Monday, March 28, 2011

Machismo and Marianismo in Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela

When considering gender roles and behaviors in Latin America, perhaps the most defining concepts are machismo for males and marianismo for females. Machismo is a widely recognized phenomenon defined by the “cult of virility”, more or less, competition between males and male sexual aggression toward females (Stevens, 4). Marianismo is a less known, but equally prevalent, phenomenon defined by the the moral and spiritual superiority of women, with the Virgin Mary as the ideal woman. Machismo and marianismo reflect a gender binary in Latin America in which both sexes coexist in their varying characteristics. In this, there is a division of labor based on sex (Stevens, 5). Machismo places men in the public sphere (the workplace, politics, and bars for example), while marianismo keeps women in the private sphere (the home). While machismo puts a great deal of responsibility on men, mainly to earn money and support their families, it works with marianismo to place other burdens on women and allow men to be lazy in other areas. Although women typically do not have the responsibility of making money, all other responsibilities, such as bearing and raising children, maintaing the home, and keeping a moral atmosphere in the family, fall on them. Women’s lack of financial power, a result of machismo, works along with marianismo to produce a culture in which women must stay faithful to their husbands despite infidelity or abuse. If a woman is financially dependent on a man, she must tolerate his laziness or aggression in the way of the female martyr. She accepts her suffering as part of the role of a woman and also accepts her role as a model of faith for her children, whereas the husband is allowed to stray from the narrow path. During my time spent at a Roman Catholic mission in Venezuela, I saw the reality of the machismo-marianismo culture, but I also noted distinct trends that showed a move away from these traditional gender roles.
A major problem for young men in Ciudad Guayana is gang violence. Men typically form gangs within their barrios and designate that barrio as “their turf”. If men from outside the gang step into a barrio that has already been claimed by a particular gang, it is considered disrespectful and violence often ensues in defense of the turf. The men who participate in this violent subculture are gangsters known as “malandros”. Most are school drop-outs and abuse drugs. They can be seen loitering at all hours of the day. The violence is such that the priests with whom I lived said funerals on a weekly basis for victims of gang violence. Gun shots were also a nightly occurrence.
The gang violence in Ciudad Guayana is a very accurate reflection of the machismo that exists in greater Latin America. It takes place completely in the streets, the public sphere that men dominate because of machismo. Machismo also fosters both camaraderie and competition between males, both of which are key in gang relations. To become part of a gang a male must prove to meet the male standards set up by gang leaders and he will later form a bond with other gang members based on their maleness, competing in what they consider a friendly manner. While the relationships between members of the same gang may be violent and competitive, all of this is set aside when there is a perceived threat from another gang. This usually involves on gang trespassing on the supposed property of another, an unacceptable offense to the machismo culture of ownership, pride, and control. The competition between gangs is a direct result of the sense of entitlement and need to prove oneself that males have in machismo culture.
Another aspect of machismo that is especially common in Ciudad Guayana is infidelity. There is a great disparity in the ratio of men to women in Ciudad Guayana with many more women than men. Some of the residents with whom I conversed estimated that there are as much as four women to every one man, which creates an unusually high level of competition between women for the attention of men. Due to this gender imbalance, the men are very easily able to have multiple sexual partners. This is quite typical of Latin American culture because machismo dictates men to prove themselves through sexual aggression and the drive to reproduce as much as possible. Marianismo tells women to accept their partners’ infidelity as part of life’s suffering, but not to engage in infidelity themselves. However, the culture I discovered in Ciudad Guayana was one that defied traditional marianismo in that women had multiple sexual partners as well. It was a rarity to find a couple in which both partners were sexually faithful.
I talked to many teenagers and most were willing to admit, without hesitation, that they had more then one girlfriend or boyfriend. As a result of this promiscuity, HIV and AIDS and teenage pregnancies have become a serious problem. Machismo culture also dictates that men should not have to wear condoms, which greatly exacerbates these serious social and health problems. Dr. Luz Rodriguez, who occasionally works at the parish at which I stayed, estimates that 25 percent of the girls in the area between the ages of 13 and 15 become pregnant, some getting pregnant as young as age 11. Some of the local teenagers I talked to told me that most kids start experimenting with sex at age 12. They told me that many of their friends have gotten pregnant and, because abortion is illegal in Venezuela, some have tried to perform abortions on themselves or have sought unqualified help to have illegal abortions. Many young women die as a result of botched and unsanitary abortions. This is a living example of a de-facto shift in the culture away from machismo-marianismo, even if the written code of Venezuela still reflects the traditional Latin American gender roles. Abortion is completely contrary to marianismo because marianismo tells women that being a mother and raising their children is their main purpose in life. Like the Virgin Mary, they are meant to be sacred vessels of human life and they are obligated to serve this purpose without questioning their role. Marianismo uplifts women as the only ones worthy of the honor to carry a child and to have an abortion is to deny this honor. I was surprised to find that so many women and girls have had abortions because of its blatant defiance of marianismo. This helped me to see the slow shift in the populous away from marianismo, although the laws still reflect marianismo standards.
