Chile and the machismo

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Even though I’m no longer in Valparaiso, but in the tropical Bahia in Brazil, I have devoted this entry to some final reflexions upon life in Chile and Valparaiso. There's one highly relevant theme that I still havn’t really written that much about. The machismo- a phenomenon highly integrated in the Latinamerican society, or?

I remember conversating with some friends before leaving Sweden, discussing ways to meet the machisto attitudes that I was sure to meet in all sorts of contexts, for example regarding men insisting on paying for drinks or dinner or throwing comments in the streets. Recently one of those friends asked me how I had coped with these and similar situations, which made me realize that not once, during my time in Chile, had anyone tried to pay for drinks or food that I had had. My impression is that men, as well as women, on the other hand always try to make sure splitting the bill down to each and every peso - just like the Swedes.

During my first weeks in the Valparaiso, people that I met often asked me for my impression of the Chilean men, and if I’d had any bad expereiences with machisto attitudes. The truth was that I hadn’t really noticed any major diferences to “equal Sweden”, but was constantly reminded to keep my eyes open by the anxious questions. It seemed to me that the people had developed a somewhat overprotective attitude, worrying a lot about the reputation of the Chilean men and their attitudes. However as the time have passed, I have become more and more aware of the smaller details that in a wider perspective are of relevance in the constuction of a machisto society.

It can really be the simplest things such as the fact that many men, without reflecting upon, it, always choose to walk closest to the streeet on a pavement, when they are with a woman. This, after having given it some thought, was explained to me as an “instinct” to protect the woman.

In some of the discussions of a conference, that I went to as a part of my internshaip, it was concluded that it was more importent to prevent teenage daughters than teenage boys from hanging out one the streets, taking drugs and all sorts of substances, since they are more vulnurable.

I have also ended up in more ridiculos discussions with men, stubbornly stating that they would never play fotboll together with a women since it would take away all the fun of the game, since there are obviously no women on this planet that know how to play fotboll. I, with my past career as a fotball player (between 7-14 years of age), didn’t quite agree.

Just a few days before leaving Chile i cooked a Swedish dinner concisting, among others of meatballs with lingonberry jam and for dessert, icecream with cloudberry jam (hjorttronsylt). Both of the jams were made by my dad, which I of course told the impressed audience, that was next to shocked find out that I had a dad that makes jam. In the area of cooking that already is considered quite a femenine task, making jam is apparently considered something especially femenine.

In general it seems to me that women and men in Chile are looked upon as two totally diferent creatures with diferent tasks in life. I did for example several times, when telling people that i had been away with some friends climbing in the past weekend, get the question “oh, and did you climb or did you just watch?”. And the typical activities for the kids in my project out of those that were separated into girls and boys groups, could for example be: fotball for the boys and make up and hairstyling for the girls. But as you can see from the photoes, I did at least manage to involve both boys and girls in the capoeira and climbing activities that I arranged.

My conclusion would therefore be that the society is changing, but slowly. There's still a long way to go before the machistoattitudes are erased from the social structure.

PS. Again for those interested in more photoes from the climbing adventure in Hitchcock go to http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Johannalo/Gallery/3131/ or just click on Gallery in the menu above..

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