Masculinity in Colonial Mexico

Abstract

Sonya Lipsett-Rivera has done it again by writing another well-researched and highly readable history. The author reminds readers that colonial Mexicans themselves did not use the word macho. Yet, her book analyzes precisely the colonial period (mid to late seventeenth to early nineteenth century), with an eye toward the subject of men’s experiences and notions of male behavior. Lipsett-Rivera’s motivation here is how the Mexican macho trope relates to being a man in colonial Mexico. By offering a fine-grained analysis of topics like boyhood, sexuality (heteronormative as well as homosexual), labor, violence, and male sociability, she ultimately argues that the emerging of the “macho” stereotype could occur only after Independence.