Nuts to Butts
Even with how pervasive Machismo is in Latin American culture, some attitudes regarding Motorcycle etiquette are more progressive than the culture in the States.
In the US, motorcycles are typically NOT your main form of transportation. Especially in a state like Minnesota where you cannot ride for 4-6 months out of the year, you're typically going to have a motorcycle as your 2nd or 3rd vehicle. Even then, it may not be your daily driver.
In the US, the rule is that you don't have 2 men on a motorcycle. Some of that harks back to the early days of American motorcycling clubs, where you'd ride your 'hog' with your 'mama' on the 'bitch seat.' Women can absolutely own motorcycles and ride with other women on the back, but in certain circles, a man on the back is seen as a sign of weakness or even homosexuality. In other vernacular, the man on the back is the 'catcher' or the 'Nelly bottom'. Whether the attitudes go as far as homophobia or not, you're not commonly going to see two men on a motorcycle together in Canada or the US. This extends from burly, older countryside Harley riders all the way to young city folk.
In Latin America, however, an alien observer would think that Latinos have made much progress toward equality on this front. Here, a motorcycle is the ONLY form of transport for many people. They're more simple machines than cars, they're cheaper to insure and operate, and they use less fuel. I've seen entire families of 5 or more carrying babies on their way to Sunday mass down the highway on a dirt bike with no more than 100 CCs. Farmers will move around their properties faster by darting around on motorcycles, sometimes carrying their family member / coworkers on the back.
There is no stigma regarding men on the back of motorcycles here. I've even seen women drive and men be passengers. It's for these reasons I say that Latin America feels -more progressive- than the United States when it comes to 2-wheeled passengers.
Cracking Skulls
Also, I don't see the machismo at work when it comes to helmets. Here in Puerto Vallarta, most people wear helmets. Helmets are required by law in Mexico but it is rarely enforced. Folks in the countryside as well as people in the cities wear them. I have NEVER ran into the same kind of Machismo attitude toward helmets that I find in Canada and the States.
In Canada, all 10 provinces and 3 territories require helmets by law. In the US, it depends on the state. In both countries, I've seen many conservative Boomers show their distaste at helmet requirements. A Bunk-a-Biker in Washington once showed me a "helmet" that was only hard plastic so he could fool the authorities. In Canada, I've heard them gripe about how heavy they are and how lucky some states are that don't require them, like mine in MN.
In the US, I don't believe the resistance to helmets is rooted in toxic masculinity. rather, I see it as having it's origins in Cold-War-Libertarianism and anger against government control. "If it doesn't impact anyone but me, why should the government mandate it? I'd rather be free to do as I wish!"
Then we see people like Ron Smith, a Floridian lawyer. Smith had been fighting against helmet laws in his state for over a decade, even helping overturn tickets of people who had been charged for not wearing their helmets back in 1998. In 2000, he SUCCESSFULLY lobbied and fought against Florida's state-mandated helmet laws in Tallahassee. With his efforts, he was able to overturn some of the requirements. In 2000, a new state law was passed that made it so people over 21 could ride without a helmet if they had over $10,000 in insurance coverage.
Later, in October 2022 he died of head trauma in a motorcycle crash where he was not wearing a helmet. His girlfriend on the back also died of the same causes.
In the motorcycle community, I haven't seen Smith hailed as a hero. Attitudes must be changing, because most motorcyclists I've seen online relish in the irony of his death rather than shrug at his freedom to do it.
I think because of this, attitudes toward helmets are changing to be more aligned with Latin America's, but again both regional and generational.
Don't be polite, that's women's work.
Another difference came just from me trying to be a good guest. In Latin American households, women are the caretakers. I typically see cooking as a 70/30 women-dominated task, but cleaning is 95/5 at the least. When I was invited into a home of a Latin American household, I was offered a meal. Upon completing it, I thought it would be nice of me, as a guest, to take the dishes up to the sink to clean. I wouldn't go as far to clean them as they may have a special way of doing so and wouldn't want them to have to clean them twice. I wasn't going to 'rock the boat' that much.
Upon grabbing the plates there wasn't just a push to stop me, there was an inquiry. "Why are you taking those?" they said with a smile. It was as if I just stood up and put on a dress. Cleaning the table was women's work and I was 'rocking the boat'. I am supposed to sit there and let them clean it up for me. Not because I am a man and superior, but because it looks feminine to do the task.
This also extends to many tasks. A stay-at-home dad may feel demasculated if he were to engage in tasks such as waxing floors and doing laundry. This isn't just Latin America, I know it's in the US, but here it's still much more prevalent.
Living Situations and the Dating Scene
This is a Costa Rican observation, not a Mexican one. I may form a Mexican one in good time. There is a change in Latin American attitudes toward women's living situations as the generations pass and become more liberal than their predecessors, but this one is still coming on slow in Costa Rica compared to the US.
