On machismo

It's my first weekend in La Paz, and I'm reunited with two of my girlfriends who have been here for one month already. So, of course, they have to show me the hottest Bolivian discotecas!  Already, I've prepared myself to deal with Bolivian men. I have the phrase memorized if anyone gives me trouble, Déjenme en paz. I know the harassment is coming though. I've learned about machismo in my Latin American studies classes and I know how men here view American women. I'm not naive, You have to take precaution.

So we get to the club, get our drinks, and within 10 minutes are greeted by our lovely new Bolivian friends. The first question they ask us is, "De dónde son?" (Where are ya'll from?) "Los estados unidos." Here we go, I thought. "Quieres bailar conmigo??" one of them asks me. "No puedo bailar" (I can't dance,) I lie. I make it very clear I do not want to be messed with. This guy was drunk, spitting, and very confused as to why I wouldn't dance with him. I continue to ignore him and talk to my girlfriend, but he keeps persisting, "Me gustas a tu mucho, solo tu, eres tan bonita, yada, yada, yada" Mind you, when he's not talking to me I see him in my peripherals-- I kid you not, I cannot make this up-- licking his lips, staring, and pacing. Shit. What am I supposed to do? I can't leave my friend and go wandering by myself. He would surely follow me. But I can't keep putting up with this much longer. So I tell him I have a boyfriend, hoping that'd make him back off. HAHAHA. He grabs my face and kisses me on the mouth so aggressively he bites part of my lip. I push him away, grab my friend's arm, and run to the bathroom, tears already starting to run down my face.

What the fuck? Did that really just happen? I was so in shock I couldn't say or do anything but get away. And the fact that my resistance caused him to be even more aggressive is the most bothersome part of this interaction. Never in my life have I been so disrespected, so objectified, so humiliated. A complete stranger just violated me while I was in mid-conversation and then tried to pull my purse off of me as I ran away. What? No entiendo, I really don't.

He wasn't looking to have a conversation, to learn about my life, or take me out on a date. He wanted to say he had been with una americana. He wanted to tell his friends how wild we were, how much more loose and confident we were in bed. I was playing hard to get, he thought. This must be part of the game. I was exotic, and I owed him this experience.

But now I'm left wondering... How often do Latin American women deal with aggressive machismo behavior? Does this happen on a weekly basis? Or would this have even happened to me if I weren't a gringa? Could this have happened in the United States?  I don't know if this would have happened if I were Latina.  But this guy felt entitled because I'm American, and that's all I know for sure. I remember saying to my friend in the bathroom of the club, "So I guess this is the norm from now on. I guess we're supposed to expect this as long as we're in Bolivia." But why does it have to be? Why does wearing an undershirt to hide your chest have to be a norm?  I want so badly to fix this. To find answers to questions I don't know. And now that I've experienced machismo first-hand, I understand why there's such a vocal Latin American feminist movement. One that's arguably more united and thriving than American feminism.

I think the silver lining of this experience is that it happened in La Paz while I'm taking a class in Social Science Research and Ethnography--> a class to teach me how to conduct research and prepare me for my thesis. So what better way to handle being assaulted than to research machismo and gender in Bolivia? This incident speaks to the larger problem of being a woman in Latin America. Now I'm on mission. I have to figure out what we need to do and how we need to do it... Until I figure that out I'll be asking, watching, and observing. Conducting research in the name of women.