Debunking Marianismo: Economic Vulnerability and Survival Strategies among Guatemalan Wives

is called a widow, but everyone knows she was abandoned by her husband after the birth of her third child. Carmen had to send her children to live with her mother since their father left her and her new husband refuses to raise another man's offspring. Dona Magdalena's husband drank up her wages, beat her when she complained about it, then spent the next two weeks with his lover, leaving Magdalena penniless. Rich or poor, in towns and villages across the highlands, rarely a day passes without another woeful tale of offenses, abuses, and bad habits of men. The research on gender relations in Latin America is replete in descriptions of women tormented by unhappy marriages and in explanations of male behavior in this context (e.g., Basham 1976; Lewis 1959; 1961; Penalosa 1968; Hewes 1954). Even as early as the 17th century, Fray Alonso called it la mala vida (Boyer 1989). Where analysis fails us is when we ask why women put up with persistent male abuse and irresponsibility. In trying to explain this pattern, authors have often turned to the machismo/mari ani smo model of gender relations, which suggests that women welcome abusive male behavior as the spiritual verification of their true womanhood. Men's wickedness, this argument claims, is the necessary precondition for women's superior status as semidivine figures, without whose intercession men would have little chance of obtaining forgiveness for their transgressions (Stevens 1973a). There are several problems with this model. First, marianismo is often considered as a complement to machismo, where the passive, long-suffering woman acts in response to male irresponsibility; without marianismo, machismo could not exist. Second, it alleges that this pattern offers women a positive and private realm; that relegated to a separate domestic sphere, they are content with their feminine power in the home, and do not wish to change the sexual balance of power. On both counts, marianismo blames the victim, suggesting wives accept callousness from men because they benefit from the status of wife/mother. In addition, although some writers exclude traditional indigenous families who maintain their cultural purity (Stevens 1973b), marianismo has evolved into a nearly universal model of the behavior of Latin American women.