BODIES FOR SALE. PINGUERISMO AND NEGOTIATED MASCULINITY IN CONTEMPORARY CUBA

This essay relates the research of a kind of male subjects (pingueros) inserted in the informal economy of pleasure linked to the tourism in Cuba. Studying their performance on homoerotic circuits in Havana, the text analyses how the pingueros when dealing with foreigners negotiate masculinity and identity; it also discusses the locally constructed concepts of gender and sexuality, on one hand, and nation and survival on the other. Finally it links the sexual tourism with the contradictions inside the revolutionary model ...