Latino Manhood

The term Latino manhood refers to models of masculinity embraced by men of South American, Central American, or Mexican origin living in the United States. It has historically been complex, dynamic, and in many ways shrouded in stereotype. In the Anglo-American mind, Latino men are often perceived in terms of machismo, a generalized set of negatively connoted behaviors ranging from misogyny to belligerence. More specifically, white Americans typically believe Latino men to be heirs to a cultural heritage driven by a veneration of the male and a denigration of the female. The male is supposedly dominant and aggressive, the female subordinate and passive. Within the family, the father is the unquestioned patriarch, provider, lawmaker, and judge. He is obsessed with the need to prove his masculinity, whether by extramarital affairs, excessive drinking, or aggressive behavior toward other men.

Yet while Latino men acknowledge the existence of machismo among them, most regard it as an undesirable cultural trait. Instead, they describe their own masculinity in terms of obligations toward their families, rather than their rights over it. Moreover, historical investigations have demonstrated that, though patriarchal authority did at a specific historical moment become an important component of Hispanic culture, it has been challenged by a variety of factors, including migration in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries (and its attendant redistribution of authority within the family); the emergence of a Latina feminist consciousness in the 1960s and 1970s; and, at the end of the twentieth century, the conscious rejection by Latino men themselves of behaviors that imperil the survival of their community. Thus, contrary to the stereotype of the Latino man as invariably sexist and violent, Latino masculinity has always been both multifaceted and flexible, sensitive to external socioeconomic pressures and internal reformist urges alike.