12.

Against Marianismo ~

Marysa Navarro

M arianismo was a concept first used by the political scientist

Evelyn P. Stevens in an essay entitled "Marianismo: The Other
Face of Machismo" (1973a). She defined marianismo as "the cult
of female spiritual superiority which teaches that women are semi-divine,
morally superior to and spiritually stronger than men." She asserted that
marianismo like machismo existed throughout the continent, although mar-
ianismo may have been unknown and/or misunderstood when Stevens set
out to reveal its importance to Latin Americans and North Americans alike.
But it soon found a receptive audience among the latter and beyond and
continues to be referenced by scholars writing on Latin American women
and even Latina issues. 1
While marianismo has been criticized, many scholars nevertheless seem
to believe that it describes a situation that exists, albeit some may find that
Stevens exaggerated its significance or its characteristics and may disagree
with its applicability to a particular group of women in a particular coun-
try. A close look will reveal that marianismo is a concept that is seriously
flawed. In fact it is an extrapolation from impressionistic data that has been
used mistakenly to account for the gender arrangements of an entire conti-
nent. The critique presented here echoes the stance adopted by the editors
of this volume: Feminist scholarship should be grounded in the cultural,
geographic, and historical specificity of gender arrangements. We must
"desalambrar" the theoretical frameworks that have been imposed on the
study of women and gender in Latin America.

SCHOLARLY RESPONSES

One of the first scholars to challenge Stevens, historian Silvia Marina

Arrom (1980) warned that Stevens's ideas resembled the Victorian "cult of
womanhood" found in the United States and Great Britain. However,

R. Montoya et al. (eds.), Gender’s Place

© Rosario Montoya, Lessie Jo Frazier, and Janise Hurtig 2002
258 Marysa Navarro

noted Arrom, more recent scholarship tended to contradict the passive,

powerless, self-sacrificing, and dependent women described by Stevens.
Furthermore, new research contradicted her claim that marianismo had
existed on the continent since the beginning of Spanish colonization.
Though she did not dismiss the concept altogether, Arrom's data "strongly
[suggested] that marianismo was not in fact a deep-seated Latin American
cultural trait, but merely a variant of Victorianism introduced in the sec-
ond half of the nineteenth century'' (1980, 262).
Susan C. Bourque (political scientist) and Kay Barbara Warren (anthro-
pologist} rejected the idea of separate spheres as well as the specific argu-
ments offered by Stevens, arguing that, "because they are based on images
rather than actual examinations of the politics of family life," they do not
provide precise information on the power that the women exert, its mate-
rial base for example; and they are "largely directed toward urban society
and segments of the middle and upper classes in which wives do not work
outside the home" (1981, 61). In contrast, anthropologist Yanda Moraes-
Gorecki did use marianismo in her research, though she criticized Stevens's
simplistic claim that machismo was unconnected with other forms of polit-
ical subordination, her lack of class analysis and the uncritical acceptance
"of folk images and middle class preconceived stereotypes of male/female
relations" (1988, 28), and her conclusions that tended to justifY the status
quo on issues of sex domination and class oppression. Though Moraes-
Gorecki accepted the basic idea of marianismo, she did not agree that it
could be found all over Latin America and across all social classes. She
showed that women had resisted domination in Latin America from the
sixteenth to the eighteenth century, when privileged women had exercised
power despite conventions, as well as in the early to mid-twentieth century
when they fought for the vote in Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile.
Ethnographers Carol Browner and Ellen Lewin found that scholars
generally depicted women's roles as timeless, static, and unconnected with
the varied socioeconomic conditions of their lives. In their view, Stevens's
description of women as altruistic, selfless, passive, and morally pure failed
to take into consideration the material basis of their behavior (1982, 63).
Swedish anthropologist Kristina Bohman, responding to Stevens's idea
that Latin American women are not oppressed but rather enjoy privi-
leges because of the importance given to motherhood, agreed that among
the women of a Colombian poor urban neighborhood, there might be
"a potential for female influence and power." However, she noted that
"[Stevens's] argument needs to be seen in the light both of class differenti-
ation and of the patriarchal structure of the family." Her findings indicated
that, at least among the urban poor, "women's lack of economic resources