Latino Truck Driver Trade

Sex and HIV in Central America

Johnny Madrigal

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780789008824
• eBook ISBN: 9781317720522
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Estudios étnicos

What do truckers do about their sexual needs on the road?This startling and unique study examines the on-the-road sex lives of Central American truck drivers. It takes a quantitative and qualitative look at the extent of homosexuality, prostitution, drug use, and vulnerability to HIV infection among these men who operate in a strangely unique sexual culture. Latino Truck Driver Trade: Sex and HIV in Central America documents the extent of their sexual activities with both men and women as well as drug use and prostitution among this population. Honest and revealing, this valuable book uncovers the incredible danger that truck drivers put themselves in by risking HIV infection and why Latin sexual culture does not always define men who participate in acts with other men as "homosexual." Latino Truck Driver Trade explores the concept of "machismo" and why truck drivers act very "manly" (to avoid being teased or being made fun of).Through interviews with truck drivers, this detailed account gives insight into how friends pressure others to perform sexual acts, drink alcohol, and take drugs in order to "fit in." Latino Truck Driver Trade: Sex and HIV in Central America

• provides suggestions for HIV prevention programs to decrease the spread of HIV that is prevalent among this group
• shows how theories of homosexuality fail to account for its widespread practice among Latino heterosexual men
• explores the sexual practices of these men
• questions basic assumptions about Latin machismo
• demonstrates how Latino men can practice homosexuality without acquiring a gay identity
• shows how this international truck driver culture will impact the U. S.

Latino Truck Driver Trade explicitly examines the on-the-road lifestyles of Central American truckers, revealing that many times they are completely the opposite of the quiet, "normal" lives these men lead at home.

Chapter 1

Theory of Machismo

There is a debate in academia concerning two very different ways of looking at the modality of Latin masculinity known as machismo. One view, expressed in the work of Mirandé¹ and Gutman,² considers machismo to be something positive. Others such as Lewis,³ Paternosto,⁴ Carrier,⁵ Lancaster,⁶ and Díaz⁷ perceive it as a negative institution. The positive vision tells us that machismo is a phenomenon of Latin American culture that reveres courage, the defense of the family, a sense of communal responsibility, and honor: “ethical, modest and concerned with the honor and protection of the family.”⁸ The negative view considers machismo as an accentuated form of masculinity that despises the feminine and emphasizes the masculine, and is associated with physical strength, aggression, sexual infidelity, and violence against women and sexual minorities. To be macho is to be “violent, irrational, and a dominator of women.”⁹

Lewis, Paz,¹⁰ Aramoni,¹¹ and Goldwert¹² belong to the “essentialist” current, and believe that the macho phenomenon is generalized among Latin men and that it has been part of their culture since a very early period. Others, such as Mirandé, Gutman, and Lancaster, regard it as a historical construct that varies in time and space, one that has an origin and will possibly have an end. For the constructionists, no category is common to the whole region; there is no constant in time either. Their studies are aimed at pinpointing the historical changes in different Latin societies with respect to gender, particularly masculinity.

These visions appear to be so opposed that they do not seem to depict the same “animal.” The nonacademic public observing the debate from the sidelines would not understand the reason for all the brouhaha over such a familiar beast. However, university intellectuals tend to create these technical categories to ensure that they remain entertaining and productive to magazines and publishers. It is hardly surprising that these discussions go unnoticed by people whose feet are firmly on the ground.

HONORABLE MACHOS

The first school of thought believes that machismo is Latin cultural baggage characterized by an accentuated masculinity. In his study on Latin men living in the United States, Mirandé concludes that being macho has a different connotation than is usually thought:

The findings point to a distinctive Mexican cultural attitude towards humanity, masculinity, and the role of the father, an attitude that is particularly strong among men from the lower and working classes. This attitude dictates that a man's success as a father is measured not only by external qualities such as wealth, education or power, but also by internal ones such as being honest, responsible, and hardworking, sacrificing himself for his children and, above all, by not being selfish.¹³

The study also questions the rural origins of machismo and the notion that it springs from more primitive stages of development, since the poor are those who least often define themselves as macho.¹⁴

The minority that does define itself as machista, which tends to be from the middle and professional classes, does not do so from a perspective of contempt and domination of the feminine, which has been the traditional view of the term. Those who describe themselves as machista interpret the term as a “code of ethics, honor and decency.”¹⁵ In other words, for those studied by Mirandé, to be macho is to be honest, honorable men who are responsible for taking care of their families. According to him, the fact that being macho is equated with being brave and honorable does not exclude women, who may also be regarded as machas.

Gutman agrees that the perceptions created by anthropologists about Mexican working men are “erroneous and harmful.” They have lost sight of the fact that not all Mexican men are “hard-drinking philanderers,” and of “the activities of fatherhood in the lives of millions of Mexican men.”¹⁶ In other words, they have forgotten that Mexican men also perform “feminine” activities such as being good parents.

Gutman believes that most male inhabitants of Santo Domingo, a shantytown in Mexico City, no longer consider themselves machos; and those who do, the older men, share Mirandé's definition that has to do with being a “man of honor.”¹⁷ The young men do not regard themselves as machos or mandilones (effeminate or homosexual men) and think that being macho is something negative. In other words, the new generation in Santo Domingo does not defend traditional machismo.

