If not a ‘macho’, then who did it? Social actors and the violence of Mexico

Abstract

The article examines how the Mexicans represent in their discourse the perpetrators of everyday violence. Ethnographic data that I collected during in-depth interviews recorded in Guadalajara, Mexico, are analyzed employing Theo van Leeuwen’s tools of CDA as presented in Discourse and Practice. New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Comparing extracts from recorded interviews discussing violence against women, men, and children proves that the representation of social actors differs depending on the victim and thereby normalizes violent behavior. Although the main explanation of high rates in violence is the machismo – the cult of macho, the low frequency of the terms macho, machos, machista, or machismo in the corpus demonstrates that for the informants the concept of macho is remote and does not serve to justify the violence.