SeriousMaricasand Their Male Concubines

Seeking Trans History and Intimacy in Argentine Police and Prison Records, 1921-1945

Bibliographic Data

ID2789592
AuthorsJavier Fernández-Galeano, Mir Yarfitz
Year2023
Volume103
Issue4
Pages651-678
Publication date2023-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00182168-10797831
OpenAlexW4383373930
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited38

State, legal, and medical experts in early twentieth-century Argentina conflated what would today be distinguished as same-sex attraction and trans or nonbinary gender experience. An urban subculture of self-styled maricas was pathologized by criminologists and occasionally targeted by police. Scholarship on these subjects has often focused on medical and cultural representation, situating maricas in the genealogy of homosexuality. This article brings insights from trans studies to several microhistories from police and prison archives in Rosario and Buenos Aires in order to focus on sociocultural practices. In their courtship rituals, romantic and sexual relationships, and household roles, Emilia, Dora, and La Lita engaged both respectability and sexual playfulness as modes of feminine expression

Courtship · Criminology · Homosexuality · Political science · Prison · Psychoanalysis · Representation (politics) · Romance · Scholarship · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · State (computer science) · Subculture (biology) · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Psychology · Sex work and related issues

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