[Reconsideration of the Latin lover. An etno-communicational vignette with a moral]

The latin lover is a model of the self-fulfilling prophecy: you have to believe in him to be able to find him. The sequence that produces the latin lover includes the following ingredients: a) the "neutral" face-to-face distance for Latins is similar to the "seductive" face-to-face distance of non-Latins (more specifically, of Anglo-Saxons and Nord-Europeans); b) non-Latins do not detect the influence of their own cultural stereotype, the "Latin Lover", in their perception of the other's behavior; c) if the non-Latin choses to contribute his/her own share of seductive behavior, he/she will label that performance as a "response" to the message attributed to the Latin; d) the Latin, in turn, is forced by the pressures of his own cultural stereotypes to respond to a seductive advance with more seductive behavior; he labels his own behavior as a "response" to uncalled for behavior on the part of the non-Latin; e) that readiness to escalate seduction reinforces, in the eyes of the non-Latin, the first meaning attributed to that spacial choice behavior of the Latin. The case illustrates certain notions of communication theory, especially issues of "punctuation" and text-context relationships.