July 24, 2007

Mexican Machismo

In 1979, I took a tour boat around Acapulco. The guide, a local lady, pointed at a house on top of the cliff overlooking the ocean and proudly announced: "The home of movie estar Yon Wen!"

After about five minutes, I finally figured out that "Yon Wen" was John Wayne.

The great cowboy actor was probably the most prominent Mexicophilic American of the 20th Century. All three of the Duke's wives were from Latin America (Panama, Mexico, and Peru), and he loved making cowboy moves in Durango in Mexico, which looked a lot more like the Old West than anyplace in modern America. The movie closest to his heart, 1960's "The Alamo" (which he produced and directed in an era when movie stars seldom did either), was highly sympathetic to the Mexicans.

As I mentioned in "Sunday in the Park with Jorge," I'm ambivalent about Mexican machismo. I admire it in some ways, but not as much as John Wayne did.

One of the oddities of mass immigration from Mexico, however, is that, when praising the magic of diversity, almost nobody in liberal white America ever expresses any John Wayne-like appreciation for the stark Mexican sex role divide. The whole concept that Latin culture exaggerates natural sex differences just doesn't seem to register in the mainstream media. Diversity is supposed to overcome stereotypes, not reinforce them, so bringing in more Mexicans must be a victory for feminists.

What's even weirder is that the diversicrats are right on the political impact of this. Mass immigration from Mexico ultimately pushes power into the hands of the nanny state and the feminist establishment because Mexican immigrant dysfunction justifies huge numbers of government and foundation jobs for social workers. Further, macho Mexican-American politicians and activists find their white allies on the feminist-aligned left. For example, LA's strutting mayor Antonio Villaraigosa long worked for the ACLU and has one of those silly gender-equal surnames combining his last name (Villar) with his long-suffering wife's (Raigosa).

By the way, a reader writes:

I've spent a lot of time working with Mexicans and spent a lot of time in Mexico. Your observations are right on the mark. I've always thought that the Mexican practice of the "Pinata" at kids birthday parties was typically "mexican" and particularly dangerous to boot. A blinfolded kid wildy swinging a baseball bat at a paper mache' donkey filled with candy while a whole bunch of kids wait just feet away to rush in and capture the candy........That is if the kid swinging the bat stops swinging the bat when the candy starts to fall out of the Pinata. I'm sure there has been plenty of cracked skulls and concussions as a result of that mexican funfest. But, hey!, que lastima! pobrecito! Traiga la nina al cuarto emergencia donde hay muchos gringos medicos. Todo es libre, tambien! (What a pity poor thing. Just take him to the emergency room where there are lots of American doctors. It's all free too!)


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

The magic of diversity is that immigrants are just like us only more so.

Of course if they are just like us then where is the diversity?

Anonymous said...

Staunch Irish John Ford directed Yon Wen in a number of memorable pictures. His opinion of El Duke, frequently expressed? "Big idiot."

Anonymous said...

The people in Western nations who are most fervently against racism, sexism and religious bigotry are also those most fervently in favour of mass immigration from countries where racism, sexism and religious bigotry are far worse than in Western nations. I think this is evidence of liberalism's crypto-religious nature: religions gain a lot of their power from their contradictions, because no-one need invest emotional energy in believing the obvious.

Unknown said...

Everyone in California does piñatas that way. It's not a Mexican thing. You change it up depending on the ages and maturity level of the children - you can have blindfolded kids but a static piñata, or you can blindfold the older ones and let the little ones swing without being blindfolded. Also, the adult controlling the piñata typically moves it so the birthday child gets in the winning swing, and makes it almost impossible for older, stronger children to score - in fact, you can't really do a piñata in a mixed age group without the rope and the blindfold, because the older children just whack it and the game's over. And when I was growing up in San Francisco in the 80s, the candy scramble was always used an opportunity to impress the hippie values of the community - children who were greedy and who pushed littler children out of the way lost their candy and had to apologize.

Michael Carr - Veritas Literary said...

To be fair, combining the female and the male names fits more with the Spanish-style of naming than it does with the Anglo-Saxon, so Villaraigosa is not that big of a stretch.

Also, I would add that there's a big push in Mexican culture against machismo. It's got a long way to go, but this is an aspect of their culture that most educated, middle class Mexicans are not proud of.

(BTW, free is translated at gratis, not libre. Libre means free as in "free time" or "free from oppression.")

Michael Carr - Veritas Literary said...

