I had an acquaintance from Costa Rica who said that while everyone is officially straight, most young people had both boyfriends and girlfriends, sometimes at the same time. Even the most effeminate queens reportedly had girlfriends. And this was confirmed by other people that have lived and traveled there. Brazil, from what I understand is similar.
I used to know Joe Currier, a gay anthropologist who studied the scene in Mexico and the barrios of LA. And he told me that in Mexico, if a young boy does not look like he’s going to be acceptably macho, his father rejects him and he tends to become feminized by his mother and sisters. This marks him as a sexual target for his brothers, cousins, young uncles, and others in the neighborhood who turn him out, so to speak. These “passivos,” as they are called, seem to get quite a lot of action. In interviewing a small group of these boys, Currier found that when they compared notes, these boys had had sex with something like 27 males in just the houses immediately contiguous to theirs.
Despite the high prevalence of homosexuality extrapolated from these figures, there was still quite a bit of stigma to being a “passivos” and almost none at all for the “activos.” So, while homosexuality is not officially approved of or socially tolerated, what goes on behind closed doors seems to be shrouded in hypocrisy and denial, but is largely guilt-free.