The Role Of Men And Women In The Crystal Frontier By Carlos Fuentes

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A cultures traditional understanding on a matter often creates conflict with how the matter is understood in the modern era. Mexico, a nation with deep ties to its traditional Native American roots, knows this conflict extremely well. Specifically, Mexico’s traditional understanding of the roles of both men and women creates a heavy conflict today. One of the most significant conflicts that stems from these traditional conceptions of gender is the propagation of a patriarchal society in which women are often exploited by seemingly powerful men. Carlos Fuentes, the author of the book titled The Crystal Frontier, highlights this conflict in the numerous short stories within this book. However, the short story “Malintzin of the Maquilas” gives …show more content…

Additionally, this also explains a huge part of why the labor force both in the story “Malintzin of the Maquilas” and in real life is unable to fight for better working conditions and contracts. This fact is another reason why management turned to women to field their workforce. As stated by Kopinak, “Supervisors reported that whereas men and women were comparable in productivity, women made fewer claims than men before the Junta Local de Conciliaciony Arbitraje concerning the violation of their legal rights as workers” (Kopinak 32). Such a statement is proven to be true by the event that takes place in the story in which Rosa Lupe was first publicly humiliated, then sexually assaulted, and then sexually harassed. Despite the fact that all three of the above occurrences are illegal and violate both legal and moral laws, nothing was done by Rosa Lupe in terms of reporting the event to a higher authority (Fuentes 125-126). In addition to the fact that the workers of Maquiladoras felt that they had no voice nor any representation at the management level, the female workers were again falling into the “passive” role that Paz defined as one of the traditional roles for a woman (Paz 81). In the case of Rosa Lupe, she especially falls into the role of the “Chingada” in that she did “not resist violence” in terms of doing more to report what happened to her to a higher level of management (85). Without the feeling of being “macho” or powerful, it proved hard for the women of the Maquiladoras to take a stand for themselves

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