9 Derogatory hegemonic masculinity in Lydia Cacho’s Ellos hablan

Other crucial issues in the country, such as structural poverty and violence, exacerbate this ideology. For example, the intense activity of drug cartels is mainly led by men; their actions, according to government reports and international organisations, mainly affect men.3 Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI), ‘Encuesta nacional de seguridad pública urbana (ENSU)’, 2021; https://www.inegi.org.mx/programas/ensu/ [accessed 19 January 2021]. Less prominence is given to the alarming rates of violence affecting children and women, the femicide phenomenon and the increasing vulnerability of migrant girls and women, many of whom go missing on their way to the US and/or are prostituted or trafficked. Mexico also tops the world ranking of gender crimes, with 97,778 women victims of crimes against their lives and integrity in Mexico during 2020.4 Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública (SESNP), ‘Información sobre violencia contra las mujeres’, 25 January 2021; https://www.gob.mx/sesnsp/articulos/informacion-sobre-violencia-contra-las-mujeres-incidencia-delictiva-y-llamadas-de-emergencia-9-1-1-febrero-2019 [accessed 19 January 2021].

Let us pause on the alarming incidence of domestic violence against women and children in Mexico.5 I provide a detailed account of the violence against women and girls in contemporary Mexico in Chapter 10 on Fernanda Melchor. The National Survey of Urban Public Security (ENSU) reported that 9% of households experienced family violence between January and August 2020.6 Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI), ‘Encuesta nacional de seguridad pública urbana (ENSU)’, September 2020; https://www.inegi.org.mx/programas/ensu/default.html#Tabulados [accessed 19 January 2021]. Cohabitants suffered offence and/or humiliation, threats to kick them out, beatings or other types of physical assault, and sexual abuse, among others. Of course, 2020 was an unprecedented year due to the confinement and isolation measures adopted by the national and State governments to protect the population from the Covid-19 pandemic. Economic stress and family tension aggravated a bad situation, with adverse effects for women, girls, boys and adolescents at home.7 Ibid.

I have referred to the connection between the notions of virility and the ‘real man’ (‘hombre de verdad’), as well as their association with the machista ideology in Latin America. This ideology, which is often linked with male chauvinism, appeals for the predominance of male power over women in all spheres of life. This impacts the nature of what constitutes ‘benevolent patriarchal nuclear families’,8 Rebecca E. Biron, Murder and Masculinity: Violent Fictions of Twentieth-Century Latin America (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000), p. 1. which pivot around authoritarian husbands and fathers. In their role as ‘providers’, authoritarian husbands and fathers exercise their sense of ownership over their partners and descendants. In this sense, masculinity serves as a problematic, if seldom questioned, core of models of Latin American identity.9 Ibid., p. 5.

This chapter addresses the impact of these values on children’s and women’s mental wellbeing and how the trauma of being brought up in such a home environment can lead to a more fluid and empathetic model of the ‘real man’ notion. To this end, I will analyse the views of male children (now men) from all social classes who suffered parental violence in #EllosHablan: testimonios de hombres, la relación con sus padres, el machismo y la violencia by Lydia Cacho.10 Lydia Cacho, #EllosHablan: testimonios de hombres, la relación con sus padres, el machismo y la violencia (Barcelona: Random House Mondadori, 2018). Hereafter, I will use the title Ellos hablan. We shall see that their testimonies show that sexist violence and hostility against male children at home often set up the foundations for violent and discriminatory social dynamics to be perpetuated in the streets and other social environments, generation after generation.

Lydia Cacho is one of the main voices in Mexico standing against violence against children and women, which she presents as a global phenomenon that limits freedom, impedes social development and deteriorates the victims’ mental health and self-esteem. She presents sex trafficking and sexual exploitation as forms of political violence that result from the collaboration of the police, the military, traffickers and brothel clients.

Her investigation has been widely commended over the years. For example, in 2010 she was named a World Press Freedom Hero of the International Press Institute and received the Distinguished Leadership Award for the Defense of Human Rights from the Inter-American Dialogue. She has won the Amnesty International Ginetta Sagan Award for Women’s and Children’s Rights, the Civil Courage Prize, the Wallenberg Medal from the University of Michigan for her work bringing public attention to the corruption that shields criminals who exploit women and children, and the Olof Palme Prize. The recognition of her work is well deserved, as she has put her life at risk for the sake of it. Due to the threats of drug traffickers and politicians, Cacho finally moved to Spain. In the distance, she continues investigating the situations of the most disadvantaged in Mexico.

