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This paper deals with an ethnography aimed at describing and understanding the gendered organization of schopería life and masculinity in northern Chile. Schoperías are characterized physically and socially and the effects these premises have on gender relations and masculinity assigned to them by waitresses and clients are studied. Schoperías are beer halls, mainly for men, served by women, located in cities near copper mines in Chile. They are strongly gendered and classed places. Schoperías are reference scenarios for men and their performance; they are premises that privilege masculine socialization and heterosexual hegemonic masculine performance. Paradoxically, they are at the same time unique places where male friendship and complicity take place, allowing homosociability and the expression of a certain type of affection and feelings among men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the gender practices of men and women who work in the mining industry in the north of Chile. This ethnographic research was conducted in masculine spaces for social interaction in Calama. We ask about the structure of gender relations in the Schoperías, and how this economic and cultural context favors a type of gender relationships based on a normative patriarchal system. In this paper the researchers argue that there is an association between mining and the symbolic and imaginary reproduction of the worker, who is socially valued according to his physical strength and economic power. Schoperías are privileged homosocial spaces for the performance of hegemonic masculinity. However, although homosexual desire is continuously performed in these spaces, a strong and constant homophobia is also exhibited by the mine workers at the Schoperías. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]