On Latin Men
On the bus into Montevideo a few months ago, I was curled up in a window seat reading the screenplay for When Harry Met Sally.
It was an attempt to see how screenplays work—I told y’all, I want to write one about that magical afternoon in Bariloche—and also just a wildly entertaining read. I finished it with half an hour or so left in my trip from Punta del Este and as the bus began its descent into the city, I started thinking about the central thesis of When Harry Met Sally, the universal truth that Nora Ephron writes about in the introduction to the screenplay: straight women and straight men cannot be just friends. Some kind of attraction pops up and ruins it. Billy Crystal delivered Harry’s thesis perfectly in the movie: “What I’m saying — and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form — is that men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.”1
I realized that was by and large true, in my own experiences, at least when the friendship surpasses regular enjoyment of each other’s company and turns into one of the intense best-friendships that Harry and Sally find themselves in about halfway through the script. I’ve twice had straight male best friends and both times, I’ve developed feelings for them; neither time did the friendship become a successful romantic relationship (which, I now realize, was for the best in both cases, but were certainly painful when they happened). I’m still friends with one of them, and we’ve fully settled into an enjoyable and platonic friendship, but it wasn’t without its blip of complicated romantic feelings.
All this to say: I walked into my hostel in Montevideo with male/female relationships on my mind. When, a few hours later, I found myself deep in a conversation with the guy in the bunk across from mine—a conversation that had started with a question about the wifi strength and had expanded into travel, relationships, personal theses on values and goals—I asked myself if this connection would follow the Harry-Sally thesis and fully convinced myself it wouldn’t. It couldn’t. The thesis didn’t apply to connections made while in day-old traveling clothes in dorm room beds when the parties in question only had 12 hours together in the same space. And moreover, I didn’t want it to. I was leaving Uruguay to fly across the continent and start my Peru adventures, I’d just been ghosted (that is to say, ignored into oblivion) by the guy I’d had a few great dates with in Punta del Este, I was sweaty and tired and frustrated that the most progressive, secular country in South America was a ghost town on Good Friday. I was happy to have company for a few hours—particularly well-spoken, kind, funny company—but that was about all I wanted. When, a few hours later, the connection we’d made turned decidedly romantic—his overture, but one I leaned into rather than away from—I couldn’t help but laugh a little at the irony of it all, of walking into a hostel mulling on male-female relationships, of thinking myself in a situation outside of the thesis I’d just decided that I agreed with, only to find it end right back with a midnight kiss, straight out of When Harry Met Sally.
That guy was Diego, an Ecuadorian-born artist and designer who was visiting Montevideo from Buenos Aires, where he lives and works. I left the next day and went to Peru, where I ate great food and got really sick; Diego and I stayed in touch, sharing movie recommendations and tidbits of our days. We started video-chatting when I was in the Galapagos. Laggy wifi connections somehow did not smother our enthusiasm for connecting and for getting to know each other better. Part of me was watching what I was doing—going to Diego for advice, weaving him in as an integral part of my extremely slapdash existence, smiling giddily at the videos he’d send me and thinking of him every time I saw a heart-shaped shell at the beach—and asking myself, from above, like some kind of bespectacled Disney fairy representing my conscience, what I thought would come of this, what it all meant, who I was being and whether it was some actually authentic version of myself that I just hadn’t come across before (is this Kath in love?). And part of me was just doing what made me happy. And so when Diego and I planned a reunion in Quito, I was equal parts entirely thrilled and entirely frightened as to what would happen, what it’d be like to spend real time together, what it would all mean.
And the weekend came, and it was another screenplay-worthy set of experiences: meeting his entire family in one sitting, running between breathtaking sites (the actual equator, Quito from above, bustling markets of brightly-threaded blankets and beaded bracelets), whispered conversations under heavy wool blankets, playing pickup soccer in a park as dusk faded, fighting and laughing and sitting together and feeling the warm weight of contentment slide over us. I can already imagine the camera angles: a wide zoom on the bodega bed in Otavalo, an overhead pan of the gondola ride up the Teleferico, a jangly first-person view of dancing to reggaeton across the cold floors of the country house after everyone else had gone home.
