Abstract
The pages of Latin American AIDS offer a problematic look at the representation of the infected, portraying unsettling methods of gender-based exclusion of female carriers of the virus. HIV-positive women hardly appear in the writing of the epidemic, and the few transvestites are subject to ridicule and increasing violence as carriers of a particular femininity in the biological body of a man (Gilman, “AIDS and Syphilis”). This exclusion was not only the result of a direct intervention by traditional society against those affected or suspected of being affected by the disease, against all those it saw as undermining the self-sufficiency of capitalism. Dramatically, the texts also reveal the internalization of those prejudices by the sexual minorities themselves, prejudices that they used against each other. The main sufferers of the epidemic were caught up in a tide of mutual suspicion that predated the crisis. And it was AIDS that sparked the conflict between the two most afflicted communities: women (especially feminists, who added the virus to their agenda combating all forms of male violence) and sexual dissidents (especially transvestites), who saw AIDS as embodying a historical discrimination.
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Notes
The novels discussed by this critic are Alberto Fuguet’s Mala onda (1991; Bad Vibes),
Mario Bellatin’s Salón de belleza (1994),
Diamela Eltit’s Los vigilantes (1994; The vigilantes),
Fernando Vallejo’s La virgen de los sicarios (1994; Our Lady of the Assassins),
Mayra Montero’s Tú la oscuridad (1995; In the Palm of Darkness),
and Ricardo Piglia’s Plata quemada (1997; Burnt Money).
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© 2014 Lina Meruane
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Meruane, L. (2014). Female Disappearance Syndrome. In: Viral Voyages. New Directions in Latino American Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137394996_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137394996_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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