The Role of Women in Latin American Cultures

When reading Dutiful Hijas: Dependency, Power, and Guilt By Erica Gonzalez Martinez, I immediately connected themes present in this work to the novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  In this novel Marquez conveys traditional Latin American cultural and social values through the character of Angela Vicario. Angela Vicario appears in the novel as a symbol for everything a woman should be in Latin American culture and society. In order to convey the values of honor, a woman’s role in society and in her family, and the importance placed on a woman’s virginity, Marquez uses the story of a baffling murder that tells the tale of how one woman’s virginity cost a man his life. The representation and the characterization of Angela Vicario in Chronicle of a Death Foretold provides an understanding of ways in which women were meant to act in Latin American culture, and how society treated them under an unequal gender system. Marquez’s characterization of Angela Vicario not only reflects the extent of women’s exploitation under this unequal gender system, but also reveals women’s subversions and resistances to this oppressive subjection. This completely parallels  the themes present in Dutiful Hijas: Dependency, Power, and Guilt as this work also focuses on traditional Latin American cultural and social values that focuses on the role of women in an inequal gender system, mentioning concepts such as marianismo, and using a family narrative to get a sense of what being a women in Latin American culture entailed.

Martinez introduces traditional cultural concepts such as marianismo to allow her readers to get a sense of what your life as a women in Latin American culture would be succumbed to. "Marianismo is the crux of our existence ... Using the Virgin Mary as a point of reference marianismo defines women as obedient servants who "happily" sacrifice themselves for everyone else's good. ... "Do not forget a women's place, do not be single and self-supporting or independent minded. Do not put your own needs first. Do not wish for more in life than being a housewife."" (Martinez, 145) With this quote Martinez describes aspects of her culture that have been imprinted in her since birth, and that she has been raised to accept as a woman: the ideal women that one had to become being raised a girl in a traditional Latin American family. Reading this particular quote automatically made me think of a certain quote from Chronicle of a Death Foretold, "The brothers were brought up to be men. The girls had been reared to get married. They knew how to screen embroidery, sew by machine, weave bone lace, wash and iron, make artificial flowers and fancy candy, and write engagement announcements.” (Marquez 31) This is what the women were to succumb to. They were brought up in a society that viewed marriage as the most important thing in a woman’s life. From the day they were born, when it was revealed that they would come into this world as girls, they would be prepared for marriage, and throughout their years as infants, and children, until the day would come when they would finally be seen as young women, they would be sculpted and perfected into the ideal-enough woman for any man. Through the character of Angela Vicario, Marquez flawlessly presents the exploitation of women in Latin American society. The character of Angela Vicario is almost a symbol for what Martinez could have become had she not chosen a different route for herself becoming an advocate for feminism.