I’ll see Diego again in a few weeks, and then in a few months, and then we’ll figure out what to do next. I’m not overthinking it. I’m loving every moment, and I’m loving what I’ve found in him: someone who is a confidant and a partner and a friend and a lover and a listener and a laugher, someone who fully supports me and my dreams and has his own, too. Someone who expresses how he feels and communicates honestly and sees me as an equal.
Diego would be a good person in any setting, but he’s especially good in comparison to my developing understanding of the landscape of Latin men. I’ve written about the gender dynamics here in South America a few different times—my misogynistic first boss, my womanizing Galapagos friend, women’s rights in Chile, relatively woke Uruguayan men who still get pissed when their wives disagree with them in public—but here, in this piece, I’d like to give you a few different personal case studies in quick succession and then summarize my current hypothesis of Latin men and their relationships with women. It’s based on my nearly six months’ experience of dates, come-ons, long conversations over beer and coffee and ceviche about relationships, and media immersion (so many terrible soap operas, y’all). And let me say it now: Latin men are wonderful in a lot of ways—expressive, passionate, absolute dynamite on the dance floor—but this essay will focus on some of their less positive general characteristics and interactions.
To make a point about the ubiquity of the interactions I’m about to write about, I pulled these examples from one single week. Different people, different dynamics, but all three happened within five days of each other, and every five-day period of my trip is by and large scattered with similar moments, no matter the country or the activity or the company. (Even when I’m hanging out with only well-educated Repeal-supporting Irishmen, moments like this still crop up with hostel staff or street hecklers or the like.)
Vignette number one: Daniel.
The first hostel I checked into in Baños was below the bar in most ways that matter (bad wifi, itchy sheets, overpriced), and since I’d arrived a day early to make sure everything was ready for Tracey’s arrival from New York, I hit the town to find a better option. I headed to a hostel near the end of town, where I’d heard the waterfall views were unrivaled and the thermal baths that give Baños its name were within spitting distance (though let’s hope spit and all other bodily fluids were kept out of them). I did a room tour, made a reservation, and got to chatting with the male receptionist (I hate that I feel the need to add the “male,” just like I would if I was chatting with a nurse who happened to not be female, but I do) about what I could do for a few hours the next morning before Tracey arrived.
Turns out Daniel—that’s our male receptionist’s name—is a trail runner who’s hosting a trail race this November through the hills and crags and waterfall basins of greater Baños, and he had plans to walk the length of the trail the next day and measure the exact distances of each leg. He invited me to go with him and gave me his WhatsApp information to coordinate times.
I did a brief background check—aka scoured the Internet for signs of normalcy, which turned up a Facebook full of photos with his mother and dogs and half a dozen posted trail race finishes—and, feeling relatively certain he wouldn’t murder me and push my body off a waterfall, confirmed that I’d meet him the next morning at 9 a.m.
The hike was beautiful. Ecuador is impossibly lush. Each strip of landscape looked like it’d been teased into abundance by an overzealous gardener with a background in genetic engineering: branches dripping in blooms, hills resplendent with long grasses, avocado trees heavy with fruit.
Daniel and I conversed amicably in Spanish, telling each other about our best friends and debating small town vs. big city preferences. I was in no way flirting; Daniel didn’t interest me at all, and even if he had, the terrain was so rough that there wouldn’t have been time for it, as all my energy was focused on keeping me from rolling an ankle. The first eight kilometers passed relatively normally, with only one flag—a few hours in, he’d pointed out a plant (“It’s beautiful”), then swiveled around to make unwelcome and sustained eye contact as he finished, “like your eyes.” I didn’t respond and, another four kilometers in, had convinced myself we were good, back on a normal and platonic path. But then. But then! We finished the hike in a park a few kilometers outside of Baños, where Daniel waved his hands in the air and described his plans for a picnic area, a medalists’ station, and a photo opportunity while I complained about the oppressive heat and buzzing gnats and in general hurried him along to the bus stop.
“Okay, we can head home,” he said, slinging his right arm around my shoulders and steering me towards the exit. “But how are you going to pay me for being your guide?” He leered towards me, grabbed my left hand with his, and turned his face into mine.
