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Machismo in Cuba |
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De La Torre, Miguel (1999). Beyond Machismo: a Cuban Case Study. The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics, 19, 213-33.
History
is forged through one's cojones (balls)... [Meaning: like phallus
is to penis.]
"El colmo" (the ultimate sin)
is to be called a "maricón" (a derogatory term meaning
queer or fag), the antithesis of machismo. We white Cuban elite
males look into Lacan's mirror and recognize ourselves as machos
through the distancing process of negative self-definition: "I am what
I am not." The formation of the subject's ego constructs an illusory self-representation
through the negation of cojones, now projected upon our Others,
whoever identified as non-machos...
Unlike
the United States, sexual identity for Cubans is defined in terms of masculinity,
not in terms of gender... The phallic signifier of machismo
is located in the cojones. For Cubans, cojones, not the penis,
become our cultural "signifier of signifiers." The Other, if male, may
have a penis, but lacks the cojones to use it. I conquer, I subdue,
I domesticate por mis cojones (by my balls)...
To
tell a man not to be a maricón, also means "don't be a coward."
Cuban homophobia differs from homophobia in the United States. We do not
fear the homosexual; rather we hold him in contempt for being a man who
chooses not to prove his manhood. Unlike North Americans, where two men
engaged in a sexual act are both called homosexuals, for Cubans only the
one that places himself in the "position" of a woman is the maricón.
Only the one penetrated is labeled loca (crazy woman, a term for
maricones).
In fact, the man who is in the dominant position during the sex act, known
as bugarrón, is able to retain, if not increase, his machismo...
As
our Mexican friends Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes point out, the feminine
is screwed beforehand . . . [Machismo's] negative hero is the dictator
(one of Batista's motto was "Batista is the Man"), and its positive hero
is the rebel. They are at odds in politics, but they both love power. And
both despise homosexuality, as if every macho had his hidden gay
side . . .
The
supposed effeminacy of the Amerindians was further demonstrated by emphasizing
their lack of body hair and pictorially displaying their supposedly small
genitals. Simultaneously, the Amerindian woman was portrayed with excessively
masculine features and exaggerated sexual traits, justifying the need for
macho
Spaniards to enter the land and restore a proper phallocentric social order....
When machos gaze upon the Latino's Other, what do we see? How we
"see" them, defines our existential selves as machos. To "see" implies
a position of authority, a privileged point of view. "Seeing" is not a
mere innocent metaphysical phenomenon concerning the transmittance of light
waves. It encompasses a mode of thought which radically transforms the
object being seen into an object for possession.
Specifically,
when a macho gazes upon one of God's crucified peoples, they perceive
a group which is effeminate. When the macho looks at himself in
Lacan's mirror, he does not see a maricon hence he projects what
he is not into his Other so as to define himself as a white, civilized
macho.
The power of seeing becomes internalized, naturalized and legitimized in
order to mask the dominant culture's position of power. Our task as Hispanic
ethicists is to move toward dismantling machismo, to go beyond machismo,
by
shattering the illusions created in our hall of mirrors.
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