Mexican Women and Men: Battles, Conquests, and Film

Para la traducción en español, haga clic aquí.

After Tanya and I had finished our Zoom interview with Marco Lôme, we were excited to dive into our second interview of the day almost immediately. A chance comment at the home of Diana Ibarra, philosopher of gender, had encouraged us to rent online one of the films produced by Maestra Olivia Núñez Orellana, at that time director of the Mexico City section of the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for the Sciences of Marriage and the Family. We had watched, cried, discussed that night and all the next morning, after our immersion in the beautiful cinematographic journey of Ilusiones, S.A. And now we would be able to speak with the woman who had produced this award-winning film for the 2015 Chicago Latino Film Festival!

Olivia joked with us as she took off her new glasses – “I don’t have to look intelligent…and these are hurting my vanity!” – and got comfortable for our conversation. Perfectly dressed and manicured, yet warm and open, she began to share with us what it means to be a woman in the Mexican culture.

“The Mexican woman,” she told us, “[is] defined by her history…of being conquered.” This history of the conquista, she continued, means that every Mexican woman finds herself fighting two battles simultaneously: “One is very visible, which is cultural, and one is very invisible, which is that of personal identity.” This visible battle is the struggle for liberty, the struggle for equality, whether that manifests itself in having to ask a man’s permission to go to the doctor, or the university and work hours, which are set so as to encourage men and discourage women. In this context, “the Mexican woman is challenged to understand which are truly battles and what are battles that are undertaken out of inertia…”

For, whereas before it was considered somehow wrong for Mexican women to study or work outside of the home, now it is considered somehow wrong for them to dedicate themselves to the home: the woman finds herself having to conform to and fight for one of two alternatives. The difficulty is that women are so exhausted in fighting these exterior battles, that they have no energy left to fight the invisible battle: to know themselves, to discover their true identity.

As Olivia explained, for the Mexican woman, “I am so exhausted by these external battles that I am not really a woman….[a]ccomplishing external conquests, fulfilling the expectations that history, that the lack of liberty has imposed upon me. Thus, I enjoy my femininity very little, I don’t truly touch it…The woman has a challenge and that is to be a woman. Period.”

This challenge is undertaken by “ceasing to fight this external battle, both by women in this exaggerated liberty, as well as by men, with this false alternative of either being macho [the man who dominates] or mandilón [the man who is dominated].” It is by “turning our eyes to look inside and to recognize our own wealth and when we discover it, then we will discover that something is missing from this wealth, which is the other [man or woman], who is equally valuable and then this can become a relationship of equals which is given to one another...”

Olivia spoke then of her own journey as a woman, in terms of her work in Communications and film and her marriage: “[I]n my experience of 30 years of marriage, my husband was always more than generous in recognizing my desire to study, in supporting it, staying in rhythm with me, with the projects, dreams, and in allowing that I would decide this harmony between these dreams, doing what was possible and doing it from home.” As she recounted later at lunch, when a journalist asked him what it was like to be the husband of Olivia Nuñez, she waited too with curiosity for the response. Her husband then answered, “In her realization, I find my own.”

If this is the true battle of the Mexican woman, to encounter herself, together with support from others to realize herself, where can she look for some model or some idea of how to undertake this conquest?

This is where Olivia’s own realization meets that of the culture. “In reality, the television culture and the heroes that we present are always men without women at their side or capable of doing without them. Violent men” or “the Mexico of drug trafficking.” Instead, in the three prize-winning films that Olivia has helped to write and produce, El estudiante [The Student] in 2009, Ella y el candidato [She and the Candidate] in 2011, and Ilusiones, SA [Illusions] in 2015, Olivia and her production company have sought to represent, “the man-woman relationship; love, donation, discovery of the other; and a beautiful Mexico,” “with the values of the Mexicans.”

Ilusiones, the film that captured the hearts of Tanya and myself, is based upon a story by Alejandro Casona and focuses on a company of actors whose job is to make dreams come true. An older gentleman has engaged the company to play his long-lost grandson and the grandson’s wife, in order to fulfill his own wife’s dream of meeting her grandson once more. Set in the beautiful Mexican countryside, full of the creativity and surprise of discovering what the “form” of love looks like, it is in the acting of love that the supposed grandson and his wife, as well as the older, more mature couple, discover that, as Olivia described, “falling in love…always has the magic of donation, of giving to one another.”

Reflecting on Olivia’s experience as a Mexican woman, how might it help other women to live out their femininity?

Women, what are the cultural battles that we fight? Where do they present false alternatives? When and how can we undertake the true battle of finding our own femininity? And who are the people – the men in our lives and the tellers of great stories through film – who can help us to more fully understand our feminine wealth that exists within – and discover the magic of donation?

Thank you for accompanying me on this gender journey! May the wisdom of the Mexican women be a gift to you!

Mexican Women: Thorns and Roses

Para la traducción en español, haga clic aquí.

Some people steal your heart with a smile.

Sandra began with a smile, but stole my heart with a rose.

