Table Of ContentRepResentations of HiV/aiDs in
ContempoRaRy Hispano-ameRiCan anD
CaRibbean CultuRe
The Cultural Politics of Media
and Popular Culture
series editor:
C. Richard King, Washington State University, USA
Dedicated to a renewed engagement with culture, this series fosters critical, contextual
analyses and cross-disciplinary examinations of popular culture as a site of cultural
politics. it welcomes theoretically grounded and critically engaged accounts of the politics of
contemporary popular culture and the popular dimensions of cultural politics. Without
being aligned to a specific theoretical or methodological approach, The Cultural Politics
of Media and Popular Culture publishes monographs and edited collections that promote
dialogues on central subjects, such as representation, identity, power, consumption,
citizenship, desire and difference.
offering approachable and insightful analyses that complicate race, class, gender,
sexuality, (dis)ability and nation across various sites of production and consumption,
including film, television, music, advertising, sport, fashion, food, youth, subcultures
and new media, The Cultural Politics of Media and Popular Culture welcomes work that
explores the importance of text, context and subtext as these relate to the ways in which
popular culture works alongside hegemony.
Also available in this series:
The American Imperial Gothic
Popular Culture, Empire, Violence
Johan Höglund
isbn: 978-1-4094-4954-6
Media and the Rhetoric of Body Perfection
Cosmetic Surgery, Weight Loss and Beauty in Popular Culture
Deborah Harris-moore
isbn: 978-1-4094-6944-5
Disability, Obesity and Ageing
Popular Media Identifications
Debbie Rodan, Katie ellis and pia lebeck
isbn: 978-1-4094-4051-2
Representations of HIV/AIDS
in Contemporary
Hispano-American and
Caribbean Culture
Cuerpos suiSIDAs
GustaVo subeRo
Regent’s University London, UK
© Gustavo subero 2014
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Gustavo subero has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and patents act, 1988, to be
identified as the author of this work.
published by
ashgate publishing limited ashgate publishing Company
Wey Court east 110 Cherry street
union Road suite 3-1
farnham burlington, Vt 05401-3818
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www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
a catalogue record for this book is available from the british library
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
subero, Gustavo.
Representations of HiV/aiDs in contemporary Hispano-american and Caribbean culture :
cuerpos suisiDas / by Gustavo subero.
pages cm. — (the cultural politics of media and popular culture)
includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-4724-2595-9 (hardback) — isbn 978-1-4724-2596-6 (ebook) —
isbn 978-1-4724-2597-3 (epub) 1. HiV infections—united states. 2. HiV infections—
Caribbean area. 3. aiDs (Disease)—united states. 4. aiDs (Disease)—Caribbean area. 5.
Hispanic americans—social conditions. 6. Caribbean area—social conditions. i. title. ii.
title: Cuerpos suisiDas.
Ra643.83.s83 2014
362.19697’92008968073—dc23
2013039371
isbn 9781472425959 (hbk)
isbn 9781472425966 (ebk – pDf)
isbn 9781472425973 (ebk – epub)
III
To my parents
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xxiii
1 HIV/AIDS, Deviance and Plague Imagery in Anahi Berneri’s
Un año sin amor and Jochen Hick’s Via Appia 1
2 Constructing the Visual Rhetoric of AIDS in the Photographic
Work of Mario Vivado and Hector Toscano 19
3 HIV, Edu-entertainment and Female Subjectivity in
La cara oculta de la luna 45
4 Mapping Hetero/Homo-sexuality on the Caribbean Male,
HIV Body 69
5 Narrativizing HIV Positive Bodies in the Literatures of
Hispano-America 91
Bibliography 127
Index 141
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Preface
In 1989 Willie Colon’s Simón el gran varón became a huge hit with Hispanic
audiences in Latin America, North American and the Caribbean. The song was
written by Omar Alfanno and tells the story of Simón, a boy who is raised
by an overtly machista father and expected to be his father’s mirror image.
However, once he grows up and leaves the parental home to study abroad, he
becomes a transvestite. One day Simón decides to pay a surprise visit to his
father and turns up dressed in ‘falda, lápiz labial y un carterón’.1 He is then
unsurprisingly rejected and disowned by his father. In the end, Simón will die
alone in a hospital from ‘una extraña enfermedad’.2 I remember clearly when I
first heard the song, how massive it became and how dreadful it made me feel
about myself. As a child, I remember being teased in the school playground and
called Simón by other children because I did not project an overt macho image
of myself. I remember only too well the feeling of uneasiness that the song
provoked in me every time I heard it (which was often as it was so famous). I
remember the discussions surrounding the song, and what it signified, by the
adults around me. Simón (and little did they know, myself too) was the object
of derision and mockery, a warning to those who dared deviate from traditional
gender behaviour and a lesson to be learnt by ‘real’ men. At a time where very
little scientific rationale was provided in relation to AIDS (and subsequently
HIV), the only sources of information available to most of the population
(especially in countries that had not been directly affected by the virus) were
those that circulated in the popular imaginary through the media and other
forms of popular culture. Although it is hard to document whether Colón’s
song was intended to demonize or raise awareness about AIDS, the cultural
reappropriation of the song seemed to merely serve the former. El gran varón
reaffirmed the association between homosexuality, male effeminacy and AIDS.
After all, all gay men are extremely effeminate, desire to become women and,
as is only logical, will die of AIDS because of their unnatural sexual practices.
Regardless of the true nature of the song, it became an emblem of
homophobia and, more specifically, AIDS-phobia. As Steven Brown and Ulrik
Volgsten argue in their work on music and manipulation, ‘music would seem to
work through a peripheral route of persuasion, operating more as a reinforcer
1 A skirt, lipstick and handbag. (All translations unless otherwise stated are the
author’s own.)
2 A strange illness.