Her book Los demonios del Edén: el poder que protege a la pornografía infantil (2005)11 Lydia Cacho, Los demonios del Edén: el poder que protege a la pornografía infantil (Mexico City: Random House Mondadori, 2005). created a nationwide scandal because it denounced several prominent businessmen for conspiring to protect a paedophile network in Mexico. In December 2005, Cacho was arrested in Cancun and driven to Puebla by car. She later reported that, during the 900-mile journey, the agents verbally abused her and implied that there was a plan to rape her. She was jailed for a short time on defamation charges before being released on bail. Cacho became the first woman in Mexico to formalise a complaint about women’s rights to the Supreme Court of Mexico. The UN Human Rights Council advised her to seek political asylum outside Mexico and offered her legal assistance for accessing international courts. She provided a detailed account of her arrest and her judicial journey in defence of her right to report freely in Memorias de una infamia.12 Lydia Cacho, Memorias de una infamia (Mexico City: Random House Mondadori, 2007).

In Esclavas del poder: un viaje al corazón de la trata sexual de mujeres y niñas en el mundo,13 Lydia Cacho, Esclavas del poder: un viaje al corazón de la trata sexual de mujeres y niñas en el mundo (Mexico City: Random House Mondadori, 2010). Cacho approaches the sexual exploitation and trafficking of girls and women as a powerful international business fuelled by a depredatory mentality concerning women’s bodies. The testimonies of female victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation allow Cacho to present evidence of powerful criminal networks at the border and in conflictive and military settings, where incompetent governments allow girls and women to be handed over to criminal organisations for the commercialisation of their bodies.

In #EllosHablan: testimonios de hombres, la relación con sus padres, el machismo y la violencia, Cacho addresses another taboo subject in Mexican society: how male violence in the home environment affects males.14 Ellos hablan. Ellos hablan is a non-fiction book that first presents the testimonies of several men, who talk about their childhoods and describe the parental violence they endured as they were growing up. These testimonials show how children and women normalise violent and discriminatory relationships and how that trauma can validate a system of impunity and paternalism. In the second part of the book, Cacho presents her own views on the origins of male violence and invites the reader to reflect on male leadership and submission to it in contemporary times.

Cacho presents intra-family violence as the result of a long tradition of machista values, which continue to be a crucial element of the social education in Mexico. Cacho relies on the experiences of male victims of violence to argue that abuse and disdain by parents towards their children are consequences of other factors, such as structural poverty, dependence on harmful substances and the inability of men in a patriarchal system to show their feelings to their families. We shall see that some males in the volume argue that the beatings and other parental abuses they received made them revise their understanding of masculinity towards a more open, more empathetic notion of it that is free of prejudice. For others, their parents just did what they had to in order to protect them and teach them to be ‘real men’ in life. These groups tend to replicate the learnt masculinity model. While Cacho emphasises that violence against women is a phenomenon that transcends borders, these males’ stories initially relegate women to the background. Yet, exploring the derogatory treatment of their mothers and other women in the home has been crucial in the recovery process for the interviewees. We will see how later. Ultimately, by giving a voice to male victims of parental violence, Cacho also gives them the opportunity to review their lives, understand, choose, forgive and move forward, opening up the possibility for males and women to recover from the harm.

I have organised this chapter into three sections. Firstly, I address the notions of machismo, masculinity and patriarchy as crucial issues to understand fathers’ hegemonic power over women and children in the home environment and how this is intimately related to the objectification from which, I argue, the recovery of individuals is possible. Secondly, I review the references to machista education concerning the notion of being ‘a real man’ received by the victims of parental violence and how their recovery process has led some of them to adopt a new understanding of masculinity/masculinities in Mexico from a compassionate perspective towards women and children. Finally, I address the representation of violence against women in the stories in the book. Initially presented as collateral to, and in some cases disconnected from, the children’s experiences, there are indications that the violence against mothers and other women in the family marks the recovery of the children and determines their social relationships with female partners in particular.