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Carmen Nestares's Venus En Buenos Aires: Neocolonialist Cyber-Romance, Virtual Lies, And The Transatlantic Queer , Maite Zubiaurre

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Carmen Nestares's novel Venus en Buenos Aires (2001) chronicles a transatlantic lesbian love affair between a Spaniard and an Argentinean that begins in cyber-space and culminates in reality. At first, the novel reads "innocently" as an uncomplicated cyber-romance fiction, but once the romance becomes physical after the lovers meet on Latin American soil, certain unsettling elements arise. Online, the Spanish and Argentinean cultures, supposedly "united" by the same language, seem to intermingle easily and graciously, but offline, they are more conflicted, as the Spanish lover adopts a neocolonialist stance. From a distance she considers Argentina a land of capitalist promise …