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Submitted by burt1661 on July 15, 2008
Category: Social Issues
Words: 2892 | Pages: 12
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Mexico is a country that has long been in a struggle to find a concrete national identity. This struggle transcends the boundary of gender identities as well. This is the precise issue in which Matthew C. Gutmann addresses in his book The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City. In his book, Gutmann dispels the macho generalization that has been applied to all Mexican men, as a result of their struggle for an identity. The thesis of his book is that the terms macho and machismo, no longer exist, if they ever actually did, and the generalizations that accompany those terms and are subsequently applied to all Mexican and other Latino men are off-based. Due to the dependence of the identities of macho Mexican men to their relationships with women, those same women have an advantageous position of the power to tear down the stereotypes. Although these Mexican women play a central role in the changing of gender roles and the ideas of machismo, the manifestations of these stereotypes are often upheld by racist and ethnical tendencies, both within Mexico and abroad.
In trying to dispel the generalizations of machismo that have been placed upon all Mexican men, Gutmann places the emphasis of his argument on the range of differing definitions of what it means to be a man throughout Mexico, and even from man to man. He supports this argument through his diverse findings from his time and studies in Colonia Santa Domingo, a self-built working class neighborhood of Mexico City. He also focuses on the role of women as catalysts behind the changes in not only what it means to be a man in Mexico, and specifically in Colonia Santa Domingo, but also gender identities.
The relationship between women and machismo in Mexico is very complex and one of interdependency. This relationship can also be linked to the struggle for men to establish a national identity for themselves. Connected in the sense that the way in which a “macho’s machismo”...
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