Critical examinations of sexualities in Gabriel García Márquez’s work have often been metaphoric in nature and intended to highlight the experience of colonial oppression and other embedded postcolonial experiences. The current article refers to five selected works to situate García Márquez’s work in lived experience as opposed to allegory. The focus is on the concrete realities of such key issues as prostitution and the commercial sexual exploitation of children. The representations of specific sexual practices in their social contexts and drawn from the five novels discussed clarify this aspect of García Márquez’s work, an aspect that has been largely silenced. The article examines previously unremarked-upon concerns such as brothel life, legal issues versus social practice, the link between labour and capital, child commercial sexual exploitation (including by women), the lack of social safety nets, ‘risky’ sex and sexually transmitted infections and the absence of serious reflection on HIV and AIDS. The reflections on prostitution and child exploitation are placed at the core of the present analysis to counteract the more recent common dismissal of some of García Márquez’s works as pornographic. Through a vigorous analysis of the selected works, the article offers a complex and shifting take on the traditional views of García Márquez’s apparent championing of sexual freedom.
54.4 DEVELOPING A SEXUAL HEALTH INTERVENTION FOR YOUTH IMPACTED BY COMMERCIAL SEXUAL EXPLOITATION: LESSONS LEARNED FROM PARTNERING WITH LIVED EXPERIENCE EXPERTS
