Male homosexualities, aging and memory in Mato Grosso do Sul's Pantanal

Abstract

This project seeks to discuss and to analyze issues concerning male homosexualities, aging and memory focusing on Mato Grosso do Sul's Pantanal. The research will be developed from life history interviews with men over sixty years old with homosexual practices, living in Corumbá and in Ladário. These cities work as receptor poles of people from smaller towns around them. The interest of this project is for those migrants who saw, in the possibility of going to a bigger town, even if still in the countryside, the expectation of trying homosexual practices and sociabilities, still problematics in their hometown. The discussion between homosexuality and aging will have as guideline the study on the memory of those men, particularly in their expectation when they were young, late 70s, early 80s, time in which Mato Grosso do Sul state was created and where there was a precarious urbanization, but also a time in which the whole world started living the impact of HIV-AIDS epidemiology. These memories will be opposed to current life conditions. Among so many questions that this project tries to answer, maybe this one stands out: to what extent is it possible to say that old homosexuals live in a condition of marginalization and exclusion? (AU)