This dissertation focuses on the history of male sexuality to explore fundamental processes of urban economic and demographic change and social reorganization in Buenos Aires from the consolidation of the nation-state in Argentina to the Populist presidencies of Juan Perón in the mid-twentieth century. The first four chapters analyze the effects of disproportionately male migration to Buenos Aires on the development of male sexuality between 1880 and 1930. Against the backdrop of the scarcity of women and male peer pressure to show one's masculinity through sexual deeds, men from the lower strata demanded female prostitutes. When women were not available, however, men seemed to have no qualms about having sex with one another.

The analysis of sexual practices and identities in the popular classes between 1880 and 1930 focuses on a harbor-city where massive migration and the seasonal agroexport economy created an unstable job market that encouraged the development of crime, prostitution, and a flourishing culture of male same-sex sexuality rather than family sociability. The study provides detailed analysis of casual same-sex sexual contacts in male plebeian culture and of the gender dynamics shaping the personas of maricas, transgender males who were viewed as a distinct gender/sexual category.

Chapter Five explores the effects on sexuality of social changes after the 1930s. Rather than offering a conclusive interpretation, this last chapter is meant to establish a hypothetical analysis that requires further research. The hypothesis is that decreasing migration and the stabilization of the job market in the context of import-substitution industrialization encouraged family life, possibly leading to a decline in the importance of crime, female prostitution and sex between men. I present the possibility that these social changes might have precipitated the formation of a male homosexual subculture.