Beyond the Illusion of Machismo: Mobilizing Critical, Intersectional Frameworks for Latino Men’s Health Equity

Masculine roles and expectations require critical examination in light of new paradigms to promote improved health outcomes and competence in the modern social and economic world. In the case of Latino men’s health research specifically, this necessary advancement means moving beyond the simplistic, often pathologizing use of “machismo”¹ and related cultural constructs. Although research documenting the link between adherence to traditional machismo, characterized by aggression, dominance, and stoicism, and negative mental and behavioral health outcomes is necessary,² the construct is a limited, Westernized characterization.¹ It is important to acknowledge that some research has attempted to broaden this lens by incorporating “caballerismo,”¹ a construct encompassing positive attributes such as social responsibility, nurturance, and family-centered values.

However, even this duality fails to capture the full humanity of Latino men. Reliance on singular, essentialized cultural terms often restricts the study of gender identity, fluidity, and sexuality.¹ To critically examine masculinity, public health must urgently integrate contemporary critical frameworks from disciplines such as sociology, ethnic studies, and gender studies.

THE FAILURE OF MONOLITHIC MASCULINITY CONSTRUCTS

Historically, public health scholarship has struggled to conceptualize and measure masculinity in ways that are both universally accepted and culturally sensitive.³ For Latino men, the construct of machismo has been historically conceptualized to characterize Mexican-origin masculinity and subsequently generalized to characterize all Latino men.¹ This monolithic approach ignores Latine heterogeneity across sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, race, and acculturation.^1,3,4

The consequence of this narrow focus is a research landscape that uses machismo, and even its supposed positive counterpart, caballerismo, to uphold restricted views of men that limit considerations of fluid gender identity and expression.¹ Critically, this conceptualization often traces the roots of Latino masculinities back to the negative consequences of colonization and imposed White supremacist patriarchy rather than recognizing and recuperating the broader, more fluid, and egalitarian conceptualizations that existed historically within indigenous and diasporic populations.¹ Reliance on this monolithic cultural construct is problematic because machismo itself lacks a standardized definition across the health literature² and its generalization from Mexican-origin men to all Latine populations lacks empirical support, ignoring vital heterogeneity in nativity and generational status.¹ This focus on individual deficits reinforces the pathologizing of Latino men for traits such as emotional stoicism and denial of illness,^1,5 obscuring the complexity of shared experiences including the shame many men feel when expressing emotion.²

Furthermore, an overemphasis on cultural constructs alone often distracts from the pressing structural factors driving health disparities.⁶ For example, the stress and role strain experienced by Latino men are profoundly complicated by structural racism, anti-immigrant rhetoric, and socioeconomic precarity. We must also consider the concept of historical trauma, recognizing that the health behaviors we observe today are often responses to the catastrophic losses of power, agency, and culture resulting from centuries of colonization and systemic oppression.¹ These are the factors that must be addressed to truly understand health.^1,3,6

CENTERING CRITICAL INTERSECTIONAL INQUIRY

The path forward requires adopting theoretical frameworks that embrace the complexity of multiple, interlocking systems of oppression.^6,7 A comparative illustration of the historical focus and resulting public health implications of the traditional versus critical/intersectional paradigms is provided in Box 1.^1,2,7–12 Intersectionality, the study of how social identities such as race, gender, and socioeconomic status interact to reflect structural systems of privilege and oppression, is an overdue framework for public health research on Latino men.^1,6,7 Intersectionality challenges researchers to look beyond studying systems independently and instead understand how factors such as machismo operate within broader societal contexts of power.⁷

