Challenging Latin America’s ‘Machismo’ Culture
By J/ Lee Grady
Last month in Bolivia, I helped preside over a ‘funeral’ for old attitudes of male domination.
The typical indigenous woman in Bolivia quotes an odd saying that is well-known in her country. Speaking of her husband, she often says: “The more he beats me, the more he loves me.”
That might seem horrific to us, but in Bolivia?where seven out of every 10 women are victims of physical violence?abuse is just a way of life, something that goes along with eating salteñas and wearing alpaca sweaters.
I saw the ugly problem of abuse up close last month, when I spent a week in La Paz, one of Bolivia’s two capitals. It took me three days to get used to the altitude (La Paz is the world’s second-highest city), but I don’t think I ever adjusted to the harsh realities of machismo, the cruel male pride that is deeply rooted in South America’s poorest nation.
One day I watched an indigenous woman weave some colorful fabric for a tablecloth. A Bolivian pastor who was with me asked the woman why she had bruises on her face. Embarrassed, she looked down and admitted that her husband?who was in the next room?had broken her nose a few days earlier during an argument.
It is one thing to know statistics about domestic abuse. It is quite another thing to talk to a woman whose face has been disfigured by her husband’s fist.
Thankfully, God is at work today to heal the deepest pain of Latin America’s women.
My hosts in La Paz were Alberto and Silvia Salcedo, pastors of the 12,000-member Ekklesia Church. Four days a week, Silvia broadcasts a TV program for women called Vaso Frágil (fragile vessel), which is carried on Enlace, the Spanish-language arm of Trinity Broadcasting Network. When I appeared on the show to share from God’s Word about abusive husbands, women from all over La Paz called in to share their stories about molestation, abandonment and neglect.
The next day, about 1,500 Bolivian men jammed into Ekklesia’s main sanctuary to hear me address the issue of male domination. I reminded them that although I carry a United States passport, and they are Bolivian citizens, what I was sharing with them was not a cultural preference. In God’s kingdom, violence against women is a crime. Period.
At one point I asked an actor dressed in a clown suit to enter from the rear of the auditorium. He was dressed as El Pepino, a popular figure in Bolivian folklore who represents the machismo culture. Every year at a festival, this clown runs around a park and hits women on the head with a stick while everyone laughs at his antics. He is then taken to a graveyard and “buried,” but onlookers are reminded that he will come back from the dead each year.
In our men’s meeting I ordered El Pepino to come to the stage. I took the stick out of his hand and told the audience that his abuse is not funny. Then some pallbearers arrived with a coffin and they carried the clown away. Making a prophetic declaration in the name of Jesus, I told the crowd that El Pepino is not welcome back any more.
We had a public funeral for the machismo spirit.
You might assume the men would have been resistant to the idea of burying their male pride, but actually they cheered when El Pepino was carried away that night. Later, many of them came to the altar to repent of their abusive behavior and to receive forgiveness from Jesus for the cycle of violence that has afflicted Bolivian men for generations.
There is plenty of work to be done to end violence against women around the world, but I am encouraged by the way the Lord is releasing an unprecedented wave of healing in Latin America. Because of the power of the gospel, Christian men are rejecting old traditions of male superiority and learning to view women as the equal partners God created them to be.
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J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma. He will be speaking July 18-21 at the Apostolic Women Arising conference, held at Life Center in Atlanta.
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