Saturday 20 December 2008, San José, Costa
Rica
CUBA: "I’m a Man and I
Cry"
By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Dec 19 (IPS) -
"I was ashamed to cry,"
confesses Alejandro
López, a burly Cuban man
who a year ago decided
to break away from
violence and leave
behind the "macho"
stereotypes that
prevented him from
expressing his feelings
and sensibility.
"Now I’m going around
telling everyone: Let
yourself go! Crying
won’t make you less of a
man," López tells IPS.
"I’m a man and I cry.
And that doesn’t mean
I’m not masculine."
As in the rest of Latin
America and the
Caribbean, men born in
Cuba are typically
raised to believe that a
true man must be strong,
successful and rational.
This perpetuates the
dominant model of
masculinity associated
with violent,
authoritarian and
competitive behaviours.
In December 2007, López
attended the first
Masculinity and Gender
Violence Awareness
Workshop, held in
Havana, which caused a
radical shift in how he
approached his
relationships with his
family and co-workers.
The workshop was
organised by the
non-governmental
organisation Oscar
Arnulfo Romero
Reflection and
Solidarity Group (OAR)
as the culmination of a
project conducted in
three urban communities
with the aim of
empowering community
leaders to help them
address gender violence.
One day, during an
activity at his
workplace -- the
Refrigeration and
Air-Conditioning
Services Company --
López decided to talk
about masculinity and
violence. Surprisingly
enough, his boss and
co-workers liked what he
had to say, and revealed
that they had never
really thought about
such issues.
That talk led him to
form an action group
aimed at changing gender
relations and reducing
violence. He set out to
examine the prevailing
ideas of masculinity,
criticise machista
behaviours in everyday
life, eradicate sexist
language and promote
greater inclusion of
women in decision-making
processes.
"I’ve helped my
co-workers realise how
certain attitudes of
theirs are really a form
of psychological
violence towards women,"
says López, who is also
an official in the
Steelworks Ministry.
"Their first reaction
was to laugh. But the
more they thought about
it, the more they
realised that it was
better to talk things
out, and that helped
them control their
anger," he said.
López believes that
every workplace should
have "a programme to
teach people how to
solve their differences
through dialogue, and
encourage non-violent
attitudes. These
awareness-raising
efforts would complement
the rules established in
disciplinary codes and
procedures that prohibit
aggressive behaviour
towards co-workers.
"I’ve achieved so much
more since I became less
aggressive in my
attitudes towards my
co-workers and the women
around me," López says.
"My work hasn’t changed,
but everything I do has
become so much easier
because I’ve learnt to
talk things out and to
compromise if
necessary."
"Today we have a group
of men who are concerned
with the issue, and this
translates into a
commitment towards the
community, in how they
act in their personal
lives and in their
workplaces," Zulema
Hidalgo, a member of
OAR, told IPS.
Hidalgo feels that this
group of men opposed to
violence needs to
receive training to
approach other men and
discuss the issue. To
this end, OAR has the
support of the National
Centre for Sex
Education, the
Psychological and
Sociological Research
Centre, the
Psychological Guidance
and Attention Centre and
the non-governmental
organisation Proyecto
Palomas (Doves Project).
For his part, the
general coordinator of
OAR, Gabriel Coderch,
says that for many years
in Cuba "the issue of
violence had been
shelved," but now the
institutions with
decision-making power
over social matters have
become aware of their
influence in Cuban
society.
"You can’t change
people’s feelings and
attitudes overnight,"
Coderch says.
Some 20 studies
conducted in the country
in the 1990s showed that
the main victims of
domestic violence,
women, were often
unwilling to seek
institutional support or
report the men who
abused them.
A research work
published by the
Forensic Medicine
Institute around the
same time reported that
47 percent of all female
murder victims had been
killed by their
boyfriend or husband.
A more recent study,
conducted by the School
of Psychology at the
Central University of
Las Villas, located 300
km east of Havana,
studied violence in
rural families, where
"insults, shouting,
curtailment of rights,
threats, overburdened
roles and exclusions"
are commonplace.
The study, published in
October by the Mexican
journal "Psicología para
América Latina", stated
that "the general
psychological causes
behind violent behaviour
include poor
communication -- a
factor commonly found in
cases where
conflict-resolution
through non-violent
means is difficult --
and the lack of the
necessary communicative
skills to hear the other
and to make oneself
heard."
"I know it will take
time, and I know that
this isn’t something
that can be solved by
just one person. But if
it spreads to other
people we’ll be able to
reduce the psychological
violence that is so
widespread in our
society, like we were
able to do with physical
violence," López says.
"People are calling me
‘the priest,’ but I’m no
priest. I’m just a
little more flexible now
than I used to be," he
concludes.
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