Architectures of discretion: Autohoteles and the fortified enclaves of Guatemala city

Abstract

Autohoteles in Guatemala City are mid-market, pay-by-the-hour hotels designed for sexual encounters. Folding quietly into the landscape of Central America’s largest metropolitan region, these establishments provide middle-class Guatemalans with the opportunity to evade (even if only for an afternoon) the very regimes of surveillance that they have come to expect from fortified enclaves. Autohoteles have walls but no windows, guards but no guest books, and security booths but no surveillance cameras. They are one of the few places where the middle-class in Guatemala City pay not to be watched. Set against the increasing panopticism of everyday life in Central America, this essay engages the autohoteles of Guatemala City to understand an architectural form that minimizes rather than maximizes visibility, for the sake of discretion rather than discipline. It argues that these buildings evidence an intimate and necessary imbrication between the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of fortified enclaves.