Maska macho. Językoznawcze poszukiwania współczesnych modeli męskości w Meksyku

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For many decades, research into the masculinity of Latin American men has focused on machismo, the macho cult, understood as „strong, masculine, courageous, stubborn … a real man who can drink, love, sing and believe in it” (Stevens 1965, p. 849–850). Treating machismo as a phenomenon present throughout the Latin American continent overlooked the differences between societies. In Mexico, the macho cult is of special importance – representing part of the Mexican national identity and the Mexican macho is a positive character: daring, proud, brave, not giving up, not trusting anyone, and when suffering, he acts like a national hero laughing and „not breaking down.” Two publications have contributed to this belief – El perfil del hombre y la cultura en México by Samuel Ramos (1938) and El laberinto de la soledad by Octavio Paz published for the first time in 1950 (1993). According to the intellectuals, the situation of the Mexican nation has been formed by the colonial past. As the salvation for a humiliated and insecure male is to become a macho, masculinity has been linked to nationality, and Mexican men have been assigned a special national trait – courage. The main aim of this book is to comprehend the discursive practices associated with models of masculinity in Mexico and to answer the question of what is the state of contemporary machismo so important to Mexican culture.

The analysis of the data collected during the ethnographic research is preceded by an examination of linguistic sources – dictionaries, a collection of proverbs and phraseologies, as well as Mexican Spanish language corpora and Spanish reference corpora (Mexican sub-corpora). Above all, these studies point to semantic differences between the definition of the term macho in Mexico and Spain – while in both countries the term refers to both the animal and plant world as well as to tools, the emphasis in the Mexican variety of Spanish is shifted to the definition of a man with specific, mostly positive qualities – courageous, strong, masculine, superior and dominant. Similarly, the derivatives of macho indicate the essence of masculinity. A comparison of phraseological expressions and proverbs in Spain and Mexico confirmed these findings – in Mexico the popular phraseology a lo macho means to act firmly, boldly, be constant in your decisions, keep your word and not lie. While to be very macho is about courage and not being scared, it is also about making difficult decisions and bearing up with inconvenience.

The analysis of the corpora of the Mexican Spanish confirmed the positive qualities attributed to macho: courage, responsibility, lack of fear in the face of death, power, attractiveness and the need to confirm one’s own masculinity (Corpus of Contemporary Language in Mexico, CEMC). The results of the analysis in the Corpus of the Sexualities in Mexico (CSMX) prove that the macho is a sexually attractive model of masculinity, although some analysed concordances indicated a negative assessment of him. Surprisingly, although the literature on the subject indicates that the macho enjoys a unique position in the Mexican society, the frequency of the term in the Mexican Spanish corpora is low. Moreover, the notable non-existence of the word in the Historical Corpus of the Mexican Spanish Language (CHEM) confirms the hypothesis that the term gained importance over time, and thus – its use was spread only in the 20th century.

The analysis of the reference corpora of the Royal Spanish Academy of the Spanish Language (the Mexican sub-corpora of the Contemporary Spanish Language Reference Corpus – CREA and the 21st Century Spanish Corpus – CORPES XXI) allowes to distinguish four macho-related discourses: the first is about becoming macho, the second is about the society’s expectations of a macho, the third is about the relationship between macho and women, and the fourth – his attitude towards homosexuals. Becoming a macho is associated with the pursuit of a certain ideal, a man must prove that he deserves to be called a macho, he must meet a number of requirements: he must not cry, he must endure pain, regret and fear and must never give up. All these attributes are demonstrated by the macho primarily through violence. Macho divides women into women de casa and the rest of them. In the case of „domestic women”, being a macho requires taking care of them as the macho is caring, protects them from threats, supports them and their offspring. However, he despises other women, uses violence against them, objectifies them – they are only trophies to be won. He feels the biological imperative of fertilizing and wants to have as many children as possible. The fourth discourse concerns the relationship between macho and homosexuals and is related to the first discourse of becoming a macho, as the macho is a denial of what a gay is – identified with weakness, delicacy and femininity. The macho’s contempt for gays comes close to the contempt with which he talks about women. However, as in the case of women, aversion to homosexuals is mixed with sexual fascination. The limit that macho cannot cross is penetration – he can actively penetrate, but cannot allow being penetrated. Hence, the figure of the macho calado, a heterosexual man who has homosexual experiences.