BOX 1—

Comparative Paradigms for Latino Men’s Health Research, Theory, and Praxis

Research Paradigm	Core Conceptualization of Latino Masculinity	Primary Focus and Mechanism Explored	Public Health Implications and Goals	Operationalization Strategies and Measures
Traditional public health (e.g., machismo/ caballerismo)	Masculinity is static, cultural, and often binary (good vs bad). Defined by adherence to traditional gender roles (provider, protector, dominant).	Focuses on individual acculturation and adherence to cultural norms. Mechanisms include gender role conflict and cultural values as drivers of behavior.1	Aims to change individual negative behaviors.12 Studies often lack diverse samples and standardized definitions, potentially obscuring complex community realities.2	Measure: traditional machismo and caballerismo scale.1 Strategy: Correlate scale scores with negative health outcomes (e.g., substance use, interpersonal violence).2
Intersectionality	Masculinity is relational, fluid, and shaped dynamically by multiple social identities (race, ethnicity, gender, class) and larger systems of power.8	Centers the impact of interlocking systems of privilege and oppression (e.g., racism, heterosexism, classism).7	Requires culturally competent care that respects diverse intersecting identities. Moves beyond “women and minorities” to see specific subgroups (e.g., Afro-Latino men).7	Measure: intersectional discrimination scales (adapted for multiple identities).7,8 Strategy: Use person-centered analyses such as latent class analysis to identify unique subgroups based on oppression/affirmation.7
Critical race theory and public health critical race praxis (PHCRP)	Masculinity is racialized; Latino men are viewed through the lens of structural racism and historical trauma.8	Investigates structural racism directly rather than using race as a biological proxy. Emphasizes “ordinariness” of racism and “centering in the margins.”8	Guides research toward antiracist praxis. Challenges the field’s own role in racializing populations.8	Measure: intersectional discrimination scales/instruments measuring structural racism (e.g., segregation indices).7,8 Strategy: Follow the four phases of PHCRP: contemporary racialization, knowledge production, conceptualization, and action.8
Jotería Studies, Muxerista Studies, and transgender studies	Centers queer, transgender, and nonbinary embodiments. Masculinity is performative and can be reimagined through “conocimiento” (consciousness).9	Examines resistance, resilience, and “queer chisme” as valid epistemologies. Focuses on survival in the face of transphobia and homophobia.9	Validates alternative kinships and nonnormative gender expressions as protective health factors. Disrupts cisheteronormativity in research designs.9–11	Measure: queer pláticas (methodology).9,10 Strategy: Use “theories in the flesh” and “testimonio” to capture embodied knowledge. Engage in “queer chisme” as a method of exposing institutional violence.9

Public health critical race praxis (PHCRP), an empirical adaptation of critical race theory, guides researchers toward investigating structural determinants of inequities, ensuring that research moves beyond merely documenting etiological outcomes.⁸ Implementing this approach requires methodological innovation to quantify social inequalities. For example, sophisticated quantitative studies are now employing techniques such as multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy.⁷ This advanced modeling treats intersectional strata (combinations of race, gender, and class) as random effects, allowing researchers to separate the unique, true intersectional effects that emerge from these combinations and move beyond simple additive models of disadvantage.⁷

The commitment to achieving health equity, the core mission of public health,⁷ meshes ideally with the social justice bent of these critical frameworks. Two specific methodologies, which emphasize antiracism and decolonial approaches, must be prioritized: (1) critical race theory and PHCRP and (2) Jotería Studies, Muxerista Studies, and transgender studies.

Critical race theory, a race equity methodology grounded in social justice, offers paradigms responsive to structural racism’s influence on health inequities.⁸ PHCRP, adapted for public health, guides researchers to directly investigate racism and structural determinants rather than relying on proxies.⁸ PHCRP also calls for centering in the margins, orienting projects from the perspectives of socially marginalized people, which is crucial for dismantling the deeply embedded racism in the field itself.

Research must intentionally incorporate the lived realities of queer and transgender Latine people, who are often rendered invisible or obscured by rigid gender and sexual norms.^9,10 Jotería Studies, a political project and scholarly field evolving vibrantly at the intersection of Latine, queer of color, and transgender studies, is concerned with the histories, identities, and practices of queer Latine people.⁹ It offers epistemologies rooted in unique standpoints such as Daniel Enrique Pérez’s concept of “mariposa consciousness,” which serves as a symbol of resistance and survival.¹⁰ Jotería Studies is explicitly rooted in resistance to heteronormativity, racism, sexism, and classism.¹⁰

Similarly, Muxerista Studies is a gender-expansive and trans-queer approach that honors multiple, intersecting identities and radical commitment to liberation and social transformation.¹¹ Engaging frameworks rooted in transgender studies is essential given the challenges faced by transgender Latine individuals, who face severe health care access limitations and increased HIV risk as a result of compounding factors such as transphobia and racism.⁴ Studies focusing on transgender Latina immigrants, for instance, highlight the need for health services sensitive to their multiply marginalized identities.⁴

A PATH TOWARD HEALTH EQUITY

By integrating these critical lenses, public health can shift toward gender-transformative interventions that challenge constraining masculine norms rather than merely reinforcing them.¹² Intersectional frameworks help researchers understand how factors such as perceived discrimination based on multiple identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, migration status) directly influence mental health outcomes, often leading to increased depressive or posttraumatic stress symptoms among Latino sexual minority men.⁶

Adopting these interdisciplinary approaches allows public health to stop pathologizing Latino masculinity and start considering the synergistic factors that influence health, including age, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and direct or vicariously experienced trauma.¹ This approach allows researchers to study Latine masculinities from the vantage point of historically oppressed populations, acknowledging their inherent strengths, tenacity, and resilience in the face of systemic oppression, which are key protective factors against negative health outcomes.^1,4,6,7

Just as a surveyor needs a comprehensive map that shows not only the main roads but also the hidden fault lines, valleys, and resource-rich waterways, public health research must move beyond the single, fixed lens of machismo and incorporate the detailed, multilayered maps provided by intersectionality, critical race, and queer and transgender studies. Only then can we truly understand the topography of Latino men’s health disparities and design interventions that lead to transformative change.