Modern Sexuated Identities in Costa Rica (1833-1930): From the Vibrant Society to The Closed Community

Abstract

The analysis of a corpus of Costa Rican written press between 1833-1939 allowed me to identify different models  of  the modern  sexual  identities which  strived  for symbolic social legitimacy in this country in the new context of Modernity. Based on an epistemic analysis of the newspapers discourses, I established typologies of this models of femininity and masculinity promoted by Liberal, Catholic and Communist men in their debates of the desirable “national identity”. I found that their dissent diminished when they debated on how to model women. I also found that Liberal ideas and the development of capitalism were signaled both by Catholics and Communists for creating a sexual and social “disorder” which also paved the way for a feeling, among “working class” men, of being reduced to a “feminized” masculine identity, for whose “redemption” the Social Catholic Confessional State was created in the first part of theTwentieth Century. Costa Rican society hence transformed from an open one with a variety of identities to a re-communitarized one, more closed to external influences, until the second part of the Twentieth Century.