The main part of the monograph is the analysis of transcriptions of in-depth interviews (54 hours) with 28 Guadalajara residents. Using corpus tools, i.e. keywords, frequency lists, concordances, collocations and collocation networks, terms describing men are analysed: macho, machista, machismo, hombre, hombres; marido, esposo; padre, papá; hijo, niño; novio; hermano, amigo; chico, muchacho; gay, gays, homosexual, homosexuales. On the grounds of the analysis of the collocations and concordances of these terms, a whole range of contemporary concepts of masculinity in Mexico was recreated.

The structure of the questions in the interviews underpinning the corpus studied dealt with themes extracted from the literature on the machismo phenomenon, one would expect the frequency of the word macho/s to be particularly high in response to such questions. However, in a corpus of more than 340,000 words, the terms denominating macho men (macho, machista and machismo) in total occur only 239 times. More importantly, when talking about categories of masculinity, many informants and female informants emphasised the differences between macho and male. To be macho is to have a certain set of traits, usually negative, such as aggressiveness, possessiveness, bossiness, apodictic – there is ‚nothing good’ about being macho.

Concurrently, when talking about men, male and female informants emphasised their unique position – men are privileged, adored, praised and respected. The father and husband are respected at home, overindulged and served by their wives. Having a fiancé, a boyfriend, is the goal, so sometimes you have to „catch” him and sometimes „tie” him by getting pregnant. The desire to have a son is very strong, especially among men willing to spread the hallmark of their name and genes. However, this unique position of men, also amongst family members, is not due to their virtues. The informants assessed their husbands, fathers, sons or brothers rather critically, mentioned their infidelity, cynicism, selfishness, brutality, impetuosity and jealousy. Surprisingly though, women are often supposed to feel responsible for the man’s bad behavior.

Men in modern Mexico command a number of privileges. The first is power based on the authority of the man and the fear he causes. His task is to subjugate other men and women, especially those at home. Father and husband have power over the household, because being henpecked (mandilón) is a shame. Another privilege is freedom of action – a man „is the one who can.” The man has freedom of movement, his male space for puros hombres, while the freedom of women and girls is limited on the one hand by their parents and on the other by the violence they may experience in public places. Despite the unequivocally negative assessment of the macho-womanizer, informants talk about the men’s privilege of enjoying sexuality. The man has a wife, while enjoying the right to have sex outside of marriage, although the interlocutors also talked about the faithfulness and respect he should demonstrate to his wife.

When defining masculinity, informants contrasted the features of hombres with those of women. The moral superiority of women is due to motherhood, creating their ability to understand men, care for them, serve (and manipulate them). Surprising in this context are women’s statements about gender equality: a woman can do the same as a man, has the same value as him, can earn more than her husband. However, male informants more often mentioned how the society changed due to the greater participation of women in the labor market. They also talked about female violence against men.

The analysis of empirical research contradicts the idea that a macho’s antagonist is homosexual, which was associated with macho’s insecurity about his own masculinity. Most of the informants did not deny the masculinity of gays, claiming that homosexual orientation did not predetermine considering someone a man. Gays can be male, dress or act like hombres (there are also female gays, „effeminate”). They are treated like men, enjoying the same privileges as the rest. Some interviews even indicate the virtues of homosexuals distinguishing them from heterosexual men, for example, they are less selfish, less aggressive and take more care of themselves. They are considered friends of women. However, this does not mean acceptance of gays by the society. Informants often spoke about the suffering of gays, about violence against them, about the need to conceal their homosexual orientation. It is worth emphasizing, however, that the term man (hombre) without adjectives means a heterosexual man also in the utterances of gays, solely adding the adjectives gay or homosexual means gay. Hombre is also the one who does have sex with men but does not define himself as gay (also called gay macho in gay circles). He is often more attractive to homosexuals.

