"A vivid analysis of how many Latin Americans have crafted alternative modes of understanding sexuality."
--"Hispanic American Historical Review"

From its sweaty beats to the pulsating music on the streets, Latin/o America is perceived in the United States as the land of heat, the toy store for Western sex. It is the territory of magical fantasy and of revolutionary threat, where topography is the travel guide of desire, directing imperial voyeurs to the exhibition of the flesh.

Jose Quiroga flips the stereotype upside down: he shows how Latin/o American lesbians and gay men have consistently eschewed notions of sexual identity for a politics of intervention. In Tropics of Desire, Quiroga reads hesitant Mexican poets as sex-positive voices, he questions how outing and identity politics can fall prey to the manipulations of the state, and explores how invisibility has been used as a tactical tool in opposition to the universal imperative to come out.

Drawing on diverse cultural examples such as the performance of bolero and salsa, film, literature, and correspondence, and influenced by masters like Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin and a rich tradition of Latin American stylists, Quiroga argues for a politics that denies biological determinism and cannibalizes cultural stereotypes for the sake of political action.

Football is the most popular sport on earth, and a near-universal means of expressing collective identification. This book investigates the uses made of football to create, shape and foster national identities in Spain since the beginning of the twentieth century. Its focus is on the manner in which football reporting has been utilized to cultivate Spanish, Catalan and Basque national myths and stereotypes in different historical circumstances. Football and National Identities in Spain shows the changing and artificial nature of myths and exposes the often dark vested interests behind the propagation of national narratives through soccer. This book analyses Spanish, British, French, German and Italian media to tell the fascinating story of how the Spanish national team went from perennial underachiever to one of the most lauded in the history of the game and the profound implications this transformation had for the national and international image of Spain.

This book investigates the use of football to create, shape and promote Spanish, Catalan and Basque national identities and explores the utilization of soccer to foster patriotic feelings, exposing the often dark vested interests behind the propagation of national narratives through soccer.

The regime of Primo de Rivera in Spain was one of the major dictatorships of the interwar period. Making Spaniards examines how the military regime created nationalist doctrine, rituals and symbols and how these were transmitted throughout Spanish society in an attempt to 'make' new authoritarian Spaniards and halt democratic reform. In doing so, the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera also elaborated many of the political ideas that eventually became key principles of the Franco dictatorship.

The regime of Primo de Rivera in Spain was one of the major dictatorships of the interwar period. Making Spaniards examines how the military regime created nationalist doctrine, rituals and symbols and how these were transmitted throughout Spanish society in an attempt to 'make' new authoritarian Spaniards and halt democratic reform.

"A vivid analysis of how many Latin Americans have crafted alternative modes of understanding sexuality."
--"Hispanic American Historical Review"

From its sweaty beats to the pulsating music on the streets, Latin/o America is perceived in the United States as the land of heat, the toy store for Western sex. It is the territory of magical fantasy and of revolutionary threat, where topography is the travel guide of desire, directing imperial voyeurs to the exhibition of the flesh.

Jose Quiroga flips the stereotype upside down: he shows how Latin/o American lesbians and gay men have consistently eschewed notions of sexual identity for a politics of intervention. In Tropics of Desire, Quiroga reads hesitant Mexican poets as sex-positive voices, he questions how outing and identity politics can fall prey to the manipulations of the state, and explores how invisibility has been used as a tactical tool in opposition to the universal imperative to come out.

Drawing on diverse cultural examples such as the performance of bolero and salsa, film, literature, and correspondence, and influenced by masters like Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin and a rich tradition of Latin American stylists, Quiroga argues for a politics that denies biological determinism and cannibalizes cultural stereotypes for the sake of political action.