Just Between Us: An Ethnography of Male Identity and Intimacy in Rural Communities of Northern Mexico

Notes

191 Notes Introduction 1. My English version from the original in French : “S’il y a une chose qui m’intéresse aujourd’hui, c’est le problème de l’amitié. Au cours des siècles qui ont suivi l’Antiquit é, l’amitié a constitué un rapport social très important : un rapport social à l’intérieur duquel les individus disposaient d’une certaine liberté . . . qui leur permettai aussi de vivre des rapports affectifs très intenses. . . . Et l’une de mes hypothèses . . . est que l’homosexualité (par quoi j’entends l’existence de rapports sexuels entre les hommes) est devenue un problème à partir du XVIIIe siècle.. . .Tant que l’amitié a représenté quelque chose d’important, tant qu’elle a été socialement acceptée, personne ne s’est aperçu que les hommes avaient, entre eux, des rapports sexuels. . . . Qu’ils fassent l’amour ou qu’ils s’embrassent n’avait aucune importance . . . la disparition de l’amitié en tant que rapport social et le fait que l’homosexualité ait été déclarée problème social, politique et médical font partie du même processus.” 2. This image is identical in the posture to the one of Francisco and José Pedro. Unfortunately, Don José died before I could ask for a copy and his family lost the photograph . The picture we present is of two men, friends, of the same time and from the same Serrano region. I thank the family, Bojórquez López, for giving me permission to use the picture in this book. 3. The term gay and others such as joto or mayate are going to be analyzed extensively in this text because they are involved in a politics of meaning in the Mexican sexual/gender field. The term gay is used in this case and throughout this work to name people who call themselves by this category, mostly those who are urban, middle class, and young. In the last decade, however, this category of identity has been spreading rapidly even in lower classes and rural settings. 4. In the dominant sexual discourse, joto is the most common Mexican term to call a passive and effeminate partner in a homosexual encounter. In the same discourse, the active and masculine partner is called mayate. The political character of this 192 • Notes to Pages 6–28 discourse is widely analyzed in the chapters that follow. The English terms fairy and trade, as described by Chauncey in his study on homoerotic relations in New York City in the first decades of the twentieth century (1994), seem to better fit the Spanish terms. 5. The public expression of affection among friends in Mexico is by far more common and deeper than in the United States. Nevertheless, holding hands between men or between a man and a woman is seen as an expression of being in love. Nowadays, this is very common among young gay couples in Mexico City and in certain areas of urban centers such as Guadalajara or Morelia. Only in select indigenous communities did men used to hold hands as an expression of friendship. Contrary to the practice of men, everywhere in Mexico women usually express their friendship by holding hands. 6. I am assuming here Foucault’s theoretical definitions on power and freedom. Power is a social relation that works to structure the possibility of action. Freedom involves , therefore, the possibility for choice. Power is only possible when choice is possible in human action. If human actions were the product of “natural necessity” or “instincts,” it would be unnecessary to talk about power or freedom. 7. The term sex/gender regime is understood as a system—that is, a structure of relations —of social distinctions and power that has two major characteristics: it is androcentrist and heterosexist. The sex/gender regime produces different effects on people’s bodies, desires, subjectivities, and relations. The term patriarchy is sometimes used here and by certain authors as a synonym, even though we know that it originally referred to a particular configuration of the sex/gender system—in which the father exerted the economic, political, and symbolic power over an extended agro-pastoral family (see Lamas 1996). 8. Chapter 5 fully explores this dichotomous characterization of Mexican homoerotic experience. 9. An enunciation is, according to Foucault, the smallest unit of discourse containing an object of discourse. An interviewee’s expression “One has to be a real man and to have muchos güevos...