In traditional Latin American culture rules, men are allowed to live on their own after they become adults. They can live with other men as well. Women, however, are to stay with their families until marriage. You typically don't move in with your significant other until marriage. There is a push away from these traditional values, as female participation in education is MUCH higher than it was a generation ago, and some universities may even have more female attendance.
We're even seeing a shift of white collar disciplines being female-dominated. That in itself will 'rock the boat' when it comes to the dating scene and living situations.
I know women in Costa Rica who are living on their own. All of them are college educated. I've heard from one of them that the dating scene can be intimidating for men because Machismo culture has men as the 'bread winners' and providers. It throws the system out of whack if the woman is expected to cook, clean, AND be the breadwinner, doesn't it? It demasculates the man to have to tend to housework. It doesn't quite emasculate the woman to be the breadwinner, though. I don't see women being shamed or discouraged from going into education. I DO see women possibly being shamed for not being married in their 30s. I also see a LOT of women in Costa Rica having children very, very young.
My theory on the prevalence and frequency of teen pregnancy again harks back to Machismo. Women are trying to please their man, and in doing so, men prefer to not use condoms. Women are discouraged from using birth control out of religious pressure, so you see a LOT of pregnancies in young women regardless of marital status. Shotgun weddings (American term for having a wedding quickly before the pregnancy starts to show) are common. Divorces less so, but are more common amongst educated women.
Trashy Behavior
To me, some attitudes and customs in Latin America are much like what the US was a few generations ago. Many social norms that Boomers like to hail as hallmarks of the 'good old days' such as safely hitch-hiking, drinking a beer while driving, and casual racism are perceived as normal, albeit some attitudes are changing.
Here in Mexico, like what I imagined in the US of the past, I've witnessed littering as socially acceptable. There is a little bit of shame to not do so depending on who you're with, but the lack of collective action means littering still very pervasive in the culture. Also, I feel like seeing litter as being so common helps keep the practice going.
I can explain:
Looking along the roads in Latin America, wherever you are, you can see trash. Go into the poorer neighborhoods and you'll find a refuse heap somewhere just outside of the community.
In Nicaragua, I remember one of the more potent smells being burning trash. It was so strong that whenever I smell burning plastic and trash, I think of Nicaragua. It's a scent very much tied to memory. In Costa Rica burning trash was illegal, but when you got into the countryside it was not enforced and the locals had never really stopped doing it.
I was surprised to see in Mexico, much like Canada and NOT like the US, Toll ways had trash cans along the road. They were of course not picked up often, so there was just piles of trash there, but they had them all the same.
I was traveling with a local man and his son to go to a vista that overlooked a town. When I was up there, trash was scattered about. When we were leaving, his son finished a Gatorade bottle and threw it on the ground. It bounced off the pavement and rolled into a gutter. I was personally appalled to see the behavior from a child and was even going to scold him. The father, however, paid no attention to it and moved on.
It was then I decided it wasn't my fight, not my world, and I ran more risk of being judged by THEM if I were to speak out. I looked around at the trash in the area and I think I figured out the rationale: "Eh, there's already trash here. What's one more."
I also learned from a close friend in Costa Rica that "community service" to pick up trash didn't exist. In the US, a common punishment for criminals of light offenses is to sentence them to "community service." One of the community services is to pick up trash on highways. In Costa Rica, I was told, there were paid members of the government who would go out and pick up trash along the road. It's entirely possible that there IS a community service as a punishment that they were unaware of, but the fact that a college-educated friend hadn't heard of it and through it was a wonderful idea? I was surprised.
So where does the trash come from? It's not you or me who are producing plastic in our homes and throwing it out on the street. It comes from the producers. It's companies. When plastic compounds were first introduced in the mid-20th century it was a miraculous material. It can preserve food, take any shape, it's light weight, and it's cheap. What's not to like!? Everything at the supermarket soon came with plastic.
Now, several generations later, WE THE PEOPLE are being pressured to deal with the trash the producers create. They even invented the term "Litter Bug" to put the pressure on people like you an me to not litter. No pressure was put on companies.
Lately in the US, especially in more liberal Blue States, there has been a push to remove plastics from the shelves. In Europe, single use plastic bans are going into effect. In stores like Trader Joe's and Aldi, they have no option to load your groceries in paper OR plastic. In places like Minneapolis and California, they charge small amounts of around $0.10 per plastic bag to carry your groceries out of a store, incentivizing reusable bags.
Some of it is company-enforced. Some of it is government-enforced. Here in Latin America, it will typically be the former. All I know is, there is a long way to go when it comes to the problems with refuse in Latin America. Like the US, it won't happen in one election, one year, or even one decade. Some of these major changes are completely generational and when they are, they're only regional.
-JT
12/15/2022