Cacho wonders in her book: when does a child come to believe that violence is a valid form of social interaction? Who teaches it to them? She argues that there is a strong link between machismo and violence and that together they present a wrong approach to manhood that is sustained by repressed anger, resentment, racism and sexism. Ruy Sánchez says the following about this:
Under the violent sexist education, children are afraid of being afraid and are afraid of crying, sometimes uncontrollable drives. Unfortunately, so many times these are controlled with gestures of excessive violence accompanying what is considered to be masculine.
1 Spanish original: ‘Bajo la violencia de la educación machista los niños tienen miedo de tener miedo y tienen miedo de llorar, pulsiones incontrolables algunas veces. Desgraciadamente controladas tantas otras con gestos de violencia excesiva que acompañan lo que sí se considera masculino’; Ellos hablan, p. 141.In this way, Ruy Sánchez presents
machista education as the basis for exercising a masculinity anchored by the promise of power and social leadership for violent males. The ‘hombrecitos’ (‘little men’) of the patriarchal system must endure violence, abuse and humiliation in exchange for the promise of privileges over women – a power that gives males the possibility of resolving conflicts according to their interests, discrediting ‘the voices of girls, boys and women’.
2 Spanish original: ‘las voces de las niñas, los niños y las mujeres’; Ellos hablan, p. 27. Cacho therefore invites males to look at their childhoods and, specifically, at their relationships with their fathers because, in her view, men do not subordinate themselves to other powerful men without first submitting to a father figure, who represents male power in the home and patriarchal order in the public space.
3 Ellos hablan, p. 33.Variation in the concept of hegemonic masculinity thus leads the males in the book to reflect on their paternal figures first and then challenge the prototype of the concept of virility in Mexico. The males who reject sexist and violent values must necessarily present as valid a different vision of fatherhood than that which they received as children. For them, a good father, and therefore a good man, must be committed to the welfare of his family and avoid exhibiting traditional macho behaviours, such as being a womaniser, drinking too much and being violent. Ultimately, this variation in their understanding of masculinity involves attracting men to a concept of leadership that openly opposes violence and discrimination against women and children.
Juan is a
padrote (pimp) and a victim of this situation. He embodies the prototype of the Mexican macho, which he feels proud of. He says: ‘To be macho is to be very much a man; we are born this way; there is nothing wrong with it’.
4 Spanish original: ‘Ser macho es ser muy hombre; así nacemos no tiene nada de malo’; Ellos hablan, p. 129. Juan is interviewed in prison, where he is serving a sentence for being involved in sex trafficking. He abducted his wife and prostituted her in the US, where he was convicted for human trafficking – something he still considers a worthy profession. We will return to this later in relation to female sexual objectification. As his story progresses, we discover that Juan’s father was the leader of a ‘family business’ of sex trafficking and perhaps drugs. Juan says how, on one occasion, his knees were broken by his father in response to him displaying public affection for receiving skates.
5 Ellos hablan, p. 127. The physical violence perpetrated by their fathers is constantly addressed in the interviews with those who were abused as children. This is because male power often manifests in beatings and verbal and sexual abuse and creates dysfunctional home environments.
However, Juan believes that his father’s violent behaviour gave him the strength and capability to run his own business. He states how his father, whom he calls ‘the boss’, taught him the two main things that he needed to do to become a ‘real man’: conceal his feelings and work as a pimp. He says:
The most important thing my dad left me as a child? Well, he took away my chicken heart. Do you think that I would survive here in the American prison with feelings? No way, you have to kill your feelings to be at peace, because there is a lot of loneliness in the world and it is very difficult to endure if you do not become hard as stone. This is how it should be, that is to be a real man.
6 Spanish original: ‘¿Lo más importante que me dejó mi papá de niño? Pues quitarme el corazón de pollo. ¿Usted cree que yo iba a sobrevivir aquí en la cárcel americana con sentimientos? Pues nada, hay que matar los sentimientos para estar en paz, pues hay mucha soledad en el mundo y está muy cabrón aguantar si no se vuelve uno duro como piedra. Así debe ser, eso es ser hombre de verdad’; Ellos hablan, p. 132.Juan’s testimonial shows early socialisation as the birthplace of the emotional and cultural factors that determine his understanding of masculinity. He feels deep admiration for his violent father and respect for the sort of education he received from him. This happens because Juan has not managed to question the education he received because it would mean questioning the vertical/parental leadership and this, as pointed out by one of the males in the book, Bartolomé, is a learning process that requires courage from the individual: ‘That is courage, not pulling out guns and intimidating people. Brave are those who heal their wounds and move on, even if at times they feel fear’.
7 Spanish original: ‘Ésa es valentía, no andar sacando pistolas y amedrentar a la gente. Valientes son quienes se curan las heridas y siguen adelante, aunque a ratos sientan temor’; Ellos hablan, p. 83. This also happens because challenging the system entails revisiting their past from a gender perspective, and not all victims of parental violence ever become aware of this perspective.