HIV/AIDS has been on the rise in Ciudad Guayana in recent years as well. I met a young mother with four children named Milagro. Milagro had been in what she thought to be a committed relationship until she discovered that she and her youngest two children had HIV. Milagro’s husband had cheated on her, in typical machismo fashion, and unknowingly contracted the HIV virus. He subsequently spread it to Milagro and the two younger children were born with the virus. Milagro’s husband died a few years ago and Milagro was left with no income and no way to feed or cloth her children. She began working as a prostitute to earn money, which helps spread HIV in Ciudad Guayana. Milagros story is a very common one in Ciudad Guayana. Most women get pregnant at a young age and drop out of school. Thus, when their partner abandons them or dies, they are left without a means of supporting themselves and they turn to prostitution. Prostitution is another contradiction of marianismo because it defies the culture of purity. Marianismo sets Mary, a virgin even in her own marriage, as the model of perfection. To be a prostitute is to contradict Mary’s example of virginity. Prostitution, on the part of the male customer however, fits in very well with machismo culture. Machismo culture encourages men to pursue sexual activity with any number of women and it entitles them to seek alternate sources of pleasure if their wife fails to satisfy his “needs”. Male transvestite prostitution is also common in Ciudad Guayana. Becoming a transvestite directly contradicts the ideals of machismo. Dressing as a woman, allowing yourself to take a woman’s role in sex and letting someone else purchase and objectify you are all very strong contradictions to what a man should do according to machismo.
One of the ideas of marianismo is that women are morally superior to men and are responsible for the morality if their husbands and children. I noticed that within my uncle’s parish, most of the active members of the church are women. Even at daily masses most of the people in attendance are women with just a few men mixed in. One of the most active groups in the church is the Legion of Mary, the members of which are all older females. The primary roles this legion were fundraising for the church and community outreach. The women raise money by making empanadas or pizza to sell after worship. They also work in the area surrounding their church, taking care of the sick and feeding the hungry. The nature of the Legion of Mary directly corresponds to women’s role in marianismo-machismo culture. Most obviously, the group’s patroness is the Virgin Mary and thus, it reflects the Virgin’s perceived moral perfection, selfless caring, and suffering. The women address community problems unquestioningly because it is their responsibility to adopt the suffering of the people around them.
According to machismo, men are supposed to provide for and protect their family. but because the unemployment rate in Ciudad Guyana is close to 70%, men are unable to earn money for their families. Most homes in Ciudad Guayana are headed by females and even in homes that are male-led, most men do not financially contribute to the household. Maria, one of the women who worked at the parish was the head of her household, is an example of this phenomenon. She has four children with the same man, a fisherman on whom the family depended for their food. He is very undependable and only comes home at his convenience without considering his machismo obligation to feed his offspring. Maria decided she needed to take charge of her situation so she went to the church for help. She got a job cleaning the church and the parish helped her move out of her metal shack and to purchase a house. She and her daughters now have a sense of stability, but their father only stops by once in a while. Although women in the marianismo culture are supposed to live in the private sphere, most women of Ciudad Guayana are now realizing that the machismo drive to provide for the family is weakening. They have to get an education in order to get a job and support themselves and their children. The church offers many classes that help people get training that will help them find employment. However, some women still aspire to be mistresses of wealthy men from the neighboring town of Porto Ordaz. This way, they can have his children and receive child support to avoid having to work. While this kind of aspiration beyond a life of suffering does not necessarily reflect the self-deprecating marianismo, it still keeps women in the private family sphere.
Throughout my education in Latin American Studies I have read and heard a lot about marianismo and machismo. During my stay in Ciudad Guayana I was able to see some of these concepts in reality, but I was also able to recognize deviations from these concepts. I began to realize how complex the reality of machismo and marianismo is and how they could penetrate most facets of daily life in Ciudad Guayana. Although these two gender norms are supposed to complement each other, it seemed to me that in order for machismo to succeed, women had to put aside the moral guidelines of marianismo. It also seemed to me that the reality of machismo might be shifting away from the role of the man as head of the house and toward a more sexually promiscuous, uncommitted role. The fact that this shift in the focus of machismo is occurring means that many more women are moving away from marianismo and becoming more sexually promiscuous or must enter the public work world in order to comply. Being in Ciudad Guayana helped bring to life many of the concepts I have learned about over the last four years and it gave me a more realistic vision of the complexities of and deviations from the gender norms.








Bibliography
Yeager, Gertrude M.. "Evelyn P. Stevens, Marianismo: The Other Face of Machismo." Confronting Change, Challenging Tradition: Woman in Latin American History (Jaguar Books on Latin America). Wilmington: SR Books, 1997. 3-16. Print.