AHA Session 315
Conference on Latin American History 63
LGBTQ+ History Association 13
Conference on Latin American History 63
LGBTQ+ History Association 13
Monday, January 6, 2025: 9:00 AM-10:30 AM
Petit Trianon (New York Hilton, Third Floor)
Chair:
Juan Carlos Mezo-González, University of Toronto
Papers:
Session Abstract
This session explores queer Spanish-language publishing by examining the transnational circulation of queer publications—including ‘zines, homo-erotica, and memoirs—as well as the the transnational transmission of news about gender non-conforming individuals. It discusses diverse and under examined topics such as the representation of women in gay men’s press, gay autobiographies’ use of Catholic notions of guilt, sin, and redemption; and queer Mexicans’ appropriation of U.S.-based underground publishing. The session presents perspectives not addressed in English-language queer scholarship about the Hispanic world, particularly the transnational collaboration between activists, the agency of Latin American queer publishers and their appropriation of techniques from English-language queer and straight publishing. An important aspect evident in these papers is how Latin Americans’ travel, residence, and work abroad gave them insight into U.S., and European queer lives and culture, and this positioned them as interlocutors or mediators between different queer communities. Anne Rubenstein examines an underground lesbian and feminist comic published in Mexico City and San Francisco in the late 1980s and early 1990s that documented the struggles of daily lesbian life in Mexico during the transition from one-party rule to democracy that coincided with the adoption of NAFTA and the rise of queer publishing. Noe Pliego Campos analyzes a popular 1980s Mexico City gay male magazine that included erotica and community news, not to examine gay men’s culture, but to study how it examined the lesbian community, its use of personal columns, and the imagery of women to better understand how women explored their gender and sexuality. Luis de Pablo Hammeken examines how a queer autobiographical best-seller of the 1950s deployed Catholic notions of sin mediated gay men’s exploration of their gender and sexuality and compares elements in a queer tenor’s memoirs with autobiographies published in the 1990s by an exiled queer Spanish performer and an influential Mexican poet, columnist, and bureaucrat. Macías-González explores how Spanish newspapers covered news of the first gender reassignment in 1950s Mexico and how the political and economic situation of Spain under Franco mediated an event that some Mexicans perceived as emblematic of the scientific and medical advances of post-Revolutionary Mexico. These four papers shed light on how political transition and economic crisis in the 1950s and 1980s (roughly the beginning and end of the so-called Mexican and Spanish “Miracles”) affected gender and sexuality. These scholars examine how the publications reflected the effects of periods of transition on LGBTQ+ persons’ lives. The panel makes strong contributions to the history of the press and to the circulation of Mexican publications and news about Mexico in the U.S. and Europe. Rubenstein’s offers innovative fundings that show how queer and feminist publishers in Mexico appropriated techniques and visual culture from U.S. The panel also makes important contributions to the under-studied topic of Mexican lesbian publishing and visual culture in the 1980s and 1990s.