Although the interviewees did not mention the need to become macho, the discourse of becoming a man can be distinguished in the analysed corpus: boys are brought up como hombres, they have to prove being superior to other men. Despite the negative evaluation of macho figures, society’s expectations of men are similar. The core difference in these two processes is the attitude towards the family: macho wants to have many children, because the number of descendants proves his manhood. However, he is not concerned whether they are conceived with a wife or with another woman, not to mention the actual capacity to maintain a large family. The modern Mexican man, however, must support the family and exercise supreme power at home. Being a father and and ‚man of the house’ (hombre de casa) seems to be the only positive aspect of being a man. He is a responsible, hardworking, house-keeping man, breadwinner who cares for the household members. Inability to fulfill this duty causes his suffering and sense of failure. Working and earning money are also the basic attributes of a father. The father protects his children, but also imposes his will on them, sets conditions, sometimes even beats them. He has absolute power at home and his authority is grounded on fear. He often succumbs to addictions, sometimes leaving his family. Regardless of how informants judged their own parent, being a father is the bright side of being a man. The repeated use of the word padre as an adjective meaning something „very good, very funny, of good quality” is also significant (El Colegio de México 2020). In contrast to the word madre which occurs in many idioms and is the source of numerous derivatives and phraseological expressions, padre has only positive meaning.

The results of the corpus analysis are interpreted in the monograph in the light of John Taylor’s prototype theory (2001). It is hypothesised that the macho should be treated as a prototype, as membership of this category is gradual, and according to the literature there are many ‚prototypical machos’ in Mexican history and culture, e.g. leaders of the 1911 struggle for independence and revolution. Empirical data show that contemporary references to this prototype are much rarer and, importantly, mostly negative. The informants did not mention macho heroes, they associated the term ‚macho’ with distant relatives or talked about „some typical macho” whom they assessed unequivocally as negative figures. The application of prototype theory, however, makes it possible to summarise the results of the corpus analysis in relation to the different models of masculinity and thus to capture the common features of the macho, male, father/dad and gentleman categories. The father/dad category, due to its nature, is analysed as a Lakoff’s cognitive model (2007).

Aggression is a fundamental feature of macho it appears in the literature on the subject and in linguistic sources, making the most important feature of a macho according to the informants, which is why a separate chapter has been devoted to the topic of violence. His aggression is related to the need to prove masculinity and is directed against everyone. Male-based violence is at the fore in modern machismo literature (Stevens 1965; Paz 1975, 1993; Basham 1976; Kaufman 1989; Garda 1998, and others; Bustos Torres 1999). Ignoring the dangers, constantly proving manhood is the cause of excessive mortality among Mexican men. Violence against women is also extensive, the gender-based killing of women (feminicidio) has been considered a separate crime category under the Mexico’s Federal Criminal Code. Generally, machismo serves as the explanation for the incessant and increasing violence. In interviews recorded in Guadalajara, violence made a frequent topic, but its perpetrators are not machos or machistas. For this reason the transformation of social actors in acts of violence – both perpetrators and victims, was analysed. The tools proposed by Theo van Leeuwen (2008), were used to examine interview excerpts in which male or female informants talked about violence. Choosing the Critical Discourse analysis approach resulted both from its subject matter – the study of masculinity as a gendered construct, and the nature of the collected empirical data. The corpus resulting from the transcription of in-depth interviews is a discourse understood as „ways of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking, and often reading and writing that are accepted as instantiations of particular roles (or ‚types of people’) by specific groups people” (definition J.J. Gee, after: Locke 2004, p. 7). Informants and informants narrated their lives, their relatives and neighbours, justified their choices, behaviours and beliefs and thus, in their stories, recontextualised social practices. This ‚opaque’ process of recontextualisation is the axis of Discourse and Practice. New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis by van Leeuwen (2008) and enables a close look at the social actors of violent practices: perpetrators and victims.