Sorry, I can't resist. It should go:

Que lástima! Pobrecito! Lleva al niño al cuarto emergencia en donde hay muchos gringos medicos. Todo es gratis, tambien!

Anonymous said...

Todo es gratis.

You need to do a better job of welcoming your new Mexican overlords, or its off to the sugar mines with you!

O. Mandias

Anonymous said...

"Es todo gratis" would ingratiate you with the overlords even more.

-O. Mandias.

Anonymous said...

Steve Sailer: One of the oddities of mass immigration from Mexico, however, is that... Latin culture exaggerates natural sex differences...

What's even weirder is that the diversicrats are right on the political impact of this. Mass immigration from Mexico ultimately pushes power into the hands of the nanny state and the feminist establishment because Mexican immigrant dysfunction justifies huge numbers of government and foundation jobs for social workers.

Why would that be "weirder"?

Illegal immigration is all about votes for the DEM's.

Traditionally, American Hispanics have split about 70/30 DEM/GOP, and my guess is that with this new wave of even stupider, more crime-prone immigrants, the disparity is only going to increase in favor of the DEM's.

I.e. every new illegal Mexican is overwhelmingly likely to be a new vote for the DEM power structure - the social workers, the psychologists/psychiatrists/pscychobabblers, the race hustlers, the child molesters, the trial lawyers, the feminazi university professorettes, etc etc etc.

Or maybe it's "weirder" because you expect The Left to be intellectually consistent in its positions?

Anonymous said...

"Out here due process is a bullet!" Ironic that one of the Duke's most quoted lines may become more and more the reality in these diverse states! NOTE: "Feminists" are AGAINST 'racism and sexism"??? Ha ha ha! Feminists are AGAINST white men,and anything that hurts them. They are profoundly racist(white) and sexist(male...duh! :D).

Anonymous said...

*****off-topic comment*****

Steve, you must do a blog entry on QB Vick and how he blew his career by victimizing one of the few groups above blacks in the PC hierarchy - helpless and innocent animals! What a moron!

If Vick had had scraggly young white heterosexual male runaways battling to the death in his backyard it would've gone much easier on him. What an idiot!

Now all those innane PC sports journalists who would love to just let Vick off the hook and just get on with the important business of the NFL are caught in their own revolting Stalinist groupthink cul de sac. The NFL tough guy culture gets caught in the sensitivity trap. Falcons head coach must be on heavy meds this week. I love it. Screw 'em all!

Anonymous said...

Steve, you must do a blog entry on QB Vick and how he blew his career by victimizing one of the few groups above blacks in the PC hierarchy - helpless and innocent animals! What a moron!

If Vick had had scraggly young white heterosexual male runaways battling to the death in his backyard it would've gone much easier on him. What an idiot!


Or better yet, if they could somehow get human fetuses to battle to the death without the intervention of an abortionist.

By the way, it's "maroon", not moron.

Anonymous said...

Many Old Hollywooders were very fond of Mexico-as a place to visit or lease a big hacienda. Robert Mitchum, who was a pothead when pot was virtually unknown to white Americans. Frank Sinatra and Liz Taylor had nice spreads there. And of course, there was Marilyn-who ran to Mexico whenever a divorce was in order. She had at least one boy toy down there. (Ava Gardner preferred Spaniards and Argies as I recall.)


Mexico is a hell of a lot nicer when you have a lot of American money. Otherwise, it's just hot, smelly and moderately dangerous.

Anonymous said...

Well Steve, you've pointed out that the aim of both Affirmative Action and Open Borders is to use minorities as blocking pieces for upward White mobility from the working and middle class.

So that's not surprising. Liberals and Feminists care only about status and controlling ordinary people, not their actual well-being. Their model as you pointed out is Latin America -- a privileged feudal class lording over the serfs and peasants.

However, they've miscalculated. Of course feminists LOVE power in men and the most powerful men as long as they give lip service to trends/causes. Bill Clinton, Mayor Tony (has about six women on a string, allegedly) or Bill Richardson, it doesn't matter. As long as they have power, women want to sleep with them. "Smash Monogamy" benefits women who are at least moderately attractive because they can have sex with powerful men.

However, import all those millions of Mexicans and their sheer numbers will overwhelm the privileged estates of the elites. All those aspiring power-seekers among women hoping to have sex with a powerful man, are likely to come a cropper as Mexicans eliminate the social freedom women have experienced.

