“He Died Like a Man”: Examining the Scorned Language of El Macho—Sex, Violence, and Politics
The U.S. – Mexico border is, in many ways, a distinctive locus of cultural, social, and political confluence and conflict. One of its aspects is the expression of the man and the elusive meaning of El Macho within an evolving world of woman—specifically, El Feminismo. In Carlos Nicolás Flores’ border novel, Sex as a Political Condition, protagonist Honoré del Castillo actively but unconsciously navigates the internal conflict between the animal man and the political man while trying also to negotiate the problematic and risky conversation between el macho and woman. With a title like Sex as a Political Condition and a cover depicting a semi-automatic rifle—attached to which is a woman’s erotically extended leg adorned with a bright red stiletto—you probably already guessed that things get dirty and wild in Flores’ novel.
Malynda Nuss of the Texas Observer was A victim of the onslaught of breasty images; she writes sardonically about Flores’ array of vocabulary in her 2015 review of his book:
Breasts proliferate with reckless abandon. They bob and wiggle, they roll and pour, they spread like swirls of chocolate. They are compared to onions, tomatoes, mangoes, calabazas, gourds, scoops of ice cream, ivory pudding, flan, cupcakes, blowfish, boulders, boxing gloves, tulips, smooth mounds of Mexican cheese, B-52 bombers, twin puppies and vanilla malts topped with pink cherries.
Readers will likely empathize with her exasperation (as did I); however, Ms. Nuss never has an epiphany about the sinister but serious and very relevant themes raised in the novel. In fact, she completely fails to understand the absolutely essential use of parody and slapstick, claiming that “Flores can’t bring himself to abandon the silliness” without wondering at the purpose of that “silliness.” Nuss believes that “Flores sometimes impales himself” with his humor. Ironically, one of her criticisms of his humor is actually almost the whole point of the book: she says, “it is difficult to tell whether Honoré is supposed to be heroic or ridiculous. Is he saving the world, or just shepherding a crowd of eccentric egomaniacs?” Nuss fails to realize that these are important questions— questions that the protagonist, Honore, asks, too. These questions are, in fact, fundamental to the meaning of the novel and to understanding manhood in the modern world.
Let me explain.
Flores’ 2015 novel transports readers to fictional Escandon, a representation of border-town Laredo, during 1980s Cold War America. The first chapter introduces us to both Honoré del Castillo, the story’s protagonist, and his attempts to negotiate the concept of manhood in a world prevalent with nihilism, socio-political upheaval, and—what we later discover—mockery. In the novel’s context, Honoré represents the remnants of man. The decline of the image of man as hero, the slaughter of millions of men in wars, the rise of feminism and attack on patriarchy, and the ever-present threat of impending nuclear attacks in Cold War America leaves men (and women) grasping for meaning and identity. For Honoré, this means answering two questions: 1. Quien es Honoré? and 2. Que significa honoré?
Initially, Honoré seems to think he already knows the answer to the second question: action. He believes his friend Trotsky is honorable because he is a man of action, that is (and this is vital), political action. We encounter this idea early in the novel when Maruca, Honoré’s wife, asks if he is afraid of the dangers of revolutionary, seditionist work, and he replies “My greatest fear is dying in front of the television” (12); he fears being a nobody. This desire to be a man of action, a hero, a political/social being, is simultaneously in conflict with the animal man, or the natural man. Although he may not be conscious of it, he does have two, equally powerful understandings of honorable manhood. On the one hand, we have a man of society, and on the other, a man of family (or at least the ability to create one). Flores reveals this conflict when Honoré’s wife demands he cut back the tree whose branches threaten to damage their roof. Honoré thinks “Easy….Any pendejo could cut down a tree. The real challenge was cutting down an entire society rotten to the core. That required real men” (9). But only a moment later, Honoré cautions himself, worrying “who knows what you might cut off? Maybe you could live without a finger or a hand, might even put up with losing an entire arm—but if something else got cut off, you might as well blow your brains out” (9). Honoré quite clearly associates his penis with a meaningful life as a man; however, he doesn’t seem to be aware of how this conflicts with his political notions of heroism. This conflict threads itself through the entire narrative but is left unresolved.
