MACHISMO

Vicario brothers as they act to attain “social safety” in terms of avoiding being shamed if they do not kill the man
who took their sister’s virginity. Not only would they have been shamed, they most probably would not have been
able to stay in their town because they would be labelled as cowards due to their inability to prove their status as
men. As a result, since machismo is what society uses to push individuals to carry out social duties, it becomes a vital
element that governs the way the Vicario brothers act.

Public buthering was also a show of masculine strength

Santiago Nasar is the ultimate exponent of machismo. He is the absolute beneficiary of the patriarchal system who
also becomes its victim: the archetypal male subject who is both constructed and destroyed by his culture. His
mother's sigh of "[h]e was the man in my life" introduces the classic Oedipal theme (5). This is supported by the
knowledge that his archetypal Father, Ibrahim, teaches him the manly, aristocratic skills of riding, hunting, hawking
and exercising his "droit de seigneur" with the peasant women. He inherits "man's estate" in the context of Catholic
Colombia; the family ranch is appropriately named "The Divine Face".His interlude of obsession with the prostitute,
Maria Alexandrina Cervantes. Cervantes suggests an alternative mother figure. She is tender, strict and apostolic, all
desirable maternal attributes; yet she is exotic and oriental. She is also the only one, apart from the narrator, with
the moral clear-sightedness to blame herself for having excluded Santiago Nasar from her "house of mercies" hours
before his death. Angela Vicario names him as her author, her perpetrator, and it may be that, in seducing her, he
writes her tragedy on her body and therefore also, ultimately, on his own. As he learns to accept the Name of the
Father, Divina Flor and any other "wayward virgins" are in danger of having their buds nipped by the young senor
while his arranged engagement to the culturally licit woman, Flora Miguel, runs its course. Santiago Nasar learns,
inevitably, to hold " the same utilitarian concept of matrimony as his father". The narrator is one of Santiago Nasar's
group of close friends who have known one another since "Grammar School", a group which includes the
writer/narrator's brother, Luis Enrique and Cristo Bedoya. They enjoy a closely bonded relationship. They discuss
girls, get drunk, visit prostitutes and generally carouse together. Sharing stories of one's sexual exploits is a means of
validating one's masculinity in the eyes of one's peers. The narrator cannot believe that Santiago Nasar could have
taken his cousin, Angela's virginity without their all being privy to the secret "and such a big secret". The narrator
fails to see, however, that he himself keeps his sexual affair with Cervantes a secret from Santiago Nasar. Not all
secrets, clearly, are shared among the members of the group in order to reinforce the bond of confraternity. The
group are aware of Santiago Nasar's chicken-hawk exploits and the narrator knows of his macho sexual interest in
Angela. "She's ready to be hooked, your cousin the ninny is," he leers . Nevertheless, the narrator is still prepared to
believe only positive things of his friend, that he is "merry, peaceful and open-hearted". The narrator's sister Margot,
is likewise inclined to see only the attractive side of Santiago Nasar. She finds him the perfect "catch," being
"handsome, a man of his word and with a fortune of his own at the age of twenty-one". In brief, in the eyes of his
peers he is the perfect young gentleman and the absolute beneficiary of the patriarchal system. To those of a lower
social class than himself, however, his sexual rapacity is a threat and a menace that engenders in Divina Flor a
"premature anxiety". It is this same threatening machismo that leads Victoria Guzman deliberately to withhold the
warning that would have saved his life. It is not only in revenge for Angela Vicario's lost honour that he dies, but also,
pre-emptively, for that of Divina Flor. One may therefore deduce that it is the very machismo inculcated and
encouraged by his culture that ultimately destroys him.