Sanky-panky

A Sanky-panky, or Sanky, is a male sex worker, found in the Caribbean. A sanky-panky solicits on beaches and has clients of both sexes or only women. When with men, the sanky-panky asumes an active (a.k.a. top) role , but when with women, assumes the role of an ideal lover.

While strictly speaking they are not prostitutes, since they do not directly negotiate money for sex, they are more likely to create a pseudo-relationship which can be continued when the guest returns home. They then attempt to ask for money to be sent to them primarily by wire transfer, often using elaborate stories such as "sick relatives". A sankie's ultimate goal is to obtain a marriage visa to the tourist's native country, marry the tourist, then leave for areas of the country with large populations of their country persons.

Without being overly pejorative to their clients, the typical sankie-tourist relationship is obvious as the female part of the pair is often older, larger, and less attractive than the younger, physically fit and more handsome sanky. The female half would be unlikely to attract men with similar physical characteristics where they live (often the United States, Canada and Europe), while imagining that the relationship exists as more than a monetary or physical one.

Bricheros

In Peru a similar phenomenon has bricheros (which are male and usually target female tourists)) and bricheras (who are females instead and target male tourists). They hang out in popular tourist destinations and may even involve themselves in business involving tourism in order to reach their prey. The word might come from the English word "breach" or its partially false cognate "brecha" as they reach through the breach made between themselves and these tourists in the process of establishing a parasite and host asymmetrical economic relationship between both. The curious thing with bricheros is that they succeed not in raw appeal but in the personas they build. Representing a mixture of the streetwise local and the knowledgeable savant on their native culture they appeal to the tourist's interest in the exotic and their existence furthers terrible social gaps between both sides of the experience.

Sanky-Pankies in popular culture

The persona of the "sanky panky" has been brought to the big screen in 2007 by Spanish director Jose E. Pintor. In his comedic film entitled Sanky Panky, audiences follow the life of a young Dominican man named Genaro (played by Dominican comedian Fausto Mata) who travels to Bavaro to work at a resort in hopes of finding a "gringa" or a white American woman who will give him a visa. In the process, he meets a young heartbroken woman and her two older and oversexed aunts. The story that follows presents the beauties of Dominican resorts but portrays the realities of poverty in the Dominican Republic while simultaneously immortalizing the "sanky panky" via major motion picture.

A film that explores this topic in a Francophone context is Heading South.

External links

• Message board posts concerning Sanky-panky

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