ABSTRACT
Exclusive homosexual businesses and gathering places (much less neighborhoods) are exceedingly rare in Mexico and an overt gay world such as we have in the U.S. is almost nonexistent. Essentially, in urban U.S. "gaylife," social interaction is ghettoized; in its Mexican counterpart (Ambiente in homosexual slang) such interaction often takes place in heterogeneous locales. For example, between 1960 and 1984 in Mexico City, one of the largest cities in the world, while there was abundant homosexual social life, there were never more than six or seven exclusively homosexual establishments in operation at anyone time, and there were no exclusively gay baths. This situation takes on particular significance when compared to such cities as New York and Los Angeles which have long had hundreds of homosexual establishments each (Dameron, 1974).
