The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City

Abstract

In a male culture that prides itself on being a bastion of masculine values and quixotic attitudes, being Mexican and being macho have often been considered equivalents. However, these days, what does it actually mean to be macho in Mexico? Furthermore, how do macho attitudes express themselves in the context of Mexico City, the largest concentration of human beings on earth? These are the key questions that Matthew C. Gutmann poses and sets out to answer. Correctly pointing out that the philandering macho stereotype has ignored the role fatherhood in the lives of millions of Mexican men (p. 2), Gutmann explores the lives of working-class men in Mexico City and examines their attitudes about sexuality, fatherhood, alcohol, violence, and machismo itself.The Meanings of Macho is the product of a few months of fieldwork in Santo Domingo, a barrio located in southern Mexico City that was established in the 1970s when homeless families from Mexico City and the provinces illegally invaded unoccupied lands. There could be no more barren environment than the arid-rock subsoil, which dates to the ancient explosion of the Xitle volcano. It was here, among the settlers, that Gutmann was able to find a group of people ready to talk about such diverse aspects of their daily life as parenthood, sexuality, alcoholism, child care, and male violence. Although this research methodology of participant observation offers some key insights, it also constitutes a limitation, since it restricts Gutmann’s analysis to where he lived, the barrio of Santo Domingo, and rules out any comparative focus or reference to other areas of Mexico City. Thus the possible uniqueness of the case study of Santo Domingo is a topic left unexplored. This limitation deprives Gutmann’s work of a needed perspective that would contextualize the interviews he conducted as well as the conclusions he offers, particularly in the light of similar works. The lack of historical depth and the very immediacy of his narrative style further weaken Gutmann’s book, for the reader is unable to properly evaluate possible changes and continuities in the behavior and lives of the people interviewed. The absence of proper contextualization is even more striking given that some of the interviewees themselves recognize the role of their social background and upbringing in their own formation.In addition, by failing to explore both the personal and the social background of his informants, Gutmann seems to take their statements at face value. He works mainly with the text of what informants say about their sexuality, their love lives, and their parental obligations. Yet the reader is left with the impression that there might be a great gap between what they say and do, a gap that Gutmann fails to point out. At times, he makes use of Spanish colloquial terms such as casa chica (literally “small house,” a second household of an adulterous relationship), chilanguismo (from the term chilango, used, often insultingly, to refer to someone from Mexico City), and maraquero (masturbating man) in an effort to deepen his exploration of a particular concept. Yet, with the exception of machismo, Gutmann fails to offer an in-depth explanation of such terms in the context of local use. The result is that he is able to communicate only a superficial use that is more akin to an epithet than to an analytic concept. This might indicate Gutmann’s problem with Spanish terms themselves, since he mistranslates necio as “fool,” whereas “stubborn” is a more precise equivalent (p. 209); and he mistakes creía, “I believe,” for crié, “I was raised” (p. 234). A more in-depth study of the history, uses, and meanings of such concepts would have helped the work enormously and provided it with a badly needed historical dimension.However, Gutmann does attempt to explain the ways in which Mexican men and women have learned to manipulate the cultural rituals and social laws of machismo by overcoming the stereotype of Mexicans as macho men. His interviewees do indeed defy the macho stereotype, and while they do not totally overcome the macho behavior that is so pervasive in Mexican culture, their lives and self-perception overcome the homogeneity of the macho character and prove that there is more to masculinity than a long-held stereotype.Despite its problems, the book is definitely pathbreaking. It undoubtedly proves the weakness of the macho stereotype as an analytic concept, and while it does not explain the connection between machismo and domestic violence, it does prove that gender patterns are rapidly changing. Gutmann’s book is a good starting point to an understanding of such a complex problem. Given the relative scarcity of scholarly works on machismo and masculinity, The Meanings of Macho stands out as an important beginning. The culture of violence and machismo is a minefield for research and analysis in which future scholars of the topic will probably follow Gutmann’s path and deepen his innovative perspective.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 47 citations exist upstream.