"I thought you loved me, and you were never good, the things you said to me knowing you were cheating on me/ Kill her, kill her, kill her, she has no heart, bad woman": the macho message is not always as evident as in this They are from Sonora Matancera, from the year 1978.

Or as in this tango by the Mexican Agustín Lara, immortalized by Libertad Lamarque: "Take my life, with the last kiss of love, take it, take my heart, take my life and if pain hurts you, it must be not to see me, because in the end your eyes I take them with me.

Anyway, the repeated message of the superiority of men over women is often more subtle, as in this bolero from Los Panchos, from 1949: "Lost, people have called you without knowing that you have suffered, with desperation... Lost because you rolled into the mud after they destroyed your virtue and your honor/ It doesn't matter that they call you lost, I will give your life - that deceit destroyed, the truth of my love". That is, a woman "with past” is called “lost”. However, it is “forgiven” by the romantic subject. The question is: is all this normal?

Normalization of violence

It should be remembered that in 2020, 4,091 women were murdered in 17 Latin American countries, according to the Gender Equality Observatory of the Economic Commission for Latin America (CEPAL), for the simple fact of being a woman.

Given the high numbers of gender-based violence and femicide in Latin America, an Oxfam study points out that it is essential to transform imaginaries and social norms in order to eliminate violence. And it is precisely, contradictorily, in romantic love, where the normalization of certain behaviors that generate violence is found.

The study affirms that in language, discourse, repetitions, context and culture, beliefs and behaviors are socialized and reproduced. Six out of ten young people, in eight Latin American countries, believe that jealousy is a demonstration of love, 65 percent think that when a woman says "no" to a sexual relationship, she really means "yes."Seven out of ten think women are responsible for being groped or harassed because of the clothes they wear 82 percent of women and 80 percent of men think men can have sex with whoever they want, but the woman, no.

In this sense, seven out of ten men between the ages of 15 and 19 believe that a "decent" woman should not be out late on the streets; six out of ten women believe the same. This belief could have "Noche de ronda" by Agustín Lara as background music: "Moon that breaks/ over the darkness of my solitude/Where are you going?/Tell me if tonight you go around like she left, Who is she with?/Tell her that I love her/tell her that I'm dying from waiting so long/to come back now/that the rounds are not good/that they hurt/that they are painful/that she ends up crying”.

A few last figures: 56 percent of the men surveyed believe that it is better for the man to work and for the woman to take care of the children (34 percent of women agree). Furthermore, the same percentage of men and women (59 percent) believe that men have the right to "correct" female behavior, since they are economically dependent. In this regard, a musical image: "I want you to do those things to me." Tasty dishes that your daddy likes: walk and light the stove! This was a son that the Cuban Miguelito Cuní sang for the first time, in 1962. This has current versions such as that of the Colombian Yuri Buenaventura.

Is it all a coincidence? Not really. "It should be noted that most of these genres arose in Cuba, in a jocular temperament. The guaracha, for example, originates from the buffo theater of the 19th century," explains to DW Gregori Antonetti, for more than twenty years musical director of Los Her00manos Rodríguez, one of the most representative son and bolero trios of Venezuela.

Power and the voyeur

Gregori Antonetti, musician and composer, contrasts macho images with others that are also found in the bolero. "Let's think of Bésame mucho, written by a sixteen-year-old girl. Or María Grever with Alma Mía. Or Concha Valdés and her paradigm rupture," says Antonetti, defending the bolero genre. His modernist imagery -of desire, of voyeur , from the emotional moment - went on to other Latin American musical genres. Antonetti, who has directed current exponents of bolero-salsa such as Gilberto Santa Rosa, takes the blame away from the music, adding to the time when the genre was created, believing it to be illegitimate judge it with modern lenses.

So? Let's go back to the figures: the Oxfam study states that street harassment limits women's enjoyment of public spaces and leaves deep traces of violence. Its acceptance, however, ranges between 75 percent and 84 percent of men. Because? Is it like in the vallenato of the Colombian Leandro Días, from the 1970s, when he sat down to think about Matilde Lina? "...she is elegant/everyone admires her/in her land she is famous/when Matilde walks, even the savannah smiles." This, according to the study, is understood as the social control of the woman's body.

There is not always a macho message, it is clear. However, there are many camouflaged; and both make history and form imaginaries. Let's conclude with "Los Aretes que la faltan a la Luna", by the composer José Dolores Quiñonez and popularized by the Cuban Vicentico Valdés with the Sonora Matancera in 1958.

Would there be a macho vision in the poetic act of keeping the moon earrings for the beloved at the bottom of the sea? Antonetti disagrees. "It is a metaphor for the impossible to fulfill and the willingness of the lover to compromise," says Antonetti. Or is it, rather, a metaphor for control? According to Erika González, from the Isala organization, an activist for the abolition of prostitution, "the earrings that Luna is missing...represent the object that will attract the conquest".