Abstract:Violence and resistance among travesti prostitutes in Lima, Peru Summary: Based on ethnographic observations and detailed interviews, this article analyzes the unequal power struggle between different agents involved with transvesti prostitution in the urban margins of southern Lima, the capital of Peru. If young transvestis are the targets of violence and subject to forms of domination by customers and the police, they react by implementing oppositional strategies to make sex trade possible and ensure their o… Show more
The Ball of La Laguna was an infamous cross-dressing ball that ended in a police raid, media scandal, and public uproar on the night of January 31, 1959, in Lima, Peru. Hundreds of maricón (queer) couples attended the ball sporting masculine and feminine attire — unaware of the moral panic that would soon unfold across the city. How did class, race, and gender inequalities shape La Laguna? How did they shape heteronormative reactions to the ball? How can we understand the meanings of (homo)sexuality and cross-dressing at the ball? This essay answers these questions by conducting a content analysis of five newspapers, two magazines, a cartoon, an invitation to the ball, a video advertisement, and three oral history interviews. The Ball of La Laguna reveals that the class, race, and gender inequalities that have structured Peruvian society since colonial times also structured maricón social worlds and the policing of their communities. All attendees experienced homophobic treatment in the aftermath of the ball, but Indigeneity, femininity, and a lower-class status compounded these inequalities. La Laguna enables us to describe maricón social worlds in mid-twentieth-century Lima from an intersectional class, race, and gender perspective, which contributes to the growing literature on cross-dressing practices in twentieth-century Latin America and, more broadly, to the hemispheric turn in queer studies.
The Ball of La Laguna was an infamous cross-dressing ball that ended in a police raid, media scandal, and public uproar on the night of January 31, 1959, in Lima, Peru. Hundreds of maricón (queer) couples attended the ball sporting masculine and feminine attire — unaware of the moral panic that would soon unfold across the city. How did class, race, and gender inequalities shape La Laguna? How did they shape heteronormative reactions to the ball? How can we understand the meanings of (homo)sexuality and cross-dressing at the ball? This essay answers these questions by conducting a content analysis of five newspapers, two magazines, a cartoon, an invitation to the ball, a video advertisement, and three oral history interviews. The Ball of La Laguna reveals that the class, race, and gender inequalities that have structured Peruvian society since colonial times also structured maricón social worlds and the policing of their communities. All attendees experienced homophobic treatment in the aftermath of the ball, but Indigeneity, femininity, and a lower-class status compounded these inequalities. La Laguna enables us to describe maricón social worlds in mid-twentieth-century Lima from an intersectional class, race, and gender perspective, which contributes to the growing literature on cross-dressing practices in twentieth-century Latin America and, more broadly, to the hemispheric turn in queer studies.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.