I, like I think all women do, constantly have a police-blotter murmur running in my head, lining up individual moments of male attention and/or aggression (it’d clocked the eyes comment and a semi-suggestive offer to carry me up the particularly steep path that was ran the entirety of kilometer ten), categorizing the situation that the collective moments make up, and spitting out a suggested response. I’d subconsciously labeled Daniel as “annoying but harmless,” for whom the response to an unwanted overture was a quick, friendly peck and then a physical retreat into neutral ground (this type tends to take outright refusal an an invitation to wear me down—better than another type, who takes refusal as an opportunity to get dangerously aggressive).
Where we were, reader? Oh, yes, he was turning his face into mine and swimming his lips towards me. I stayed still long enough for them to barely brush mine, then shrugged him off, breaking the three points of contact he’d made between us, and joked about how gross we both were after four hours of hiking in tropical paradise. He was dejected but still in a friendly, upbeat mood; I felt good about my decision and didn’t think my safety was in danger. He asked if I’d like to walk through the flower gardens some more, to which I answered “no thanks”; we walked in silence to the curb, where I sat down a few feet away from him, awaiting the bus.
A white pickup truck passed and the driver, a young Ecuadorian man with a goatee and a backwards-facing baseball cap, leaned out the window, called me beautiful, and wiggled his eyebrows suggestively before pulling his head back in and swiveling it around to watch my reaction. I didn’t have one–I try not to in those situations—but Daniel did. He scooted over, linked his arms around me, and yelled out, “She’s mine!” There it was. Sitting on a dusty curb outside the Parque de la Familia in Baños del Agua Santa, Ecuador, coated in dried sweat and picking cockleburs out of my leggings, I’d been claimed. I didn’t quite feel like being nice anymore, and told Daniel firmly, “I am no one’s, and certainly not yours,” and moved over to wait in deeper silence.
I thought that’d be the end of Daniel—I thought I’d been pretty clearly disinterested—but alas, it was not. He texted me later that night, asking if I’d like to come over to his house to meet his dogs; I politely declined. Too politely, it seems, since he asked me the same thing the next day; that time I told him, more pointedly, that Tracey and I were busy spending time together, planning our adventures and enjoying Baños. His enthusiastic pursuit then turned straight to bitter immaturity, bypassing any of the friendly middle ground that should be well within the reach of a well-adjusted 27-year-old-male. Every time I passed him at the front desk, I said hello, and he responded with pursed lips and a sardonic dip of the head. So unnecessary.
Tracey and I came back to the hotel on our last night in Baños just after midnight. We’d been out; our giggly entrance made it obvious, I imagine, to Daniel, that we’d had a couple drinks. I nodded at him, got the silence I’d grown used to in return, and followed Tracey upstairs. Five minutes later, my phone emitted a beep: new message. From Daniel. A string of winky-faced emojis, no text. Because of course—maybe under the influence of alcohol, I’ve forgotten that I’m not interested in you. Why do men do this? Take advantage of inhibition-lowering situations with women who decided, sober and with full mental capacity, that they weren’t interested? Does it write over the initial rejection if the women acquiesce under the influence? Doesn’t it feel cheap? A dirty trick? Embarrassing, that that’s how you have to resort to getting women interested in you?
I ignored the message, killing his revived hopes that I’d go see his dogs (an actual activity he wanted to do, I’m pretty sure, but also definitely a precursor to other activities, in his mind). And thought again about how careful I have to be as a woman—where I go, how much I drink, how I’m going to get home, who I’m with. Always running through worst-case scenarios in my head. Always scanning the bar for the girlfriends I came with and making sure everyone is visible. Always taking my drink with me to the bathroom to bypass any chance of something getting slipped into it. Always worried that the activity I see as platonic might not be, from the other person’s point of view.
And that was Daniel.
Vignette number two: Juan.
One of the activities Tracey and I, both happy veterans of the concrete jungle that is New York City, were excited to do in Ecuador was visit the actual jungle. We’d spent a few hours lapping Baños’s abundance of tour agencies, searching for a jungle trip with minimal new-age colonialism (Tracey’s perfect term for the practice of carting out gringos to “villages of natives,” where said natives would then put on a show—coconut bikinis, face paint, festival dances—for the gringos to gawk at and take photos of) and no animal abuse (many of the trips visited “monkey sanctuaries” that weren’t sanctuaries at all, but rather rows of caged animals who were only allowed out for photo ops with Teva-wearing twenty-somethings hungry for an authentic-looking Instagram. This is not to say that all animal sanctuaries are fake, of course, just that some are, and you need to do your research beforehand and engage in responsible tourism).
