Ethnicity As Well As That of Latin Term Paper

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ethnicity as well as that of Latin America. Discussed are the changes such as socialization, cultural attitudes, laws and customs, which need to be made so women can have more freedom. Essay is based on Silvana Paternostro's In the Land of God and Man: A Latin Woman's Journey. One source used.

In the Land of God and Man

Silvana Paternostro paints a vivid picture of her life growing up in Columbia during the 1970's. The culture of the Latin world was not that much different than life for women in the United States. A new generation was emerging here, as well as there. However, for females growing up during those years, choices were limited and rebel thoughts were frowned upon by contemporaries and older generations alike. Although, there have been many changes during the last three decades, women are still being harmed by the customs and attitudes of our society. They still lack the freedom of men.

Paternostro was taught, or rather programmed to go from convent school to hosting cocktail parties. The women of her society and culture obeyed God and man and never questioned. This is not unlike the American woman stereotype of Donna Reed or Harriet Nelson. Squeaky clean and faithful, always turning the head or rather burying the head in the sand at unpleasantness such as adultery, homosexuality, her own sexuality, and injustices of any kind. She was helpless to change anything anyway.

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Paternostro addressed this in her book saying, "Machismo is a rigid system that both men and women promulgate" (Paternostro 1999). Women in this country were fighting machismo as well, and still are.

Paternostro described that girls married the first boy they kissed because "kissing seemed to go hand in hand with getting pregnant" (Paternostro 1999). It was no different for females here. Premarital sex was taboo, although it was going on everywhere, no one talked about it. A teenaged girl who became pregnant would be sent to live with relatives for a year, the baby usually put up for adoption, or in some instances raised as the girl's sister.

Paternostro's scene of riding around in cars with boys as a teenager echoes every teenaged girl's experience with the opposite sex. The boys were thought to be more experienced and the girls merely were there for the teaching.

Trying to break out of the mold could be frustrating and lonely. Paternostro describes how she was awed by men's power, even their signatures, "about whom I was consumed with curiosity. What they did, how they talked seemed much more alive than what women did" (Paternostro 1999). Men talked of politics….....

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