[I get the deal with Mayor Tony. Mirthala got a cut-price condo out of it, from one of Mayor Tony's campaign backers and developers. His LAPD squeeze got promoted to his protective detail. His Korean squeeze got a City Commissioner post and him promoting her fashions in Korea, also the free trip itself.]

Anonymous said...

Don't forget that Bush and his new pal McCain wanted amnesty. It isn't just Democrats (like Kennedy) who hope to profit from immigration from Mexico.

Anonymous said...

We always hear about politicians (and voters) who are "social liberals and economic conservatives". I wonder if the Mexican migration will produce a pol who is an economic liberal and a social conservative? So far, though, they haven't. Pat Buchanan was tending this way on the Republican side, and we all know how successful his political bid was.

Anonymous said...

Goody goody for you that you got that approving comment from your reader. Never mind that his fictional quote is, well, fictional, as well as being nasty and unfunny paleocon boilerplate.

And your reader's crappy Spanish, which you faithfully reproduce, suggests that neither of you are as familiar with Spanish-speaking culture as you claim.

I liked the aricle, btw :)

Anonymous said...

steve is onto a trend here. the democrat party in 2020 will be very strange. it will be a random collection of different groups who all have contradictory and hostile positions toward each other. they will only be united as democrats against their common enemy, white republicans.

mexicans dislike gays, blacks, jews, muslims, women, affirmative action for anybody but mexicans - they are basically hostile to every white or jewish liberal position, and hostile to every other group that makes up the democrat party.

white and jewish liberals are already getting into the habit of regularly ignoring anything that non-white men do that directly contradicts their philosophical positions.

Garland said...

"so bringing in more Mexicans must be a victory for feminists."

Oh, it is, it is!

http://www.reason.com/news/show/119630.html

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/119719.html

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/119729.html

Anonymous said...

chrysoperil: regarding the schizophrenia of liberals who want to import racist, sexist third-worlders, I've heard the liberal justification - some liberals simply deny the obvious and say that (for example) Mexicans aren't sexist, and others think that they're just benighted and ignorant, and will come around to the One True Faith of liberalism once they're exposed to us.

c23

Anonymous said...

"...Otherwise, it's [Mexico] just hot, smelly and moderately dangerous"

artanis, this is such a generalized, ignorant statement. You owe these careful observations based on extensive travel to, let me see, a border town?...

Anonymous said...

Have you heard the news?

American women have narrow hips! I'm absolutely ecstatic. I'm going out to buy a new wardrobe right away. Can a cover on Vogue be in my future? Watch out Cindy Crawford. I'm gonna wiggle my bony behind Richard Gere's way and I'll be the one who keeps him. I will I tell you, I will!

Anonymous said...

re:"We always hear about politicians (and voters) who are "social liberals and economic conservatives". I wonder if the Mexican migration will produce a pol who is an economic liberal and a social conservative? So far, though, they haven't. Pat Buchanan was tending this way on the Republican side, and we all know how successful his political bid was."

You raise an interesting point about the changing nature of politics and political parties. I think that with mass immigration, our political party ideologies will be a lot different a few generations from now. The GOP was once the party of blacks, slavery abolitionists and "progressives" who brought us the FDA etc. The Democrats were the party of slavery, then Jim Crow. What you suggest: a paternalistic welfare statist socially conservative party is not out of the question. My personal prediction is that the current neoconservative control of the GOp is coming to an end (after the disasters on immigration, the Iraq War, the ever present subservience to the Israeli lobby, etc) and the GOP will be open to either Ron Paul style liberterianism or Pat Buchanan style economic nationialism combined with isolationalism ("we don't want to be in Third World nations occupying them....and we don't want them immigrating over here").

TabooTruth said...

Like you said, the Dem party will be split. Can I be an avowed atheist who is also against propping up minorities? What place is there in the world for someone who is equally analytically rigorous to our moral/religious ideas AND our racial dogma?

Party of the child molesters? You go a little far. The Republicans are equally as guilty of using PC rhetoric to justify war and an ignorant attitude towards Islam (assuming Islam is good because the religious are always better than the atheists).

Anonymous said...

"...Otherwise, it's [Mexico] just hot, smelly and moderately dangerous"

artanis, this is such a generalized, ignorant statement. You owe these careful observations based on extensive travel to, let me see, a border town?...


No. The border towns are extraordinarily dangerous, except those parts of TJ that have enough US Marines at any given time to overthrow the Mexican government if they got drunk enough.