We found what seemed to be a relatively innocuous day trip: a two-hour van ride down to Puyo, a two-kilometer canoe trip to a village, a trip to the handmade-goods market that employs many of the village women, lunch of fresh-caught river trout at a home restaurant, a nature hike / plant walk to a waterfall, a quick dip, a stop at a local chocolatier’s shop, and a journey back to Baños. We signed up.
The next morning, Juan, our Quichua- and Spanish-speaking guide, helped us into rubber boots and loaded us into the van. The canoe trip was lovely, but when we arrived at the village and saw locals waiting to paint our faces, we balked. I pulled Juan aside and, in Spanish, explained how this was exactly what we were promised the tour wouldn’t include—fake performances for the sake of naive white people feeling like they got their fill of “the jungle”—and got into a discussion with him about responsible tourism. He told me and Tracey that yes, these men and women were performing for us—it wasn’t a festival that dictated their use of ornamental headdresses, but rather our visit—but that it was one of the only ways for them to make money, and that we could choose to sit out if we wanted.
Tracey and I huddled together and debated: what was the right thing to do in this moment? Would it be worse to let our righteous indignation make everyone else feel uncomfortable, or to throw our morals aside and participate? Were we being stupidly idealistic or responsible and brave? I sat there, took in the details of one of the dancers’ clothing—a regular bra, complete with metal eyelet hooks in the back, whose too-large cups she’d embroidered with yellowish seeds, and ripped plaid men’s boxers underneath a dried-grass skirt—and cringed at the Washington-born American lady taking photos of the half-naked children clutching the woman’s skirt, and realized that it was too late. Too late to not contribute to potentially ethically questionable tourism. But not too late to stop from further spreading it. So Tracey and I sat with Juan on the far side of the hut, talking to him about the experience and smiling at the women who came to serve us traditional drink or paint our faces, but refrained from taking photos.
Juan told us stories about white visitors who’d made big shows of wanting to help the locals in their apparent and abject poverty but did so in ridiculous ways, like the American who, overcome with generosity, gave his phone to a local boy, who happily entertained himself with Candy Crush until the battery died, at which point, in a village an hour’s canoe and another hour’s drive away from the nearest source of electricity and without a charger in the rare chance that electricity could be found, the phone became a useless hunk of metal.
We eventually left the village, and the rest of the trip was less fraught with ethical conundrums; we followed Juan’s spindly legs into the jungle, gamely ate raw ants, gasped at the cold clutch of the waterfall, and learned the names of a dozen different plants. Then we stopped off in a little pueblo to learn how to make chocolate from scratch (so bitter, so delicious). Everyone dozed on the journey back and we gave Juan a hug after he dropped us off at our hostel, truly appreciative of his honest engagement with us.
That night, after picking the twigs out of our hair and taking long showers, Tracey and I went out for food, where we ran into Juan (Baños is a small, small town). He asked if we were going out later; we said maybe, and he took my number to stay in touch and maybe meet up for a beer with us before we left town.
I had pegged Juan as an allover friendly guy, had gotten no weird signs from him (the police blotter in my head was entirely quiet), and was throughly taken aback when, in his messages to me later that evening, he asked what I was doing, then, when I responded that I was going out with Tracey, asked me what I was doing later, wink!, and when I didn’t respond right away, sent a row of graphic emojis. Betrayed! Another moment of an otherwise cool Latin man overstepping what I’d thought were mutually-held boundaries of general friendship.
And that was Juan.
Vignette number two: Christian.
The day after the trail hike with Daniel, Tracey and I went ziplining through forests and river canyons (10/10 would recommend), and then made our our way to the Casa del Arbol, a beautiful park-cum-Instagram pilgrimage site whose most well-known offering is the chance to swing out over a stunning landscape of green pastures and blue-grey mountains overlapping each other like a freshly-shuffled deck of cards. There I met the next man in our story: Christian, a 30 year-old Ecuadorian with locs who began our acquaintance by insulting me.