I met Craig Johring, co-founder of Hope of the Poor, a few days into my Mexican journey. Having listened to the research that I was engaged in, he looked up intently and said, “You have to speak with Sandra.” Craig was unable to come, so he sent us pictures to help identify one another. I thought, “Her smile. She has a captivating smile, and this I will be able to find in a crowd.”

Having met at the Basilica, Sandra and I went to a nearby coffee shop, where, surrounded by delicacies, pastries, and sweets, we ordered our coffee and sat down. I asked Sandra to tell me a little about herself. She calmly, intentionally began a story full of pain.

Orphaned at two years old, her physically abusive aunt in Puebla pulled her out of school at the age of seven, telling Sandra that “women weren’t meant to study [but to] clean, cook, and iron.” Then, Sandra said, as she looked me tranquilly and fully in the eyes, “when I turned eight years old, the gift my cousin gave me was sexual abuse.” She told her aunt, who accused her of lying, and beat her. The little girl ran away. When she recounted her story to the woman who found her sleeping on a park bench, the woman told her not to worry, she would help her. “And yes, she helped me,” Sandra asserted. “She took me to eat, she took me to her home, she bathed me. I could sleep peacefully because no one was going to abuse me, to touch my body. However, the next day, she woke me up very early, made me put on a mini-skirt, a little top, began to put make-up on me, and called for a taxi.”

For six months, at the age of eight, Sandra lived the hellish nightmare of sex-trafficking. “There were days that I didn’t remember anything, I awoke already on the ground, thrown about, completely beaten, bitten, I was in pain between my legs, the part behind…I don’t remember how many men…passed in a night for me.” It was here that I got up the courage to touch Sandra’s shoulder as a sign of compassion. Although we were both sitting up straight as though for a formal interview, the tears were shining in our eyes.

When an older woman finally helped the little girls to escape, Sandra traveled by foot to Mexico City; she went to an orphanage for help but was told that she was already “a rotten apple. And they weren’t going to let me spoil the other little girls.”

So, for the next 22 years, Sandra lived on the street, sometimes in a bus terminal, sometimes in a manhole, turning from a child into a mother. She was violated by passing men, policemen, and the boyfriends who claimed to love her. She sought to feed herself and her children by cleaning windshields, selling roses and rosaries that she had made by hand, and when that failed, looking for food through dumpsters at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Already the mother of Samantha when her son Adán was born, Sandra managed to escape from his father, get a job, and rent a little room at a hotel – until his father returned and demanded the son he had never recognized.

However, Sandra described her most painful suffering as the suffering of her children, for it was only her children that gave her any desire to continue living; she desired to give them better lives. When Adán was five, after they had escaped from his father, she had found a home that took in people struggling to get off the streets. One day, when Samantha was at school, Sandra was hit by a feeling that her heart was about to explode. She ran right to their room in the home – and saw a 14 year-old boy violating her little son. They left the home.

It was after the violation of her son that Sandra “raised her face and said to [God]: ‘Then, if you truly exist, help me. Why are you so bad with me? I am already tired of this. I want to change my life. I don’t want any more violation, any more beatings. They have violated my son; I don’t want to them to violate my daughter’…I was asking and begging him to help me. That he would save me, that I was also his daughter. And yes, then he helped me; within a week, Craig appeared.” In this moment, as she spoke, the same captivating smile of the photo appeared in the midst of the bustling café.

Craig asked to buy her rosaries. Sandra told him that for three pesos he could have the whole lot, to which he replied that “he was going to buy each one for ten pesos, what each rosary cost, and that he would buy all of my rosaries.” From here, Craig helped Sandra and her children to find a room in a hotel, and then he asked her to work with him. They began feeding the people in the street, helping those people to find homes, and bringing school clothes and supplies to the children who live in the dump with their families.

“Then,” Sandra said, “I began to save children from the street.” Living now in an apartment with ten children she has taken in, in addition to her own two, she elaborated, “A woman who didn’t have a mom, dad, from the streets, who ate from the trash, today I have job for Craig that I like to do. My son is doing well at school, and I have many children and a boyfriend who respects me…it cost me to find myself. Now I give to myself this love that I need.”

When Sandra finished her story, it felt strange to be sitting still in the same coffee shop, full of orders for lattes and scuffling chairs. I felt that I had traveled through suffering to hope, to the hope that allows a woman and especially a mother, to not only survive, but also to flourish. Mothers, Sandra, had told me, are warriors. “From the moment that a baby is formed within us is something immense. In every way, the word ‘mother’ is an immense word. It is something to be proud of. It is something to be proud of and at least for me, being a mother is a blessing, having an engine for whom to make the most of your life.”

And it was when I finished saving the audio file, and turned around, still seeking my bearings in this banal setting for such a story of suffering and hope, that I saw what had occupied Sandra in the last minute or two.

The woman whose life had begun with thorns had taken her napkin and made me a rose.

Reflecting on Sandra’s experience as a Mexican woman, how might it help other women to live out their femininity?

