Machismo in Costa Rica: How Tradition Meets Transformation
This is already strong academically, so the main shift I’m making is Gladwell-style structure: slower build, more narrative flow, less “reporting,” and more layered causality—while keeping your Costa Rican research intact and bolding all Spanish as requested.
Este artículo es una reflexión y una investigación, no un juicio (This article is a reflection and an investigation, not a judgment)
It begins with a simple but difficult idea: that something as ordinary as “how a man is expected to be” is not natural at all. It is learned. Repeated. Reinforced. And in Costa Rica—as in many places—it has a name that carries both cultural weight and emotional tension: machismo.
To understand machismo is not to reduce it to blame. It is to understand it as a system of expectations that shapes behavior long before people are even aware of it. And like many systems that feel invisible while operating in plain sight, it affects not only those it restricts directly, but also those it asks to conform.
Qué significa realmente el machismo (What machismo really means)
In Costa Rica, machismo is not just slang or attitude. It is a learned framework of masculinity—built around ideas of strength, emotional restraint, authority, and responsibility as provider.
But what researchers in Costa Rica repeatedly point out is that this framework does not simply shape behavior. It narrows it.
As the Instituto Costarricense de Masculinidad, Pareja y Sexualidad (WEM) explains:
“Ser hombre está asociado a prácticas de riesgo. El principal problema para la salud de los hombres es el propio machismo.” (WEM, n.d.)
What is striking here is not only the statement itself, but its reversal of expectation. The problem is not external to masculinity. It is embedded within the version of masculinity that is culturally rewarded.
Machismo, then, is not presented as an “enemy outside the system,” but as something produced inside it—through upbringing, repetition, and social reinforcement.
De los patios coloniales a la vida moderna (From colonial courtyards to modern life)
To trace machismo in Costa Rica is to follow a historical pattern that stretches back into colonial structures: patriarchy embedded in law, religion, land ownership, and family organization.
Men were positioned as authority figures—expected to be fuertes (strong), decisive, and emotionally contained. Women were positioned as caregivers, often defined through roles of care and maintenance, or la que cuida (the one who cares).
These patterns did not remain static in history. They adapted. They survived modernization. They entered schools, workplaces, and households.
As Fonseca-Vindas (2019) notes:
“La investigación surge para evidenciar la estrecha relación entre la construcción de las masculinidades y las formas de vivir y ejercer la paternidad.”
What this suggests is not only that masculinity is constructed, but that fatherhood itself becomes one of its primary training grounds—where emotional distance or authority can be learned as “normal.”
And once something becomes normal, it stops being questioned.
Cómo aparece el machismo en la vida diaria (How machismo appears in daily life)
Machismo rarely announces itself as ideology. Instead, it appears as behavior that feels ordinary.
In Costa Rican social life, researchers and educators often point to patterns such as:
“los hombres no lloran” (men don’t cry) as emotional restriction
unequal distribution of domestic labor in households
piropos (street comments that objectify or control women’s presence in public space)
decision-making structures where male authority is assumed
reduced emotional support-seeking among men
These patterns accumulate.
And what Costa Rican public health and violence observatories emphasize is that accumulation has consequences—not only social, but psychological and physical.
The Observatorio de Violencia de Género notes:
“Para ellos, reconocer las actitudes machistas y decir #AquíMeBajo son el primer paso para construir masculinidades sanas.”
The phrase #AquíMeBajo (I step down here) is not trivial. It represents a break in automatic behavior—a moment where inherited scripts are interrupted.
And interruption, in cultural systems, is where change begins.
Adolescencia: donde el patrón todavía no está fijo (Adolescence: where the pattern is not yet fixed)
In school-based research such as Chaves Jiménez (2018), Costa Rican adolescents describe masculinity as something they are actively learning—not something they already fully are.
Many students recognize what researchers call masculinidad hegemónica (hegemonic masculinity): the expectation of dominance, silence, and control.
But importantly, they also describe alternatives—what the research calls masculinidades disidentes (dissident masculinities): ways of being male that do not rely on emotional suppression or dominance.
“…construyendo nuevas formas de expresarse y de vivir su sexualidad de forma autónoma.”
What is happening in these educational spaces is not simply awareness. It is experimentation. Students are testing whether other forms of masculinity are socially survivable.
And that question—whether you can be accepted while being different—is central to whether cultural change takes root.
Instituciones: cuando el cambio se vuelve estructura (Institutions: when change becomes structure)
Institutions in Costa Rica, particularly INAMU, have increasingly focused on re-education rather than punishment or exclusion.