Tracey and I were in line for the big swings, where Casa del Arbol employees push you to a height higher than any amount of leg-pumping would get you. We’d made the trip for the photos, yes, but also for the adrenaline; we were looking forward to spinning around on a set of ropes and a wooden plank hundreds of feet above the ground. Christian was one of the pushers, and we’d gotten in his line. “No hablo inglés,” he shouted, then added in an over-exaggerated drawl, “if you no speak Spanish, you no in my line!”
A few confused-looking Germans backed away from Christian’s line and into his coworker’s, which made Christian guffaw and, in fast Spanish, dash off teasing lines to his coworker about having more people to push. Tracey and I stayed in line, unintimidated. Christian began grilling me, in Spanish, about where I was from, what I was doing, and where I learned my Spanish; he rolled his eyes when I said I first practiced it in Spain and told me he could hear that in my accent. He was easily identified as the kind of man who teases women to build up confidence and a sense of superiority; I ignored his barbs and enjoyed my turn on the swing.
As Tracey and I were leaving, Christian stopped us to give us his number, telling us that he was going out with a group of friends and other travelers that evening and to text him if we wanted to join. We’d clearly passed his test of not blanching at his ribald comments and, while neither of us was at all interested in spending quality time with him, we took down his number in case we wanted a group to go out with later.
We didn’t that night, nor the next, but on our final night in town, we were jonesing for a good cocktail and, in an attempt to avoid the heavily-promoted gringo bars, asked Christian what he was up to. He told us he and a few friends were grabbing a drink at a reggaeton club; we dropped by and found that it was only him and one friend. Tracey and I stayed for a drink with them, politely declined their invitations to dance, and made our exit. (She and I had made eye contact halfway through the drink that confirmed neither of us really wanted to be with them; my breaking point was Christian’s hand inching towards my leg and hers was, she later told me, his friend’s inquiring into her family history.)
Tracey had taken one for the team and claimed extreme exhaustion as our excuse for an early exit. Christian followed us out and offered to walk us both home, and then walk me back out to the club after Tracey’d gone to bed. I declined, saying that I wanted to stay with my friend who had traveled so far to see me, and he, in classic teaser-of-women-to-regain-sense-of-superiority fashion, said I didn’t know how to have a good time. I responded quickly, in Spanish, that yes, I did know how to have fun, that I just didn’t want to have it with him, and that I’d appreciate it if he didn’t follow me home.
He texted me a minute later, asking me why I was mad and saying it was a shame it didn’t happen; I asked him what he was referring to, and he responded with, “the chance to steal a kiss, because I like you a lot, and maybe you also like me a little.” No, Christian; no to all of that. I didn’t respond, he texted me eight more times, in subsequently grander levels of aggression; I archived the chat and moved on with my life.
Until I dug up the conversation and the moment for this lil essay.
What do all of these stories have in common?
Well, first, that they are entirely run-of-the-mill examples, things that wouldn’t even pique my memory as something to write about; I only realized the pattern and wanted to write about it after opening up my WhatsApp chats and seeing, nestled in a row, Diego Christian Juan Daniel, men whose messages ranged from loving to wheedling to aggressive to frustrated, only one of whom I wanted to talk to and the rest of whom made up an unpalatable bouquet of entitlement that I was all too familiar with.
That’s really what I think the stories have in common: a sense that a man’s interest in a woman should be reciprocated with gusto, or at the very least received with gratitude.
That attitude isn’t entirely unique to this part of the world. It’s part of a regular, daily, almost unconscious attitude that many men, even the best-intentioned and most-woke, have; it’s the attitude that was at the base of a lot of the behavior revealed in the #MeToo movement. (Remember, it’s my country’s president who was convinced women would receive his advances, as unsolicited as they might’ve been: “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”2)
None of what I just wrote about is a big deal; none of it is sexual assault, or rape, or silencing, or gender discrimination. But it is a bunch of small deals, a general wave of interactions that represent my experience here, an experience that has included far worse examples than the three above.
That attitude isn’t unique to this part of the world, but I think its impact might be.
