Sexuality In Gil Cuadros City Of God

The regulated and heteronormative sexuality embedded in Mexican culture is not a secret, nor is it a rarity. It is, however, exclusionary for nominating a style of heterosexual sex as the ideal sexuality. On Mexican culture and this ideal, in “Queer Aztlán: Re-formation of the Tribe,” Cherrie Moraga notes, “Since lesbians and gay men have often been forced out of our blood families…. we are in a critical position to address those areas within our cultural that needs to change” (232). Gil Cuadros’ City of God addresses the problem areas in Mexican culture that Moraga mentions. In the first part of the collection, Cuadros presents short stories that highlight the fault in historic and traditional views on sexuality held by older Mexican generations,

This makes reference to the logic that allowed Anglo-Americans to justify the absorption of Mexican land. In this reference, Cuadros intimates a sense of historic lingering within the Mexican community. Deep-rooted like the rows of vegetables are the scars of manifest destiny and hindering notions of an ideal sexuality. Like an effigy for the stubbornness of Mexican wounds, amongst the crops stands a scarecrow with “dry weeds for hair” and “a flimsy brown dress,” like the narrator had seen on Evelyn during their first meeting (14). Cuadros not only implicates Evelyn as an innocent within the specific storyline but he also grants pardon to all sexuality that is deviant from the sexual regulation in Mexican culture, specifically to the young gay narrator. The narrator has not yet experienced overt homophobia directed at himself, though the seeds of intolerance have been implanted through his family members, who are proprietors of an established tradition of

Their “special friendship” is a euphemism for their romantic attachment but the more compelling part of this statement is his grandfather’s cancer. Just sentences before, Reynaldo’s mom is said to say that Reynaldo has cancer as well and their close proximity is likely not a coincidence. It can be inferred that Reynaldo’s grandfather also had AIDS, whether anyone knew it or not, due to the fact that AIDS cases were undocumented and few until the 1980s