This study focuses on a sexual culture particular to Central American truck drivers. As Latin males, truckers are associated with a “macho” culture. We wish to discover the characteristics of this culture and how it functions in practice. We are also interested in finding out how this culture is influenced by social changes and how it reacts to these.
We hope that this analysis of a specific sexual culture, notorious for being “machista”, will contribute to the current debate. The question is whether “macho” culture is positive or negative (this being understood as sexist or non-sexist), or whether it is something inherent or built into Latin culture.
We seek to make a contribution on two fronts. On the one hand, we wish to demonstrate that “machismo” is a discourse, not a sexual culture that treats women as inferior and dependent beings, but one that does not manage to impose itself without resistance. This discourse fosters a double sexual standard in the region, differentiating and categorizing things that are permissible for men and women. However, material reality, competition from other discourses and the contradictions and resistances these generate, neutralize its imposition. The culture that emerges is a hybrid of different discourses and of characters that change according to the situation. It is what we term a “compartmentalized sexual culture”.
At the same time, we suggest that “machismo” is an historical construct that changes in space and time. “Machismo” is modified not only when variations occur in the material, social or political situation, but also during particular periods. In other words, it appears and disappears with great ease in the heads of those who practice it. We therefore attempt to analyze how and why truck drivers “take vacations” from the “machista” discourse and “travel” to other sexual cultures. In offering this new interpretation, we challenge the more traditional notions that tell us that “machos” are always sexist and homophobic. We hope to prove how their relationships with prostitutes and homosexuals reflect something more than exploitation and contempt.
In our view, the confusion that exists with respect to this phenomenon arises from the fact that a sexual culture is not the product of a single discourse, but rather that it interacts with other discourses and with the material reality in which it occurs. At the same time, we believe that Latin sexual culture is characterized by a greater “compartmentalization” between theory and practice and that individuals learn to express different viewpoints according to the place, person and the different environments they are in. This explains why men may express the precepts of one discourse at certain times, and totally opposite ideas at others. Truckers, as “macho” Latin males, construct a culture in which different sexual values prevail and in which each sphere or “compartment” is disconnected from the others. This is responsible for much of the confusion that is evident in the current literature.
This book is also a study of the relation between the sexual culture of truck drivers and the risk of HIV infection. Given that these truckers travel throughout Central America and Mexico, and that 12% reach the United States, the region will be vulnerable to an increase in HIV infection, unless prevention is incorporated into this culture. As we attempt to prove in this book, the prevalence of unsafe sex among truckers and the large number of sexual partners they have, make them a high risk group for contagion and the spread of the disease.
Studies conducted in other parts of the world also help us to understand the need to find out more about the phenomenon. A study published by Bwayo and collaborators on 970 long-distance truck drivers and their assistants who travel the route between Mombasa and Nairobi, in Kenya, found that 27% (257) had HIV antibodies. This study shows, among other things, that HIV carriers make less frequent visits to their wives and more to sex workers.1 Mutere and his associates report that in a study conducted with truckers (Machakos) in Kenya, 38% of Rwandans, 36% of Ugandans and 22% of Kenyans were found to be HIV positive.2
Bwayo and his team also document the prevalence of HIV infection among long-distance truck drivers in East and Central Africa. The study results indicate that 18% of the participants tested HIV positive. Moreover, 4.6% tested positive for syphilis.3 In a study carried out in India, Singh and Malaviya found that 78% of truckers admitted having sexual relations with several partners, including professional sex workers, and 5% admitted having regular homosexual encounters. The study emphasized that condom use and knowledge about HIV-Aids were poor.4 Wilson and other researchers report that condom use in Africa is also very limited. According to their study, condoms were available to truck drivers at several of the transport companies visited, but their use was not effectively promoted. Participants in this study spontaneously said that working conditions should be improved to enable them to spend more time with their families, as a way of avoiding HIV-Aids infection, but few mentioned condom use as the main form of prevention.5
Finally, we hope to find out how to conduct research and prevention efforts in a sexual culture such as that of long-distance truck drivers. It is unlikely that they will respond with total frankness to questions posed by health “professionals” or academics, and likely that they will be influenced by the expectations of researchers and educators. One of the errors in current literature on Latin masculinity is precisely that it accepts answers to sexual questions without probing the context. The same happens with traditional prevention programs, which rely on health professionals to impart information on HIV infection and prevention.
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1 Bwayo, J., Plummer, F., Omari, M., Mutere, A., Moses, S., Ndinya-Achola, J., Velentgas, P. and Kreiss, J. (1994). Human immunodeficiency virus infection in long-distance truck drivers in East Africa. Archives of Internal Medicine. (154) 12: 1391-6.
2 Mutere, A.N., Bwayo, J., and Ngugi, E. N. (1991). Controlling HIV in Africa: Effectiveness and cost of an intervention in a high risk-frequency STD transmitter core group. AIDS. 5, 407-411.
3 Bwayo, J., Omari, A.M., Mutere, A.N., Jaoko, W., Sekkade-Kigondu, E., Kreiss, J. and Plummer, F. (1991). Long-distance truck drivers: Prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). East African Medical Journal. 68(6), 425-29.
4 Singh, U.N. and Malaviya, A.N. (1994). Long-distance truck drivers and their possible role in disseminating HIV into rural areas. International Journal of STS/AIDS. 5 (2):137-8.
5 Wilson, D., Lamson, N., Nyathi, B., Sibanda, A. and Sibanda, T. “Ethnographic and quantitative research to design an intervention for truckers in Africa”. International Conference on AIDS, June 1991. (1621);7 (11): 49.