La Frontera: The Mexican and U.S. Gay Male Border Crossings of the 1970s

The “gay 1970s” took place in different languages and locations, not only in English or in the United States. Shared linguistic roots make it obvious why Mexico City’s FHAR (Frente Homosexual de Acción Revolucionaria) emerged in the late 1970s just a few years after Paris’ FHAR (Front Homosexuel D’Action Revolutionnaire) had folded.  Ideological, automotive, and air travel made transnational political and erotic relations possible, making the homoerotic a rich space for organizing and conceiving social change across borders. Drawing on 1970s Mexican/U.S. border culture and the first examples of gay print culture from Mexico, Horacio Roque Ramírez considers how Mexican gay activists understood the U.S. gay 1970s, and how gay Chicano/Latino men in the U.S. consumed gay Mexican politics, cultures, and erotics.