that lie in wait for participants and have thus paid considerable attention to them. In recent years, many gay men have been murdered by clients who frequent public sex places and we believe that our study can offer some basic safety rules.

One of ILPES objectives is the empowerment of sexual minorities. We feel that these groups have not had much of a voice, and have been still less the subject of social research in Latin America. Although traditional studies usually quote their interviewees, the latter tend to remain under the dictates of the author, who provides us with the overall and final interpretations. In our case, we have tried to give a greater participation to our respondents, respecting their language and their way of seeing things, as well as giving them a voice in many of our analyses. We have found, for example, that criminals can analyze their own crimes better than we can, and also that active participants in public places can be excellent ethnographers. However, this way of democratizing a research project also has its problems. There were times when we would have wished that much of the data gathered were more politically correct and that the language used by these minorities were less coarse and rude to sensitive ears. We would also have preferred a less homophobic brand of humor from our interviewees, including the gays themselves. But we believe it is better to portray them as they really are, without the terrible censorship of their language that is so characteristic of Latin American social science.

This study was carried out by a team of professionals who are in the vanguard of research on sexual minorities. Among them are Rodrigo Vargas, a statistician and key organizer of this study; Dino Starcevic, a journalist; Luis Villalta, coordinator of the Listen to Your Voice project for former prison inmates, who carried out the research with the police officers; Antonio Bustamante, director of the El Salon program for juvenile delinquents in street gangs; Abelardo Araya, coordinator of the Movimiento 5 de Abril program for gays and lesbians who assisted in the ethnographic observation of public places; Lidia Montero, director of the ILPES publishing company; and Hector Elizondo, coordinator of the 2828 program for young street gays, who helped me contact many of the sex workers.

To all of them, my most sincere appreciation for their great work.

Despite the enormous debt I owe to all who participated in this study, the responsibility is mine alone.