In Nicaragua: homosexuality without a gay world

This paper addresses the social construction of homosexual relations among men in Nicaragua in the late 1980s. The political economy of a nation, subjected to a devastating war by the United States, created conditions where sexual relations among men have not become organized into a gay world which would be familiar to North Americans and Europeans. Rather, homosexually-inclined men remain fully integrated in family and neighborhood life where they are often "known about" but not "recognized," a condition which dissolves separateness but also suppresses the development of a gay culture beyond the bounds of heterosexist expectations.