Chicano Men: A Cartography of Homosexual Identity and Behavior

Sociologist Tomas Almaguer explores the sexual behavior and sexual identity of Chicanos and states that “Chicano men who embrace a ‘gay’ identity must reconcile this sexual identity with their primary socialization into a Latino culture that does not recognize this construction.” He argues there is a dominant “European-American sexual system,” With this statement, Almaguer discusses there is no cultural equivalent to the modern ‘gay man’ in the Latin American sexual system. He further explains that the gay Chicano male suffers double marginalization, in which a man is identified first as a Chicano, then as a homosexual.

I found this essay somewhat compelling and troubling because it taxonomizes and evaluates secual practive in which the Chicano gay men engaged. I thought the essay was a bit aggressive, and an intervention into the sexual spaces of Chicano gay men. From this reading, I find that Amaguer’s theory was that in contemporary United States sexual categories are defined (in terms of sexual preference), and in the Mexican/Latino sexual system, homosexuality is defined not by object choice, but the distribution of power. For instance, he explains that Chicano men are able to engage in homosexual acts without depleting their masculinity or heterosexual ‘persona’. As a result, there is no cultural equivalent to the modern “gay man” in the Mexican/Latin American sexual system.