Desert Patrol (1980)

[Simon]

   

This unusual but important book, by a Swiss, Guido Franco, describes his adventures in the late 1970s among commercial boys of Mount Lavinia (in Ceylon) and Manila, Baguio and Pagsanjan (in the Philippines). As he notes on the cover, it mixes the genres of photography and literature.

I think the importance of this book lies in its historical accuracy and in its mostly detached and dispassionate accounts of the paederast "scene" in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and the Philippines before the authorities decided to clean up their countries' reputation by cracking down hard on the sex tourists. Arguably, they deprived their economies of substantial income and condemned the boys and their families to grinding poverty, but at least their souls were saved.

The men are a pathetic succession of drunks and dangerous sexual predators (usually both), but the author presents himself as an exception to this. His dry observations are often funny, and always revealing. He has a clear affection for the boys he encounters, but to a large extent manages to avoid the emotional surrender that destroys the other men.

I've added the lovely b/w images from the French version to the English text, and the result looks sort of OK on my kindle, good on ADE and better on the Kindle desktop app. I'm considering buying the latest generation kindle, since mine's showing its age now, and I expect the new ones will do a far better job with both text and images. Enhancing your reading experience they call it.