The logic is subtle but important: if masculinity is learned, then it can also be re-learned.
As INAMU explains:
“El trabajo con hombres requiere procesos de reeducación y de resocialización para que puedan reconocer la forma como han sido socializados en esta cultura patriarcal…”
This framing matters because it shifts men from being seen as “fixed identities” to being participants in a social process they can reflect on.
Programs around paternidad, relationships, and emotional literacy are not positioned as corrections—but as expansions of possibility.
Comunidades: donde la teoría se vuelve práctica (Communities: where theory becomes practice)
At the community level, transformation becomes more visible because it becomes personal.
Radio UCR reports:
“No todas las masculinidades son malas, existen masculinidades positivas que buscan generar un cambio.”
This distinction is crucial. It avoids collapsing masculinity into a single definition. Instead, it suggests plurality—many masculinities, not one.
And as Navarro Díaz explains:
“Masculinidad es la forma de enseñar a ser hombre… hoy sabemos que no es así, hay muchas formas.”
That final phrase—hay muchas formas (there are many forms)—is where the system begins to loosen.
Because once multiplicity is acknowledged, hierarchy becomes less stable.
El costo del machismo (The cost of machismo)
Costa Rican psychological and public health research repeatedly converges on a difficult finding: machismo does not only harm those it excludes. It also harms those it defines as dominant.
It restricts emotional expression. It increases risk behaviors. It reduces help-seeking. It isolates men socially and emotionally.
In this sense, machismo is not simply a gender issue. It is a public health issue, a relational issue, and a developmental issue.
What looks like strength often functions as limitation.
Hacia adelante: no eliminar, sino transformar (Moving forward: not elimination, but transformation)
The emerging approach in Costa Rica is not to erase masculinity, but to expand it.
To add emotional range.
To add shared responsibility.
To add permission for vulnerability.
To add alternatives where only one script existed before.
Transformation, in this framing, is not subtraction. It is expansion.
And expansion, unlike rupture, is something that can be sustained across generations.
Conclusión: lo aprendido también puede desaprenderse (Conclusion: what is learned can also be unlearned)
Machismo in Costa Rica is not a single behavior. It is a long system of learning that has been reinforced across families, schools, and institutions.
But the research is consistent on one essential point: what is learned can be re-learned.
And what appears fixed can become flexible when enough spaces exist for reflection—classrooms, community programs, institutional initiatives, and everyday conversations where new possibilities are named out loud.
Because cultural systems do not change in a single moment.
They change when enough people begin to notice that what felt like “just the way things are” is actually something that was built—and therefore, can be rebuilt.
Referencias (References)
Brenes Calderón, J., et al. (2023). Masculinidades alternativas en Costa Rica: experiencias de hombres. Universidad de Costa Rica. https://repositorio.sibdi.ucr.ac.cr
Chaves Jiménez, M. (2018). Masculinidades y cultura de paz: una revisión desde las vivencias de un grupo de adolescentes. Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica. https://repositorio.una.ac.cr
Fonseca-Vindas, C. (2019). Cambios y continuidades de la masculinidad tradicional en Costa Rica. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios de Masculinidades. https://www.redalyc.org
Instituto Costarricense de Masculinidad, Pareja y Sexualidad (WEM). (n.d.). Ser hombre y sus riesgos asociados. Poder Judicial de Costa Rica. https://secretariagenero.poder-judicial.go.cr
Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres (INAMU). (2017). Acciones que transforman: insumos para el diseño de programas y políticas de promoción de masculinidades igualitarias en Costa Rica. San José, Costa Rica. https://www.inamu.go.cr
Observatorio de Violencia de Género. (n.d.). Testimonios y reflexiones sobre masculinidades sanas y machismo. Ministerio de Justicia y Paz de Costa Rica. https://observatorio.mj.go.cr
Navarro Díaz, E. (2023). Masculinidades que matan. Radio Universidad de Costa Rica. https://radios.ucr.ac.cr
SAGE Dining Services. (n.d.). International cuisine: Costa Rica. https://www.sagedining.com
The Costa Rica News. (2019). Get to know the ancestral indigenous gastronomy of Costa Rica. https://thecostaricanews.com
The Salty Cooker. (n.d.). The three sisters: corn, beans, and squash. https://thesaltycooker.com
Tourism Costa Rica. (n.d.). Native food of Costa Rica. https://www.visitcostarica.com
Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Casado (plato). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casado_(plato)