That attitude is one of entitlement—that men have the right to pursue whatever woman catches their eye. Here, in Latin America, it’s compounded by machismo, or a sense of male superiority and dominance, which means that attitude comes out much more, much earlier, and with a much deeper sense of surprise and injustice when the woman in question doesn’t submit to the attention. More of a man’s worth (self-worth and society’s perception of his worth) is tied to how beautiful the woman on his arm is, or how many women he’s been with. There isn’t a general sense of decorum and buy-in to the existence of things like sexual harassment; there is a general sense of “boys will be boys” and that it’s in the male nature to need to pursue sex at any given opportunity. That fidelity is too much to ask for from your boyfriend or husband (which has terrible consequences on women’s health).
I understand that machismo doesn’t come without some benefits for women. Here, dating culture is deeply different from what I’m used to in the States. Men will buy you drinks, drive you around, and generally be extremely effusive with compliments and affection. It might take an American man six or seven dates before he’ll tell you he likes you or call you a pet name; a Latino will tell you on date two that “me encantas”—I adore you — and will have littered you with “mi vida,” “mi amor,” and “mi preciosa” within ten minutes of meeting you. And I do understand a possible response to all of this, something like “you should be grateful for the attention,” or “all of the attention helps women feel good about themselves.” I can see that. When I’ve felt safe with a Latin guy who’s pursuing me, it does feel nice to have compliments lobbed my way. The expressiveness and passion can be really wonderful. I’m also not trying to write off an entire culture and the complicated social values and norms behind it.
But I can’t let cultural relativism keep me entirely quiet on this dynamic, because the examples of its effects go far beyond my life.
One example: Latin cities have the most dangerous transportation systems for women in the world. A Thomas Reuters Foundation-sponsored survey found that of the 20 largest capital cities the world over, the top three worst cities for women, literally just in terms of moving throughout the world safely (with vectors like safety at night, verbal and physical harassment in public spaces, and confidence in authorities), were Bogota, Mexico City, and Lima3 (Buenos Aires comes in at #6). The same findings revealed New York (subbed in for Washington D.C., as the American capital doesn’t make the list of 20 largest capitals in the world) as the least-dangerous big city for women.
I have gone from living in New York, apparent mecca for women’s safety, to visiting Lima and other South American capitals, and the difference is palpable. It’s not to say that I didn’t get harassed in New York, but it is to say that I always felt justified and supported in my negative reactions to that harassment. Here, it feels like I should be grateful for it. Like by turning down attention I’m gravely offending the man offering it. It creates terrible power dynamics, like when I went to see a male doctor here and he kept calling me “mi hermosa” and I felt like I had to simper and smile back if I wanted him to give me the answers I was seeking. I don’t like feeling like that.
None of this is to say that the entire South American continent is populated by sex-obsessed chauvinistic bastards. There are legions of wonderful, respectful men here; I’ve met more than a few of them. But many, many of my personal interactions here have highlighted my perception of this sense of entitlement.
I ran a quick experiment when I first got to Colombia.
When I picked up on unwanted male attention in Cali—in this case, my salsa instructor giving me looks that seemed beyond the bounds of a dance partner and wanting to practice my slow grinding over and over again—I made sure to drop that I had a boyfriend (I opened our second class by asking him if I could film a video to send to my novio). It didn’t work—ten minutes into our third class, my instructor pulled me to him and stuck his tongue in my mouth.
I hate that vein of rhetoric—maybe you won’t respect my boundaries for my sake alone, but maybe you’ll respect another man’s property—but at least, with guys in the States, it tends to work. Ask any American woman if she’s used the boyfriend line (whether in reference to a real or fake partner) to put down boundaries. The answer will be yes. It didn’t work here, though, and I think it’s because of that extra entitlement that I wrote about above.
I read a few dozen essays, studies, and blogs on machismo and female travelers in Latin America and violence against women as I wrote this piece over the last week. I also asked myself over and over again what my goal was. I’m not writing a tell-all, or a tale of woe, or a tirade against a culture different than mine; I’m trying, as I have done my whole life, to write what I know and write what I feel and come out the other side understanding that knowledge and those feelings better. For me, this piece does what I wanted it to, but I wonder if the structure I’ve tried to put around that process of personal reflection and expression works for others. Would love, love, love any thoughts / reactions / feedback, friends.
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