One of the most obvious ways in which the conflict reveals itself is in the ubiquity of outrageous and brash sexual references that Flores employs. However, in order for Honoré to navigate the world of men and discover the meaning of honor, of being a man of honor, he must confront the animal man, the sexual man, in both himself and others. There is no doubt that sensitive readers will find themselves shocked and offended by the copious references to tits and ass, penises, and, of course, the adored and glorified pussy. But that’s the point: women have a sexual power over men that they cannot avoid—men face it every day in advertising, in movies and TV, in the form of erotic bits of flesh or sexually attractive women—but instead, they must try to control or deny its effect on them. Timothy Beneke, in Proving Manhood: Reflections on Men and Sexism, names them “arousing intrusive images” and provides several examples of such images; here are a couple:
1) “Talking to a woman wearing a sexy low-cut dress, a man may experience her breasts as intrusive and cast stolen glimpses at them. A kind of power struggle may ensue in the man as he attempts to dominate and ‘defuse’ the intrusive image”;
2) “Erotic images in advertising exploit half-conscious, unintegrated feelings and needs through subliminal or semiconscious arousal….Men feel stimulated against their will, hence powerless, distracted, and resentful.”
Despite potential initial reactions of disgust and outrage at such behavior or attitudes, the proliferation of the erotic images, whether comical or not, demonstrates the substantial and overwhelming presence of such sexualized encounters in men’s lives and the constant process of arousal, struggle, then frustration that men experience. Yet, as often as a set of breasts is exposed or a man drools over a hot body, so is Honoré’s political half displayed, and in this we see the foundation of the story—sex and politics. A division within men, that represents the ridiculous and impossible-to-navigate dichotomy of real world sexual and political movements.
One realization of this dichotomy that Flores contends with in Sex is the feminist movement, mainly the second and third waves that fought against and sought to eliminate any aspect of perceived patriarchy or its remnants. Though momentous for women’s rights and female identity, the movement deconstructed and devalued the male identity and did nothing to improve the sexual or political relationships between men and women; in fact, as Sex demonstrates, in some ways, those relationships have worsened and become more distorted. Bell hooks raises this issue in her 2004 book, A Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. She says that “militant feminism gave women permission to unleash their rage and hatred at men but it did not allow us to talk about what it mean to love men” (xii). She explains that “contemporary feminism” meant “to simply label [men] as oppressors and dismiss them [which] meant we never had to give voice to the gaps in our understanding or to talk about maleness in complex ways” (xiv). She claims that “hating men was just another way to not take men and masculinity seriously. It was simply easier for feminist women to talk about challenging and changing patriarchy than it was for us to talk about men—what we knew and did not know, about the ways we wanted men to change” (xiv). This issue is presented in particularly clarity when, to prepare for their revolutionary aid trip to Nicaragua, Honoré attempts to recruit renowned feminist and activist, Dr. Olivia de la O, at a women’s poetry conference in downtown Escandon.
What ensues is a slapstick parody depicting the horrors of [traditional] man’s perilous encounter with the world of radical feminism. When one woman asks Honoré what he does and he replies, “I sell kitsch,” another woman accuses him of saying bitch instead. Despite his own protests to the contrary, a shouting match follows with the women accusing him of calling them bitch and witch. The shouting quickly devolves when Honore is challenged if he is “man enough to back up those words” (an unintentionally ironic use of “man enough,” by the way); he refuses to engage physically in attempts to be honorable, like a “respectful…caballero from South Texas,” only to discover that decision was a grave mistake. He is labeled a “relic [from] the nineteenth century” and finds himself on the floor, “pummeled” and crushed, face flattened, in the midst of a tussle of epic comedic proportions. Legs are flying, panties are exposed, and the commentary—the commentary is priceless. One particularly humorous instance is when Honoré is confronted with someone’s red panties in his face and fears another “red scare.” The women in this situation make no attempts to listen, but, at the same time, Honoré is completely ignorant of how to converse with them.
Another example of the problematic communication and gender misperception between el macho and woman comes when Honoré feels obligated to defend sexual manhood against a woman’s meat cleaver. The aid convoy’s mechanic, dubbed Pa Savage, has become victim to “Meskin poontang,” enraging his wife, aptly named Ma Savage, to the point of violence. Honoré has an epiphany as he watches Ma Savage storm toward them: “Unless Honoré took a stand, Ma Savage would chop off her husband’s balls.” Dodging cleaver swings, Honoré and two men attempt a steer wrestling and roping with one of them on her back, twirling the rope like a lasso. On her end, she holds her own, putting up a fight and almost killing Honoré. When they finally have the rope around her neck, two women run up pleading “Let her be! Can’t you see she’s just a woman!” But Honoré and the other men call her “a fucking bull” who doesn’t act like a woman. Ma Savage cries “I hate men! I hate men!” This incredibly physical and violent encounter is both ridiculously hilarious and grotesquely horrific. Mockery of both men on the part of women, and of women on the part of men makes frequent appearances in the novel; however, this parody of gender communications is more profound than other representations because it reveals that while it may seem ridiculous—that is, the ways in which modern men and women seem to misunderstand and misperceive each other—it is actually horrifying and alarming.
