SOURCE: "The Sociopolitical Matrix," in Gay and Lesbian Themes in Latin American Writing, University of Texas Press, 1991, pp. 62-93.

Foster is an American writer and educator, and the author of numerous books on Latin American literature. In the following excerpt, he examines the manner is which recent Latin American novels have portrayed social and political issues associated with homosexuality.

From the concept of the noble savage in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and in Claude Levi-Strauss's lamentation, Tristes tropiques, drawn from his experience as an anthropologist in Brazil, on the destruction of the observed by the observer (H. V. White), it has been widely held that the founding of Latin American culture meant a tragic conflict between natura and cultura. Although the indianista/indigenista component of Latin American thought maintains the more strictly anthropological view that pre-Columbian nature has been suffocated by the imposition of European culture, other...