The essence of latino machismo on a car bumper

A while back, I was riding on a bus sitting in the front seat up alongside the driver. We pulled up behind another bus at a stoplight and I was struck for some reason by what was on the back of that bus. You must understand that in Bolivia, cars and busses are very well decorated with stickers, stuffed animals, decals, curtains, and many other odd accessories. On the backs of most buses here you can see naked women, marijuana leafs, names of children or women, pictures of tigers or eagles or some other predator, or some phrase like, "Whatever you desire for me, may God pay you double," or "Your envy is my progress." This particular bus that we pulled behind was very plain and had no big, coloful decals or phrases. Instead it had two small stickers, one next to the other, in the center of the bumper. One was a sticker depicting the Mother Mary in the middle of a rosary and the other was the Playboy bunny. I dawned on me as I considered this juxtaposition that I was looking at the essence of the machista Bolivian treatment of women on the back of a bus. 

Here, Mary is venerated everywhere. There are miraculous virgins in many different parts of Bolivia, all of which have their big, week-long annual pilgrimage celebrations. The most famous being Copacabana in Copacabana (La Paz), Urkupiña in Quillacollo (Cochabamba), Cotoca in Cotoca (Santa Cruz) and Socavón in Oruro. Today, in fact, the largest statue in South America was inaugurated in Oruro. It is an image of the Virgen of Socavón that is over 45 meters tall and includes a chapel for 80 people inside the ground floor. For a frame of reference, the Statue of Liberty is 46 meters tall, counting the torch. Mary, who according to Catholic tradition was a virgin her entire life, is a symbol of the expectations that men and Bolivian (maybe even Latin American, if I may generalize a bit) society place on girls to be chaste, pure, meek, and submissive. We also see in the Bolivian Mary the veneration of mothers in general. Bolivian men value and honor their mothers above all other women in their life and would do anything for them even if it harms their wives or daughters in the process. Their mother´s advice is law and many men see one role in their relationship to their mother as protector, sometimes against their mother´s abusive partner. Just imagine what many Bolivian women´s relationship to their mother-in-law is like. 

The Playboy bunny is also a ubiquitous symbol in Bolivian popular culture. It is usually seen on cars driven by men or on women´s clothing and accessories-- jeans, blouses, underwear, shorts, school notebooks, purses, jewelry, even tattoos. The bunny symbolizes the other side of the coin from the Virgin Mary. At the same time that women are expected to be chaste and virtuous when the marraige day comes, there is also a conflicting expectation that women must be sexy, sensuous, feminine, and sexually available. You can see this all over Bolivian society. The popular fashion for women and girls in warmer parts of the country like Santa Cruz is tiny shorts or skirts with a blouse that in the USA would be considered lingerie you would only wear for your special someone in the privacy of your own home. Advertisements on bilboards and calendars, the newspaper and on tv, for anything from car batteries, to paint, to hamburgers, to shoes are covered with barely clothed, or sometimes fully naked, women. Beauty pageants are ubiquitous and every girl's dream is to be a model. The average age at which girls comence sexual activity in Bolivia is 14 years old. The majority of women in Santa Cruz would never leave the house without fully putting on makeup, doing their hair, struggling to put on those skin-tight jeans, and wearing 6-inch pump heals-- and then get their three kids ready and take them to school. 

These two conflicting images coexist fluidly in urban Bolivan-- and really, Latino-- culture. Women here are expected to be both Virgin Mary and Playboy Bunny at the same time. Thus, men expect any woman to dress like she is sexually available and act like it too when he wants her. Once the women is married, or really just dating a regular boyfriend, her body is sole property of her partner and she had better act like Mary if she knows what is good for her. Though, it is never expected of any man to be monogamous with his partner. In fact, the general excuse if he is caught cheating it, "hey, I´m sorry but I´m a man." 

As a result, 8 out of every 10 women in Bolivia is abused sexually, physically, and/or verbally by her partner. Over half of Bolivian women will be raped at least once in their lifetime. This must change. It won´t change by simply succeeding in either Mary or Bunny pushing the other out of the picture. This is because neither image is totally good or right or even better. Rather, we should build a new image from scratch. That is, each and every woman is made in the image of God. As such, everyone-- both men and women-- should treat women with respect, honor, and dignity. How can we begin to change this popular image in Bolivia, so ingrained into the mind of the society? Is it possible that this same image is prevelant not only in Latin America but in the USA too, only in more subtle tones? What is the church doing about it? Or in many cases, is the church reinforcing this imagery? Here at Peace and Hope this is one of the major things that we are fighting for, but it is an uphill battle. We take every little victory as they come but we also want to see change on the societal level. You can argue about whether this is even possible, but I say, if we don´t try, one day when we meet our maker He (She) is going to ask, why not?