For the reader, though, Juan is not a successful businessman but rather the victim of a psychopathic father who is aggressive and objectifies people. Cacho says the following about psychopathic parents: ‘For them, children are disposable, abused objects, whose will must and can be shaped by the domestication of violence and humiliation’.
8 Spanish original: ‘Para ellos los niños son objetos desechables, maltratables, cuya voluntad debe y puede ser moldeada mediante la domesticación de la violencia y la humillación’; Ellos hablan, p. 222. Juan’s story shows evidence of the psychological damage produced by coercive education that prohibits male children from expressing their feelings. Juan’s father educates him to support the family with an illegal business and to show little empathy for the weakest in society.
This pattern impacts each individual differently. While Juan has made violence a way of life, Bartolomé, a businessman from Jalisco, rethought his father’s macho behaviour pattern towards the family during his kidnapping by a gang of criminals. His confinement forced him to relive the episodes of his childhood under the tutelage of an authoritarian and distant father and a mother who could not, or did not know how to, defend him and his sister. Until then, following his father’s example, Bartolomé had thought ‘that only gays express their feelings’.
9 Spanish original: ‘que sólo los gays expresan sus sentimientos’; Ellos hablan, p. 82. His experience at the hands of criminals led Bartolomé to rethink the idea that expressing feelings is a symbol of emotional weakness: ‘We keep it to ourselves so as not to expose ourselves. Why? Well, for fear. Parents make us fearful’.
10 Spanish original: ‘Nos lo guardamos para no exponernos. ¿Por qué? Pues por miedosos. Los padres nos hacen miedosos’; Ellos hablan, p. 82. Therefore, Bartolomé started seeing his violent father as a coward who had no courage to liberate himself from double standards, abuses of power, lies and, above all, ‘the feeling of superiority to harm others’.
11 Spanish original: ‘el sentimiento de superioridad para perjudicar a otros’; Ellos hablan, p. 84. Through his work in anti-kidnapping activism, Bartolomé is currently inviting new generations to reverse the macho model instilled in Mexican society because he believes that this will initiate the peace process in Mexico: ‘It is not by chance that more than 90% of kidnappers and murderers are men; they are children of abusive males’.
12 Spanish original: ‘No es una casualidad que más del 90% de los secuestradores y asesinos sean hombres; son hijos de machos abusivos’; Ellos hablan, p. 84.Other males in the book initially declare their rejection of their parents’ approach to masculinity but later declare their inability to free themselves from the taught patterns on gender and sexuality, despite the trauma these patterns pose for them in adulthood. Such is the case with Ismael, who deeply resents his father’s despotism in the family environment: ‘We could only live with him if we accepted his truth, no matter how false it was in the face of every scar that lay deep in our memories’.
13 Spanish original: ‘Solo podíamos vivir cerca de él si aceptábamos su verdad, por falsa que fuera frenta a cada cicatriz que ahonda en nuestra memoria’; Ellos hablan, p. 75. Ismael has therefore learnt to channel his childhood fears of his father into theatrical sexual violence: ‘This is how I divide my life: between the false and the true, so as not to be confused. I don’t like to harm anyone’.
14 Spanish original: ‘Así divido mi vida: entre lo falso y lo verdadero, para no confundirme. No me gusta dañar a nadie’; Ellos hablan, p. 75. Ismael recalls how his father and grandfather took him to brothels, and this led him to have a stormy and confused perception of sexuality: ‘then I would read novels in which intelligent and cultured men had sordid lives, between brothels and cantinas’.
15 Spanish original: ‘luego leía novelas en el que los hombres inteligentes y cultos tenían vidas sórdidas, entre burdeles y cantinas’; Ellos hablan, p. 73. He has found in sadomasochism a way to evade the memories of his authoritarian father and rethink the limits of his virility in the sexual field. The division between the false and the true has helped him to normalise his relationships with women, towards whom he shows empathy for suffering double discrimination, as women and as mothers, in the
machista culture: ‘This is the advantage of being a man; we have more freedom […] that’s how culture is’.
16 Spanish original: ‘Esa es la ventaja de ser hombre; tenemos más libertad […] así es la cultura’; Ellos hablan, p. 75. Ismael refers to the traditional division of tasks and responsibilities that establishes that women are natural caregivers and therefore in charge of raising the children.
We have already addressed this gender division; in the book, while wives and mothers are seen as paradigmatic caregivers, males are mainly perceived as providers and role models for the conduct of other males. The new masculinity, which we referred to before, requires breaking the pre-established gender stereotypes that determine the inferiority of women in all social spheres, including the home environment. This would lead to a change in the violent dynamics against women. Next, we address how violence against women is represented in the stories in the book. We shall address how this violence in particular determines the recovery of the children.