A Man Who Hates Women

According to a November 2017 United Nations Development Program Report, Latin America has the highest rate in the world of gender-based sexual violence against women, and in Central America two of every three women killed are victims of femicide, while the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean found that on average twelve women are murdered a day across the region. The acceptance of violence against women is linked to the culture of machismo in Latin America; a recent report by Oxfam surveyed young people aged fifteen to twenty-five from eight Latin American and Caribbean countries and found that machismo is tolerated by many young people in the region, with 86% of the young people surveyed believing their friends would not intervene if a friend hit his girlfriend. This normalization of violence against women has grave consequences for women and girls.

As a psychoanalyst practicing in Mexico City, I have been thinking, writing and researching for decades about the unfathomable phenomenon of feminicide. The cultural, sociological, political, and economic complexities that have contributed to the killing of women are, I believe, intrinsically tied to the fundamental ideology of machismo.

The roots of my country's machismo lie in the trauma of the sixteenth century Spanish conquest: the forced evangelization of the Indian population and the rape of indigenous women by the white-skinned conquerors who did not legitimize their mestizo children. An idealized female gender stereotype was patterned on the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico, whose legendary apparition and cult date from that time. The Virgin of Guadalupe represents the self-sacrificial, docile, sweet, understanding woman — a Madonna who unconditionally fulfills all the male's needs and expectations.

Two contrasting and negative female images also date from the sixteenth century. One, Malinche, an Aztec woman sold into slavery, was Cortes's “too willing” mistress, info