In the informant’s stories, the most frequent victim was a woman, although the informants often also mentioned violence against men, with children constituting the third largest group of victims. With regard to violence against women, the most frequent transformation of the perpetrator is categorization, and more precisely, relational identification – informants and informants spoke of family members: ‚husband’, ‚dad’, ‚grandfather’, ‚fiancé’, ‚brother-in-law’, ‚friend’ or ‚acquaintances’. Not once have they mentioned the name of the perpetrator. There is also the issue of violence between women, usually family members, also considered a relational identification. Concurrently, the rarest transformation is the one when the victim is a man. In the case of violence against men, the perpetrator is most often the male informant (‚I’) – there is activation. The rationale for the violence is then either to defend himself or to be provoked by another man. Similarly, when the perpetrator is the group ‚we’, the informers activate the perpetrator and the victim, and at the same time make a transformation of assimilation (collectivization) in which the social actor is not an individual, but a group. When an informant talks about acts of violence against his own wife, he transforms the way he acts, activates his wife blaming her for his aggression.

Both in the case of violence against women and men, there is the transformation of perpetrator’s generalization – there is a ‚man’ or ‚men’ (collectivization), usually in stories explaining the reasons for violence, i.e. alcoholism or infidelity, or in comparisons with women as perpetrators of violence. Exclusion, i.e. the omission of the agent of events, is most often used in descriptions of violence, mainly verbal, towards non-heteronormative people.

The informants were reluctant to talking about the violence experience when with them being perpetrators or victims: women more often talked about ‚her’ husband or fiancé than about their own partner in such situations, and men transformed their wife’s actions, which justified the use of force against them (wives, although they were victims of, in such situations they were activated).

The usage of the terms such as macho or machista in a role of perpetrators of violence is an example of a transformation van Leeuwen names symbolization, in which a „fictional” actor from a distant or mythical past replaces the actual actor. Informants talked about the violence perpetrated by macho, when they gave the definition of the term macho or described hypothetical situations. This confirms that the macho is a prototype for them, a figure distant in time and although clearly negative. Therefore, according to informants, macho is not responsible for violence in Mexico.

The final section of the book summarises the linguistic search for models of masculinity and at the same time asks about the condition of Mexican machismo at the beginning of the 21st century. The economic crisis that caused the impoverishment of Mexican society and made women seek jobs, as well as the influence of the so-called folk feminism, forced social changes, including changes in the concept of masculinity. Some researchers noted a reduction in machismo strength (Bustos Torres 1999). Others predicted the rise of the neomachismo (Escobar Latapí 1996), emphasizing the positive qualities of a man who must be brave, strong, resilient, control the situation, care for the well-being of others and be the breadwinner of the family (Martínez Munguía 2013, p. 187). Nonetheless, others talk about the invisible machismo – present „in almost all aspects of everyday life of men and women” (Castañeda 2012, p. 27). The dominant view in the literature on the subject is that machismo has survived and will survive. Nevertheless, there are movements of men seeking new patterns of masculinity, and books are published proclaiming „We are not born macho.” The conclusions of this book seem (at least in part) to contradict the abovementioned. Macho is a figure distant in time, belonging to the past, an outdated prototype. This is confirmed by the analysis of the actors of violent practices – when informants did not talk about specific cases that they knew about or in which they participated, in no case did they name the perpetrator a macho. Likewise, „doing something macho” does not appear in the corpus. However, this does not symbol a tremendous change in social practices, but rather a shift – macho figure has become exclusively negative, but the behaviours attributed to this figure are still those of Mexican men. The discourse on the macho man is multidimensional, has many shades, thus hampering a clear assessment or creation of a prototype. The position of a man is unique, he enjoys a number of privileges and powers, and is often not held liable for his actions. Although Mexicans do not want to be macho, according to our informants, it is much easier to be a Mexican man than a Mexican woman in the 21st century.