| Based on twelve months of ethnographic and archival research, this work examines legalized prostitution in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, in order to analyze both the relationship between neoliberalism, urbanization, and culture, and how cultural beliefs surrounding gender, sexuality, and morality are constructed, experienced, and contested in contemporary neoliberal Mexico. Unlike most Chiapas research, which has focused upon the indigenous populations of the highlands and more recently, the guerrilla movement, this research was conducted among Chiapas' urban, non-indigenous population. The dissertation examines four major areas: The social, economic, and political history of the Zona Galactica (the city's legal brothel) in particular and of female prostitution in Tuxtla Gutierrez in general; the diversity of the experience of prostitution as both work for women and diversion for men; the social and legal control of prostitution and those who engage in it by the state, moral reformers, sex workers themselves, and cultural institutions such as the family; and conceptualizations of gender, sexuality, stigma, and morality by sex workers, their managers, their clients, city residents, and the state. |
