Latinos and Homosexuality

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how Latinos come from a very strongly gender-differentiated culture where machismo rules, leading to the "blackening" of homosexuality, and causing it to become taboo. It analyzes how this has led to many problems, most notably high rates of HIV infection among Latinos and, subsequently, Latinas, who are typically married to a secretly gay husband who contracts HIV with his male partner and then transmits it to the wife. It also looks at the differences between homosexual Latinos and Caucasian homosexuals and how Latino homosexuals are treated within their communities, by their families, and within Latin America as a whole.

From the Paper:

"These are the traditional gender divisions within latino communities, although in some countries, such as Colombia, and in immigrant communities within the US, for example, these traditional cultural values are becoming more fluid, and women are generally being allowed more liberation. This is not the case, however, for homosexuals.
The macho latino culture does not see homosexuality as a viable option, with the culture defining the homosexual act as somehow against nature, against the dictates of Catholicism, and against all the latino cultural values, of familismo, machismo, etc. Homosexuals, in both genders, are therefore frowned upon, still, by the latino community."

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