KJZZ Phoenix, June 2025
For our week-long series of conversations about modern masculinity, we look at a specific word: machismo. It’s been used a lot recently, but Nicole Guidotti-Hernández, professor of English at Northeastern University, says there are two distinct origins of the word. Guidotti-Hernández says one of those origins comes from the 1930s when a man named Oscar Louis did several ethnographies in small, rural villages in Mexico and Puerto Rico.
“Lewis basically tried to identify key characteristics of what kept Mexican and Puerto Rican families impoverished both materially, morally and culturally,” Guidotti-Hernández said. “And so, the conclusion was that men of these persuasions are demasculinized by socioeconomic conditions, and that the way that they prove their pluck and metal as men, is by exerting the dominance of patriarchy within the home.”