The closer Honoré and Trotsky & co. get to their goal—whether it’s crossing the border, surviving the trek, seeking support, or reaching their destination—the deeper into the ridiculously grotesque Flores delves. Faulkneresque situations of humanity’s sickness, cruelty, and corruption frequent the pages. Flores’ creates more unbelievable and occasionally ridiculous situations here because that is precisely the way—the only way, really—to define or to even begin to grasp the reality of humanity’s darkness; it is difficult to believe. It is ridiculous. It’s insanity. It’s terrifying. But it’s real. And I think, many of us prefer to live ignorant of it, so when forced to confront human cruelty, it seems merely implausible or fanciful, exaggerated. Unconvincing. Malynda Nuss is unconvinced, of course, and criticizes the scatological humor with which Flores portrays one man’s bizarre attempt at self-preservation: “A character farting when confronted with a mixed-race hermaphroditic torturer may be considered a gesture of defiance, but here it comes across as cartoonish, even unrealistic, as if Flores’ revolutionaries are totally incapable of seriousness.” Precisely. Nuss doesn’t give Flores the credit he deserves; she seems to be “totally incapable” of asking why? Why would Flores evoke the impression that he “believes no revolution can ever take place in a world so full of boobies and bodily functions” (Nuss)? One important scene demonstrates (though in parody) the power women can wield over men using their “boobies.” When Honoré is caught transporting illegal cargo to Mexico, he faces the federales with guns pointed but is saved by those same “boobies.” Honey, an undercover CIA operative who accompanied them, strips down to her thong and challenges the federales to “show [her] some real cuernos,” creating a frenzy of howling and drooling and boners that allows them to escape. This scene may be comical and hyperbolic and even deserving of an eye roll, but it is actually one of the more minor examples of men’s powerlessness in the novel. Everywhere these men (and women) turn, their attempts to provide aid are consistently foiled by bureaucracy that only creates waste (wasted time, wasted resources, wasted people), by corrupt cops (like Honore’s fat brother-in-law, a true pig), by violent men thirsty for power who kill and kill, and by la rubia superior, a creature who man is relentlessly trying to resist. Sex and corruption is the world Honoré lives in, and in that world—a world too familiar—attempts at being a man of action are desperate. Those attempts appear ridiculous to us, and they feel ridiculous and useless, at least eventually, to them, too.
When confronted with the possibility of his execution, Honoré considers what is left for men but to die a wasted death. As he meets the “bores of the man eaters,” Honoré is outraged. It was by a case of mistaken identity that he faces death. His identity didn’t matter, though; what mattered was that he could be used by the soldiers to take another man’s place. Honoré was innocent but aware of the inevitable, and having realized earlier that “he was not a revolutionary”—not a hero—he determined to at least “not faint or cry or shit in his pants”—to be a man if not a hero. Unfortunately, nobody would know whether he did faint or shit or not. He died a nameless man. He “fell into the stream of history” neither as a man nor a hero but as a nobody for no cause. Later, when asked by the press about Honoré, his friend Trotsky reluctantly responds with “something they wouldn’t believe anyway, half-joke, half-truth, a cliché, a sound bite, Hollywood bullshit”; he says “All I can say about my friend Honoré…is that he died like a man.” For Honoré, all that really meant was that he died for nothing. Flores shows us that we need the heroes back, but Honoré never finds the honorable manhood he sought. The trip to Nicaragua was a farce of progressivism. The men had no impact, nor were they honored for trying. Honore’s experience demonstrates the botched attempts men make at seeking the heroic masculine in a world that either no longer wants a masculine hero or is too corrupt for heroics.
Nuss makes one point perfectly; she believes “that a revolution…fought and won by a cast as weird as the one in [t]his book is an indignity too insane to imagine.” This shameful cast, these men who are too disgraceful for us to even imagine as attempting heroism, these are the men we have left. Our heroes are dead. They were killed off by the millions in the endless slaughter of meaningless wars and corrupt governments. What was left of their masculinity was finished off by radical feminism and new gender movements. The men that are left are the caricatures that Flores presents in Sex. In the end, all Flores gives us is more questions: What does it mean to die like a man? Does it mean anything? Can it mean something? Or maybe, we first have to address what it means to live like a man for his death to have any consequence.