Machismo Term Analysis

When a male child is born, there are special celebrations, not because he’s male but because of all the hard work and responsibility he’ll have as a man. It’s not that machismo doesn’t exist among our people, but it doesn’t present a problem for the community because it’s so much part of our way of life. […] At the same time, he is head of the household, not in the bad sense of the word, but because he is responsible for so many things. This doesn’t mean girls aren’t valued. Their work is hard too and there are other things that are due to them as mothers. Girls are valued because they are part of the earth, which gives us maize, beans, plants and everything we live on.

My mother used to say that through her life, through her living testimony, she tried to tell women that they too had to participate, so that when the repression comes and with it a lot of suffering, it’s not only the men who suffer. Women must join the struggle in their own way. My mother’s words told them that any evolution, any change, in which women had not participated, would not be a change, and there would be no victory.

There was something my mother used to say concerning machismo. You have to remember that my mother couldn’t read or write and didn’t know any theories either. What she said was that men weren’t to blame for machismo, and women weren’t to blame for machismo, but that it was part of the whole society. To fight machismo, you shouldn’t attack men and you shouldn’t attack women, because that is either the man being machista, or it’s the woman.

But in this respect I’ve met serious problems when handing out tasks to those compañeros, and I’ve often found it upsetting having to assume this role. But I really believed that I could contribute, and that they should respect me. […] It doesn’t mean you dominate a man, and you mustn’t get any sense of satisfaction out of it. It’s simply a question of principle. I have my job to do just like any other compañero. I found all this very difficult and, as I was saying, I came up against revolutionary compañeros, compañeros who had many ideas about making a revolution, but who had trouble accepting that a woman could participate in the struggle, not only in superficial things but in fundamental things. I’ve also had to punish many compañeros who try to prevent their women taking part in the struggle or carrying out any task.

A leader must be someone who’s had practical experience. It’s not so much that the hungrier you’ve been, the purer your ideas must be, but you can only have a real consciousness if you’ve really lived this life. I can say that in my organization most of the leaders are Indians. There are also some ladinos and some women in the leadership. But we have to erase the barriers which exist between ethnic groups, between Indians and ladinos, between men and women, between intellectuals and non-intellectuals, and between all the linguistic areas.