By Sinan Farooqui
Class of 2022
In this age of MeToo movements and greater awareness of women’s oppression and the restriction of their basic rights, it is often prudent to look back on the literary works that may have upheld the traditional ideas of masculinity, resulting in the formation of such a machismo culture.
It is this point that Caio Yurgel, award-winning writer and scholar at Peking University and the Freie Universitat Berlin, emphasized in his talk on Jan. 28, part of Duke Kunshan’s colloquium series.
According to Yurgel, the fact the word ‘machismo’ is derived from Spanish and yet utilized across different languages is no coincidence. Thus, he said, we turn our attention to Latin America, and more specifically Latin American literature, to find a connection with the prevalence of chauvinist culture in that society.
Yurgel focused on perhaps the pinnacle of Latin American literature, the oeuvre of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of Yurgel’s childhood heroes, and attempted to answer a recurring suspicion befalling Garcia Marquez and other Latin American authors. Is their infatuation with manliness (as portrayed in their works) an extension of their own worldview, or is it rather a fictional re-creation (and thus a critique) of the morals and praxes observed in Latin American society?
Amiable and yet concise, Yurgel proved throughout his lecture to be a born orator, effortlessly knitting multiple personal anecdotes with informed literary analysis.
His lecture began with a brief introduction to the magical realism of Garcia Marquez, which, for a young Yurgel, filled the gap between J.R.R. Tolkien and J.D. Salinger. It was the late Columbian author’s writing style, a unique mix of implausibility and reality, which made Yurgel fall in love with the art of storytelling. As an accomplished author himself, it is Yurgel’s early affection for the works of Garcia Marquez that makes his current position so intriguing and authoritative.
It was upon revisiting Garcia Marquez’s literature later in life that Yurgel had the unsettling feeling that these works highlighted the machismo culture, with both women and men portrayed through a conventional patriarchal lens. Yurgel began researching more into the matter, and in his lecture introduced five individuals who, despite conflicting viewpoints on the matter, had made a connection between Garcia Marquez and the prevalence of heightened masculinity in his works.
Mario Benedetti was perhaps the first to identify the masculine nature of Garcia Marquez’s work (el machismo sobrio de Garcia Marquez), while Wolfgang Luchting and Suzanne Levine both argued that the writer was mocking machismo in his works, utilizing irony while also making a distinction between his own work and classic Latin American machismo. Sylvia Koniecki, on the other hand, claims Garcia Marquez reproduces a vision of sex that is anchored in a colonial male-dominated view.
Perhaps most interesting is the story of Soledad Mendoza, a female journalist who once interviewed Garcia Marquez. When asked whether he was machista, the author replied that it was the worst insult, and that he had once punched an individual for calling him that. Oh, the irony.
However, Yurgel said he fails to see the mockery that Levine and Luchting saw. Much to the amusement of the audience, the speaker then presented as evidence the prevalence of well-endowed men and the detailed descriptions of their genitalia. Surprisingly, the argument is not as far-fetched as some might think, with content of such a nature repeated in numerous works by Garcia Marquez. Yurgel said he realized there was a common genealogy, a sense of pride in this animal imagery. He ended by adding, ‘In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s world, honor begins between the legs.’
Garcia Marquez’s presumably chauvinist nature does not, in any way, invalidate his talents as an author. Yurgel said he considers the first line of ‘
Cien Anos de Soledad,‘ more widely known as ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude,’ as one of the best openings of a novel ever penned, comprising Garcia Marquez’s unique narrative tone, expert juxtaposition of verbal tenses, an emphasis on tension and total mastery over world building.
After an engaging follow-up discussion, in which Yurgel fielded several questions, the lecture concluded on a significant question: If Garcia Marquez does intend to mock the masculine and chauvinist culture prevalent in Latin American literature, and if his audience cannot discern his intentions, does it even really matter?
Sinan Farooqui is a first-year undergraduate student from Pakistan who works with Duke Kunshan’s Humanities Research Center.
