Mexican and Brazilian Machismo: Cultural Tolerance

Abstract

Thousands of Latin American women disappear on daily basis. The
United Nations through the Women Unit classifies Mexico as an
emergency State, and Brazil as an alarming country in terms of violence
and murder against women and little girls. However, the key question
is to analyse the tolerance toward violence and subjugation of
women in Mexico and Brazil. The hypothesis of this work is based
on the idea that violence against women in Mexico and Brazil is
due to prevalent machismo in those countries, which is influenced
by the political, social, economic and cultural structure. The present
text aims to understand how machismo is embodied into Mexican
and Brazilian culture, reflected into family and social structures and
values, as well as inside the political establishment, which contri-
butes not only to subjugating women, but also to increasing gender
violence in these countries, where corruption and impunity are also
critical. The text is based on an interdisciplinary perspective, with
ethnographic data extracted by direct interviews conducted in the
communities of Xochimilco, South of Mexico City, Mexico. The
article exposes the main perspectives about machismo, offers a
cultural description of family values and social tolerance towards
machismo, provides a general picture about the levels of gender
violence in Mexico and Brazil, and presents the role of political
establishment in the development of machismo, and finally it offers
some conclusive comments.