The Night is Young: Sexuality in Mexico in the Time of AIDS (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture)
Carrillo, a researcher for the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at UC-San Francisco, studies changing patterns of sexual identity and sexual practices in Mexican society, carefully elucidating a wide range of gender and sexual arrangements that affect AIDS planning and education there. A man's sexual identity, for instance, is often determined by his being the active or passive partner rather then by traditionally named categories of "homosexual" and "heterosexual." While the common view of a bisexual identity is "overwhelmingly negative," people who sleep with members of their own sex but whose primary identity is heterosexual are seemingly not judged harshly. Using an ethnographic model, Carrillo observes and documents his Guadalajara subjects' physical, emotional and psychological responses to the increasing AIDS epidemic in the early 1990s. The traditional view of the "good" and "bad" woman in Mexican culture, the role of "passion" and a complex culture of machismo all affect how AIDS is perceived and how safe-sex education has been shaped in Mexico.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.