Nicaragua gay club

Richard Ammon. A brief guest commentary by an academic observer reports on the homosexual patterns in this small country long wracked with civil war and politcal corruption. At the same time, Latin-America is since long strongly influenced by western models of homosexuality, so i n most bigger cities exists also a gay culture of bars, journals and movements that is oriented on nicaragua United States and Europe.

All shades of effeminacy are present: from the effeminate queers to drag queens and transsexuals. Nicaragua has known recently a turbulent political history swinging from an ultraconservative Somoza to a communist Sandinistas regime while there is now a broad democratic coalition. Under this new administration, the Catholic Church that is staunchly anti-homosexualhas gained influence.

Perhaps to get the support of the church, nicaragua new government has introduced anti-homosexual legislation. This is an amazing development because the general trend, also in Latin-America, is of a stronger gay movement and more gay rights. The peculiar political and legal situation of Nicaragua will be certainly topic of research in some case studies.

The city of Managuathe capital of a million inhabitants where somewhat more than a quarter of the Nicaraguan population lives, has been struck by several devastating earthquakesthe last one in that completely destroyed the center of the city which has never been completely rebuilt. As there is no clear center to the city, gay spaces are spread over the city and miss a club focus.

As the restructuring of urban spaces has been quite recent and only started recently, we will try to find out how certain places have become gay spaces. It has always been an enigma how spaces turn gay and in this case there might be histories or myths about the origin of homosexual spots.

The main places are nowadays the ruins of the cathedral, the Central Park, the Ruben Dario Theatre and along the shores of Lake Managua. These places are active from the late afternoon until eleven in the evening. But in fact, any place lends itself to homosexual encounters. It can happen on markets, street corners, in shopping centers, at bus stops.

The three bars that exist nowadays, function as a kind of focus for a core group of western-style gays. But most of gay life is elsewhere, in the streets, parks and among the ruins of Managua. The machismo-system in particular allows a strong sexual border traffic between at one hand the macho-men and at the other hand the maricone s and also youth that are willingly or unwillingly involved in the erotic games of adult men.

The system gives a clear structure to homosexual arrangements, but as is clear from the literature Gay ; Lancaster ; Carrierin general men can find their own club niche in this system, being masculine but also gay or being macho but also interested in anal penetration.

Much depends on public appearance : as long as you look like gay macho, other people will make no qualms about sexual digressions unless they have some good reason.

List of Gay bar in Nicaragua

Most people are aware of the limitations of the system and close an eye on transgressions that are kept private and silent. Nicaragua knows a specific word for the Latin-American maricone, "cochon" that clearly stems from the French and means "pig". It is a very harsh word for passive gay men. As nothing is known about the specific Nicaraguan vocabulary, research has to be done in this field.

There is no strong feeling of identity or community for men involved in homosexual behavior, except for the maricones who have a strong sense of identity and for the western style gay s who have a sense both of identity and community. For them, there exist now three bars and two gay movements Nimehuatzin and Xochiquetza l while gay demonstrations have been held.