Women, like Sandra, do you share your story with others who can learn from your suffering and your hope? Have you learned how to distinguish between those who can help you and those who will hurt you? And, how do you “give this love that you need” in such a way that you – and those you meet – can flourish like a rose?

Thank you for accompanying me on this gender journey! May the wisdom of the Mexican women be a gift to you!

To learn more about Sandra and her work with Hope of the Poor:

Mexican Men: The Desire for a New Expression of Masculinity

Para la traducción en español, haga clic aquí.

How does a man realize that he desires a new expression of masculinity, a new way of being a man? How does he, beer in hand, ask his guy friends if there is a better way to be a man? How does he navigate this new masculinity with his wife, in their relationship, and with their kids? These were the questions that swirled around in my head after the interview with Marco Lôme.

I had no idea beforehand of the questions that this first interview in Mexico would raise. Arriving on a slightly chilly morning at Anáhauc University, Tanya and I had planned interviews with both Maestra Olivia Núñez Orellana, who directs the Mexico City section of John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for the Sciences of Marriage and the Family, and Maestro Marco Lôme, who directs the Guadalajara section. As Mexican scholars of the family yet with different specializations – Olivia a film producer and director, and Marco a marriage and family therapist - we were interested to hear about their own personal experiences of masculinity and femininity. Our interview with Olivia would be in person, and the interview with Marco would be conducted with Zoom. As Marco’s interview would be the first to employ technological means – the first interview that wasn’t person to person in the same room - I had wondered if this would change our interaction or his willingness to share. Would it make the interview more formal? Would it be less personal?

However, Marco’s interview, his reflection on masculinity, was eminently personal as well as thought-provoking. Smiling, joking with us about being underdressed, excited for his third child on the way, he shared with the precision of a teacher. Using verbal clips from his own youth, he described his experience as a Mexican man in terms of a journey. As a child, Marco was taught that to be a man was to be strong, emotionally and physically. If he cried at home, he might earn a blow, as if to say, “Why are you crying? You don’t need to cry; you’re a man.” School, as well, his relationships with his classmates, taught him this same kind of strength. “The law of the jungle,” ruled our interactions, he related, and “this provoked a certain bullying…the most sensitive were criticized as being not much of a man…” And obviously, this strength was necessary to conquer women. “I remember,” he said, “there was a stage in my life where I sought out fights, because I thought that the more fights I was in, was like having more medals of honor, and the women would come to admire me, as aggressive and strong.”

And why were women to be conquered?, one might wonder. Marco was straightforward: although the idea was unconscious, he thought that women were inferior; they were conquered to be used.

It was while studying for his Masters and beginning to think about marriage, that Marco’s ideas of masculinity began to change. He realized that there had to be another form of masculinity, and he began to search for it. A dating relationship with a possessive woman, reading Sergio Sinay’s La masculinidad tóxica, and finally, his marriage helped him to mature in this new expression of masculinity. “I can say with much sincerity,” Marco related, head in his hands as he searched for the best words, “that my spouse drew from me things that I could never imagine. From professional development, from helping me to be a better spouse, from telling me things, ‘Listen, what you’re telling me hurts me’,” as he would thoughtlessly continue the same patterns from his childhood home. It was in their marriage that he found the relationship between husband and wife could be one of synergy between the two, instead of a relationship of superiority and inferiority, characterized by machismo.

Marco spoke also of how his wife helped him to find this new expression of masculinity as a father. “[E]ven working on the subject of the family, I remember that sometimes I would come home, arriving completely exhausted, and I would lie in the armchair. And my wife would tell me, ‘Hey, those two [children] are waiting for you,’ and I would tell her, ‘Well, it’s that I’m exhausted,’ [and she would reply] ‘I’m exhausted too, but it’s your turn, and not because it’s time for you to help me but because it is your responsibility to have time’.” As Marco came to understand in their relationship, “[P]aternity belongs to both [mother and father], and the moment that one has it, one has to go out of oneself.”

However, Marco knows that his journey is not over, as he joins other men on the same pioneering trek. “There is,” he says, “a Mexican man who wants to quit being macho, but he doesn’t know how to break these structures that culturally continue to be present. Because there aren’t any places that tell him how…I think that the…challenge is to encounter an education in a new masculinity that helps you to see that being strong…doesn’t lead you to being violent but to being strong in the interior.” And it’s together with his male friends, other men who are just becoming fathers, and with his wife, that he continues this journey, this self-education.

Reflecting on Marco’s experience as a Mexican man, how might it help other men to live out their masculinity?

Men, have you taken the time, as Marco did, to reflect on the image of masculinity that you have learned? At home with your own father? In school? What is the image of masculinity that you have lived out in relationships? Were you, or are you, willing to work together with your girlfriend or spouse to become a better man? And finally, is your strength the kind that makes you strong enough to be the man who starts the conversation, beer in hand with your guy friends, about what a new expression of masculinity can look like?

Thank you for accompanying me on this gender journey! May the wisdom of the Mexican men be a gift to you!