Gender Roles and Family Violence Theme Analysis

In the final three chapters of his book, Bourgois focuses on another profound contradiction in the lives of the people he befriends in El Barrio: they deeply believe in the patriarchal nuclear family in theory and completely reject it in practice. Violence against women and children is disturbingly commonplace in El Barrio, one of many symptoms of a traditional rural patriarchy struggling to maintain male dominance in a modern urban environment dominated by a service economy that welcomes men and women alike as workers. Ultimately, the women who are wounded by the machismo of the men in their lives nevertheless continue to believe in patriarchy, and Bourgois shows how this state of affairs throws them into a double bind: first, it forces them to perform all the functions that sustain life (earning income, caring for children, maintaining homes and family relationships) while their husbands and boyfriends shun responsibility, and secondly, it blames them for overstepping their roles as women precisely when they do take on these responsibilities.

The last portion of Bourgois’s book focuses on the violence and inequalities that govern gender relations in El Barrio. Domestic abuse is shockingly common—Candy tells Bourgois that her husband, Felix, beats her nearly every day from the time they meet (when she is 13, when he also gang-rapes her) until she shoots him (in retaliation for his repeatedly sleeping with her sister). Primo and Caesar proudly admit participating in gang rapes, and Ray and Luis use rape to maintain control over their neighborhood. Candy’s inability to recognize that her relationship is profoundly unhealthy shows how deeply patriarchy is ingrained in life in El Barrio. And child abuse follows: most of Bourgois’s friends recall being mistreated as children, and many women leave their families’ houses due to abuse in their early teens by eloping with men who in turn become abusive.

Bourgois highlights how this violence is an outgrowth of the patriarchal principle that men must be the rulers of their nuclear families. This idea is deeply ingrained in Nuyorican culture because the recent ancestors of the people Bourgois studies lived in large, traditional agricultural families in Puerto Rico. Men were the breadwinners and, the more children they had, the better their financial status (because kids could work in the fields and the additional cost to keep them was negligible). In contrast, contemporary life in El Barrio does not require men to be in charge. The economy is based largely in service jobs that are both traditionally and currently dominated by women, and having more children now means financial liability rather than gain. Bourgois accordingly sees a difference between the older generation, exemplified by people like Ray who are proud to have as many children as possible, and the younger generation, exemplified by people like Primo who see no inherent point in having a lot of children (but end up doing so anyway). Patriarchy also proves a barrier to Bourgois’s research, because it makes it very difficult for him to interview women without making their husbands jealous.

Ultimately, patriarchy’s pervasiveness in El Barrio allows men to skirt precisely the responsibilities they claim through it. Although they are supposed to be the breadwinners, the El Barrio men Bourgois interviews reject legal employment and choose to sell drugs instead. Though this is better-paid work than what they could otherwise get, it becomes a problem when they spend their income on drugs and alcohol, rather than their families. In addition, these men are also almost never loyal to their wives and girlfriends, despite their belief in the nuclear family. Luis ignores his wife Wanda and 12 children (with four different women), instead spending his days trading crack for sexual favors from teenage addicts. Felix cheats on Candy perpetually and expects no consequences. Furthermore, men in El Barrio almost never support their biological children. Rather, if they support any children at all, they will support the children of their current wife or girlfriend (regardless of their biological fathers). Many of the people Bourgois interviews, however, take pride in failing to contribute to their families, and see themselves as clever because they live off their mothers’ or girlfriends’ food stamps and income.

After she shoots her husband Felix, who subsequently goes to jail for four years, Candy undergoes a profound transformation, becoming more masculine than any of the men around her: she becomes the neighborhood’s most successful dealer and takes on a number of male lovers (including Primo) whom she controls with violence. However, this infuriates all the men around her, who both feel emasculated and insist that she is a bad mother for selling drugs (something they, as fathers, do themselves) and refusing to submit to the control of a single romantic partner. While these behaviors are expected of men, they are transgressive when performed by a woman: they signify that Candy is challenging the power men take for granted. No matter how hard she tries to provide for her family, El Barrio’s enduring patriarchy will treat her as an incomplete woman until she takes on a man, and then justify that man’s mistreatment of her, no matter how severe.

The double standard in El Barrio’s gender dynamics is so severe that Bourgois inverts the usual complaint about broken families: the problem is not fathers’ absence from the lives of their children, wives and girlfriends, but rather their presence—which creates violence, instability, and the worst possible role models for their children. Bourgois argues that women are, slowly but surely, winning power in El Barrio—something Candy’s rise to notoriety exemplifies, even though she continues to firmly believe that men should have power over women. However, this slow shift toward equality is possible in large part because of the crisis in patriarchy in a contemporary New York that decreasingly gives men power just for being men, and the profound violence that embroils El Barrio women and children is this patriarchy’s way of lashing out, men using violence to try and restore their old, unquestioned power.