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2. Tourism and Tigueraje: The Structures of Love and Silence among Dominican Male Sex Workers
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38 2 Tourism and Tigueraje The Structures of Love and Silence among Dominican Male SexWorkers Mark B. Padilla Global markets and multinational corporations [are] key sites of the making and transformation of a global gender order. —R. W. Connell On the popular radio programs that continuously emanate from the colmados (small corner stores) throughout the Dominican Republic, bachateros and merengueros1 often sing of the comic-tragic strategies that men employ in their (variously successful) attempts to evade detection during extra-marital affairs. Men frequently gather around a dominoes game or a bottle of Brugal (a popular local rum) or Presidente (the pervasive local beer), listening to the newest hits from Raulin, or Zacarias, or Los Toros, and participating in what has become a rather significant global market for Dominican popular music. These men also reflect what has come to be an iconic—and somewhat essentialized—image of the Caribbean man “on the corner.” During my fieldwork in two cities (Santo Domingo and Boca Chica) on the south coast, I was often struck by the ways that social interaction among groups of men is interwoven with the gendered meanings of the music that pervades homosocial masculine spaces. While there is much ethnomusicological work yet to be done on the gendered meanings embedded in Dominican popular music styles, scholars have noted the tendency to depict women as either entirely deceived by their maridos/ esposos or as tragically martyred by their husbands’ uncontrollable philandering. In one popular merengue by Luis Días, Me Dejaste Sola (You left me alone), for example , the female protagonist laments: Te emborrachaste, pagué la cuenta, Y tú, de jumo, no [te] diste cuenta. Tenía[s] queri[d]as por todas partes. No te hice nada y me deshonraste. This chapter is adapted from sections of the author’s book Caribbean Pleasure Industry: Tourism, Sexuality, and AIDS in the Dominican Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). Tourism andTigueraje 39 You got drunk, I paid the bill, In your stupor, you didn’t even notice. You had girlfriends all over the place. I didn’t do anything to you, and you degraded me. (Trans. Austerlitz 1997:118) The cultural models that circulate through such popular merengues and bachatas are refractions of Dominican gender relations, even as they represent highly stereotyped notions of masculinity and femininity.2 What is evident in the lyrics of these songs is a certain antagonism between men and women that is often rooted in infidelity , betrayal, and deceit. Frequently cast in a humorous tone, the gendered discourses that are promulgated by these musical forms reflect a characteristic feature of Dominican gender relations: the idea that men are incorrigible mujeriegos (womanizers ) or tígueres (roughly, tigers) who are continuously deceiving their female partners. This complex notion of tigueraje, in its general form, is central to the construction of Dominican masculinity. Many of its primary features—such as its emphasis on sexual conquest and infidelity—are characteristic of what numerous classic analyses of Caribbean gender relations have referred to as the masculine notion of “reputation ” among lower-class Caribbean men (Alexander 1984; Barrow 1996; Besson 1993; Olwig 1990; Press 1978; Wilson 1969). Nevertheless, as described by recent analyses of Dominican gender and sexuality (De Moya 2003; Krohn-Hansen 1996; Padilla 2007), the concept also incorporates meanings and practices that are particular to the Dominican Republic. Tíguere seems to have its root in the Spanish word for “tiger” (tigre) and has been interpreted as a partially resistant response by urban men to the particular configuration of state repression under the Trujillo dictatorship (1930–1961) (Krohn-Hansen 1996). The term is central to the construction of masculinity for men of all social classes and embodies a set of polyvalent meanings that are associated with a particular gender identity. The tíguere, while stereotypically lower-class, is also a certain kind of man that is superficially similar to Wilson’s man of reputation. In Santo Domingo, the term tíguere is often used to describe a man who regularly engages in a range of street behaviors, including drinking in all-male groups, carousing, womanizing , infidelity, aggression, and various kinds of delinquency. Yet the notion of tigueraje encompasses other qualities that are, perhaps, unique to Dominican gender constructions. In daily discourse, “tíguere” frequently indexes a kind of self-serving opportunism, deception, or avarice that is simultaneously disparaged and valorized. Men who take advantage of others for their personal gain are likely to be labeled tígueres by their...