Latin America Gender

The Construction of Gender Structure in Latin America

The construction of homosexuality has evolved overtime in Latin America.  In the Americas, Pre-Hispanic societies practiced same sex relationships but lacked a specific word to define same sex couples.  Within their societies, there was no distinction between homosexual and heterosexual couples.  Within a couple, the gender of eachindividual was defined by the role they played and not their biological sex.  It was not until their forced contact with European culture, specifically language and religion, that a term for homosexual practices was coined and became a representation of a person.  According to Ferdinand Saussure, one of the founding fathers of Semiotics, “Every language is a system, a set of interrelated signs inwhich each unit does not exist independently but finds its identity and its validity within the system relation and opposition to other elements of the same (Hualde et al., 2001).” Based on this concept, if cultures, such as pre-Hispanic cultures, do not have a word for, or conception of, heterosexual then they cannot define it’s opposite, homosexual.  Homosexual and heterosexual are both part ofthe same concept, sexuality, and exist on opposites poles of sexuality to give definition to one another. In this paper, the word gay will be analyzed to illustrate Saussure's concept.   
 
According to http://www.merriam-webster.com, the word Gay originated in the 14th century and signified happy or free-willed.  Etymonline.com claims that by the 17th century, the term became associatedwith brothels and prostitutes.  According to Etymonline.com, “A gay woman was a prostitute… and a gay house a brothel.”  The term gay quickly became associated with abnormal sexual activity and started to carry a negative association of immorality and sin.  Over time, as this negative association solidified and intensified, the word "gay" was no longer simply associated with abnormal sexual activity.Instead, it became a symbol carrying a broader meaning of immorality and sin that did not necessarily have any direct relation to homosexuality itself.  By tracing the history of the word "gay" it is possible to understand how, depending on the environment and social factors, a signifier adopts different meanings and transforms into a broader symbol. This essay will use the signifier to symbolmodel described above to demonstrate how everyday language reflects how gender and sexuality are constructed throughout in different periods and localities in Latin America. This study will focus on four key historical eras of Latin America. First, we will analyze the initial contact of European and pre-Hispanic societies to understand how the concept of homosexuality was introduced to the NewWorld. Then, the focus will shift to the Porfiriato Era in Mexico to explore how the newly independent Latin American societies negotiated the concept of homosexuality and its effects on gender structure. Finally, we will focus on the construction of the homosexual identity in the United States and how it has influenced Latin American societies.

During the fifteen century at the early stagesof European exploration of the New World, the encounter of Spanish explorers with Native Americans resulted in a clash of cultures and gender perceptions. Serena Nanda, in “Multiple Genders Among North American Indians,” states that within Native American societies gender was defined by an individual’s behavior, in contrast to European societies where gender is directly tied to the sex of theindividual (Nanda, 2000). According to the Nanda, “the Spanish explorers were filled with contempt and outrage when they recorded the presence of men in American Indian societies who performed the work of women, dressed like women, and had sexual relations with men (Nanda, 2000).” The Spanish explores were processing this information through their preconceived notion of what was acceptable gender...