San Bartolome de las Casas

The masculinity workshops held by San Bartolome are awesome!! I was really impressed by the workshops they have for men. Machismo which can be described as excessive masculinity, or a strong sense of masculine pride, is prevalent among Latino/Hispanic men.  Many men who are machista, are abusive to their wives and children.  Domestic violence is serious problem in El Salvador, in fact, it is one of the most violent countries in the world.  This is the reason why this team of men and women work with Salvadoran men for a number of months to address this issue.This is a very difficult population to work with, but this agency is doing a fantastic job of getting through to these men  so that they can be better husbands and fathers.  One of the key activities that we did was to define a "man." As you can see on the left, my partner and I came up with these characteristics of what a man defined by society should be, but in fact the common man cannot possibly have all of those characteristics, that's unrealistic! Each individual man is different ( in a good way) and its ok to be themselves- whatever way that may be, whether they are athletic or not.  Those are high expectations,and it only leaves room for low self-esteem or the guy feeling like he is is not good enough because he doesn't possess all of those characteristics.

The hugging-tight-for-a-minute exercise was also really interesting because no one really hugs for that long, not even friends unless you are consoling them.  This was a spur of the moment hug to someone who you may not have known for long. We were told to hug tightly and to just breathe, it was tense in the beginning, but then we all just relaxed and enjoyed a minute long hug. It was great!!! It felt nice to be held. Human touch is so necessary and sometimes we forget that or get squeamish about it, but admit it, doesn't it feel nice to be hugged? and sometimes you just need one. This is one of the many exercises that the men in the workshops have to do...hug for a whole minute; which may seem an eternity for them-manly men.