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San Antonio Express-News
25 de enero de 1998
©1997: Suzanne Cane y Olvera

AT LEAST ONE SHOW IN MEXICO TRYING
TO CHALLENGE STEREOTYPES

"They lied to us. They deceived us," Consuelo declared tearfully about growing up to a life of marriage and children. "They fed us the dream and gave us a thousand ways to make it happen, but they never told us what to do in case we woke up."

Sounds like a typical American, anti-Father Knows Best, women's-lib line out of the seventies, doesn't it? It isn't. It's a line from a soap opera, Mirada de Mujer (The Woman's View) that is currently running in Mexico and knocking a good part of Mexican society on its ear.

Mexican soap operas, or telenovelas, play to much wider audiences nationwide than any newspaper or magazine, and that implies tremendous social influence. For many years, a major function of Mexican soaps had been to reaffirm social values. They did a splendid job.

A very common story line was that of a poor house servant putting up with not only her miserable lowly existence, but a sexual relationship with the son of the family she worked for. Why would she do nothing about her situation? No complicated answers here. She was poor and alone and had nowhere else to go, except back to her equally poor family in the village that she had been forced to leave in the first place - and, of course, she was madly in love with that inaccessible, high-class hunk.

Let's take a time-out here to remember back to the heroine tied to the train tracks of an old silent film. Did the poor girl ever get chopped into pieces by the wheels of the train? No, the hero always showed up just in time to save her from doom - and that's exactly what would happen to our poor servant girl, who would turn out to be the illegitimate child of a high-society woman who had had to give her away when she was a baby. Of course, the biological mother would turn up just as the social train was about to slice her long-lost daughter into the final ribbons. The truth would come out, and the gorgeous son of the house would realize that he had been desperately in love with this poor servant girl all along - and she, now (instantly) turned well-dressed and equally well-mannered, would live happily ever after!

My own pet theory for years has been that the telenovela serves as a major deterrent to social revolution. If you spent every evening watching something that made you think that you, too, could hit it lucky and end up living happily after in a world of wealth and luxury, mightn't you think twice about throwing it all away on a mere social revolution?!

And that is the way it seemed to have worked - until now. Something new is happening. Throughout Latin America, a bit of the real world has begun to penetrate the realm of the telenovela.

Mexico is a good example. Subjects that had been considered taboo have finally been open to tele-public scrutiny. When had the Mexican world ever been seen through the eyes of a woman wronged? When had there ever been a character like María Inés, of Mirada de Mujer? Many married women, like María Inés, had played by the rules and never looked beyond their own families for happiness, only to suffer through their husbands' infidelity and end up abandoned for the other, younger woman. Nothing new there. What is new is that María Inés dares to make a new life for herself - and with a younger man, the thirty-three-year-old Alejandro! Thus, the double standard for men and women is actually being confronted - and in macho-landia no less!

Just how firm has that double standard been? Women themselves have actually helped to promote it. The matriarch is an ever-present figure in Mexican society and has been very much responsible for how social roles are acted out generation after generation. When María Inés is devastated by the loss of husband Ignacio, does her mother, matriarch Mama Elena, take her own daughter's side? Quite the contrary: If María Inés has lost her husband, it must be her own fault - something she did, something she didn't do. When María Inés' sister, Consuelo, breaks down and confesses that her husband beats her, does matriarch Mama Elena tell this other daughter to take out a restraining order or to leave him? No. Consuelo's husband must be under a lot of stress. As his wife, Consuelo should sympathize with him!

The message? Don't rock the boat. A woman cannot live without a man, and everything must be sacrificed to the purpose of keeping him. Yes, there is a double standard, but women must accept it and not dare to wish for anything in life beyond pleasing their husbands. The telenovelas of the past did nothing to raise women's self-esteem or to encourage them to grow as individuals.

When Mexican men are asked whether they are married, it is not uncommon for them to answer jokingly, "My wife is married." But it is no joke. The implication has always been clear: She is stuck to him - exclusively - while he can have all the women - and even complete families - that he wants. A man who has a string of mistresses is a macho. A woman who ventures into a bar alone is a tramp! Until very recently, few had debated that grossly sexist mentality - and certainly not on TV.

This telenovela is finally questioning some of those old social injustices. While it still leaves one foot in the past (María Inés' friend does tell her how necessary it is for a woman to look attractive for a man), it does take on reality with a vengeance: That only twenty percent of married women are happy? That María Inés should not cry over her pregnant daughter's departure since it will probably take only two years for her to get divorced and come home with the baby?

When I first arrived in Mexico back in the sixties, I found it odd how many homes consisted of grandmother, mother, children - and no men. So, this is certainly nothing new, but when did the telenovela ever talk about it? For that matter, when had a show's theme-song vocalist ever gone against the tradition of glamour and worn jeans and eyeglasses?! It all does seem to add up to some kind of social revolution.

I have heard from a number of women that their husbands (even those who have always enjoyed the soaps) seem to have a hard time sitting down to watch this one - that, when it comes on, they develop an irrepressible need to read, to brush their teeth, to cook, to paint the garage. Gosh darn, I wonder why!

No one knows how Mirada de Mujer will end. Will Ignacio decide that it was a mistake to leave his wife and family and attempt to come back? And, if he does, will María Inés accept him and return to her old life because living beyond the walls of tradition has turned out to be more than she had bargained for?

Does it matter? A window has been opened, and the house has been filled with fresh air. There will be those who try to force the window back closed - but pushing all that air out will take quite a trick!