1898 and the History of a Queer Puerto Rican Century

It is commonly known that when Spanish and other European explorers arrived in what we now refer to as the Americas, the indigenous populations practiced sexualities contrary to those deemed acceptable in the Old World. ¹ Colonial documents and narrations show how countless efforts were engaged in by both clerical and political authorities hell-bent on eradicating such “barbarous” customs as homosexual sex, referred to as sodomy, practiced by the native inhabitants of these continents. ² Documents of the Inquisition have also shown how Europeans and Africans were accused of these proscribed activities in the Americas during the period of the colony, while nineteenth- and early twentieth-century medical and criminal records have been useful for scholars studying countries as diverse as Argentina and Cuba in their attempt to reconstruct and analyze discourses and technologies for the control of sexuality of those years. ³