Gutman is aware that there is a tradition of subordinating women and upholding masculine values as superior. For him, identities are “processes that change historically” and live on “relationships with each other.”¹⁸ If economic conditions, for instance, change and women obtain greater opportunities, gender relations will be modified in their favor: “There is an awareness inherited from the past that is accepted without discussion and an implicit one that arises from circumstances and that unites them to transform the world.”¹⁹

Gutman considers that the integration of women into the job market, feminist ideas, and an erosion in labor divisions are some of the circumstances that have changed the world of Santo Domingo, and therefore of traditional machismo. This creates a “contradictory consciousness,” a kind of discrepancy between what people have traditionally learned about the meaning of being macho and what it means today. Since men can no longer dominate women as they once did, the definition of masculinity has changed. Machismo as accentuated masculinity is no longer possible in a more integrated, democratic world that respects women's rights. It is therefore replaced by a concept of courage that does not necessarily exclude women.

Thus, the men of Santo Domingo are no longer machos in the traditional sense of the word. They have had to adapt to new circumstances in which women have gained a greater freedom through their entrance into the workplace, their awareness of gender discrimination, and their political struggles to obtain land and housing. The machos of old have been forced to watch their territories being invaded by women (bars, sports, the workplace, fashion, etc. are now available to and influence by both sexes), their prerogatives slowly eliminated (now they are expected to help with domestic chores and child rearing), and also their monopoly of public life broken (women now occupy some elected posts).

This new reality has led men to define themselves not so much by what differentiates them from women, who appear more and more like them, but in relation to mandilones, who represent homosexuality and the effeminate. It is ironic that the definition of being a man in a Mexican slum is increasingly based upon the way that men who are not considered men supposedly behave. If we take Gutman's theories to their logical conclusions, Mexico is the first society to have done away with binary opposites (this means no longer polarizing in terms such as feminine versus masculine, woman versus man).

SEXIST MACHOS

The authors of the other school of thought take a different view. They do not share the idea that machismo or the masculinity of Latin men is divorced from their dominant relationship to women. Oscar Lewis was perhaps the first to make famous the stereotype of the macho as a bully who accentuates masculine traits to an absurd degree:

In a fight, I would never want to give in or say “enough,” even if my opponent were killing me. I would want to go to my death smiling. That is what we mean by being “macho,” by being manly.²⁰

In her study of homosexuals in a Mexican neighborhood, Annick Prieur agrees with Gutman that homosexuals help to define the macho man: “In many societies, he [the homosexual] is a cultural symbol of the opposite of the masculine man.”²¹ She concedes that while homosexuals help define macho or masculine men, as she calls them, this cannot be separated, as Gutman believes, from the feminine, since “masculine domination, feminine subordination, and the degradation of homosexuals, are related.”²²

In his work on homosexuals and homophobia, Carrier offers that machismo is closely linked to hypermasculinity—in other words, an extreme differentiation between men and women: “The distinct boundary between male and female roles in Mexico appears to be in part due to a culturally defined hypermasculine ideal referred to as machismo.”²³ For Carrier, this hypermasculinity is associated with courage, domination, power, aggressiveness, and invulnerability.²⁴ Diaz regards it as “an excessive, abusive and perverted display of masculine traits” that sometimes results from the very insecurity of feeling like a man: “Deeper doubts and insecurity about one's masculinity and a ‘non-masculine’ feeling of helplessness and fear predict a strong display of machista attitudes and behaviors.”²⁵

Carrier does not believe that things are changing radically, as Gutman reasons. For him, the world of the macho male excludes women: “Social relationships of Mexican males tend to be all male in character, both before and after marriage. Men feel free to spend a lot of their spare time with their male friends rather than with their wives.” Unlike Gutman, he does not even detect any progress in the cantinas: “drinking establishments in Mexico—cantinas, bars, nightclubs—are popular locations where Mexican men spend their free time away from their families.”²⁶

McGinn also shares the idea that machismo, for men, is related to differentiation from and contempt toward the feminine: “The young Mexican boy may be severely scolded for engaging in feminine activities such as playing with dolls or jacks. Parents verbally and physically punish ‘feminine’ traits in their male children.”²⁷ Paternosto also considers that the Latin machismo that “permeates all institutions and sexual relations”²⁸ established itself by contrasting the masculine and the feminine. “In Latin America, a woman who expresses her sexuality is a whore and the man who does so is a god.”²⁹

Stevens agrees that machismo is defined in opposition to the feminine, and that the second (marianismo) is subordinate to the first:

It is ubiquitous in every social class. There is a near universal agreement on what a “real woman” is like and how she should act. Among the characteristics of this ideal are semi-divinity, moral superiority and spiritual strength … She is also submissive to the demands of the men: husbands, sons, fathers, brothers …³⁰

In his study on machismo in Nicaragua, Lancaster agrees with the view expressed by the above authors that machismo is subject to contrast with the feminine. However, not being an essentialist, Lancaster considers this to be a social construct and believes that machismo and its feminine opposite can be created in men and women:

Those who consistently lose out in the competition for male status, or who can be convinced to dispose themselves to the sexual urges and status plays of other men, … lose status: these men are made into “cochones.” And those who master the rules of conventional masculinity, … are made into machistas.³¹

How are machismo and its opposite, marianismo, constructed, according to Lancaster? For him women are trained from childhood to subordinate themselves to men and to be “submissive, loyal, ingenuous, f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Theory of Machismo
• Chapter 2. Methodology
• Chapter 3. The Place of the Mushroom Dwellings
• Chapter 4. The Rolling Bubble of Glass and Steel
• Chapter 5. The Long Wait from Dawn to Dusk
• Chapter 6. Sexual Discourses
• Chapter 7. Sexual Culture and Truckers
• Chapter 8. Bullying, or the Cult of Size
• Chapter 9. Hypersexuality
• Chapter 10. Obscenity and Intoxication
• Chapter 11. Venereal Diseases and Condoms
• Chapter 12. Prostitutes
• Chapter 13. Prostitutes or Feminists?
• Chapter 14. Homosexual Relations
• Epilogue
• Appendix: Survey: HIV/AIDS and STD Prevention Among Central American Truckers
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index