Word: macho
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Mexico's Politica magazine: "The illustrious visitor comes with the personality characteristic of an independent country that has detached herself from the tutelage of the U.S." In Latin America, so long and so completely dependent on the U.S., De Gaulle is getting to be the image of El Macho, the big boy, who has shown everybody how to deal with those Yan kees. De Gaulle recognized Red China despite U.S. disapproval; he more or less rules the Common Market and all but ignores NATO. He is, in fact, a sort of "respectable Castro" to many Latinos. "In Latin America...
...Call it he-manliness, aggressiveness, brag, or a sense of dignity -the Latin Americans call it macho-but the masculine quality that gives the lands south of the border their individual stamp, for good or evil, is examined in THE HEMISPHERE section...
They are more than that; they are machos. Whether involved with a mistress, a mishap or an election, the Latin American male is constantly forced to prove his aggressive masculinity by a compelling phenomenon called machismo. In its simplest form, machismo is the gaudy bravado of the bullfighter, the outdoor he-manliness of the gaucho, the straightforward heterosexuality of the playboy. "The kind of man that men follow and women chase" is how one Peruvian woman defines it. But the trait goes farther than simple male ego. It turns arguments into blood feuds, business dealings into tests of strength...
...army of Dictator Fulgencio Batista respected its leader almost as much for his manliness and his brood of illegitimate children as for the military daring that first brought him to power in 1933. Castro is another story. Though he has the whiskery look of virility, and was considered muy macho for invading Cuba with only 81 men, his he-man rating fell sharply after he let Khrushchev pull out his missiles, and his love life, in the opinion of Latin Americans, is too furtive and lacks style...
...picking on the Roman Catholic Church and chasing teen-age girls that the military became bold enough to throw him out. Brazil, with its mixed Portuguese and African origins, confines its machismo to its frontier lands and southern cattle ranges. But it, too, succumbed to the magnetism of a macho leader when Getúlio Vargas raised a cavalry of southern Gauchos and rode to power in 1930. All over Latin America, the compulsion to follow a macho leader-the caudillo -helps to frustrate political organization. In most elections, nearly every party is merely a collection of its leader...