In other words, the stereotype of the Latin lover, which had long been solely a macho and heterosexual character, was reframed within these AIDS narratives so as to better represent gay male desire. Popular Performance) has to do with the way the “stock character of the gay Latin/o lover (with some mix of sexiness, sassiness, and swarthiness) cued a measure of difference within the sameness of the same-sex partnership that rendered a gay male pairing as more legibly erotic, romantic, and legitimate.” Part of this (as argued by Brian Eugenio Herrera, author of Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. While the AIDS stories of the 1980s were almost exclusively white – think of The Normal Heart, The Torch Song Trilogy, Parting Glances – the 1990s continually paired gay male protagonists with Latin/o lovers.
