The dictatorship of machismo: male homosociality and the traffic in women in Mario Vargas Llosa's the feast of the goat

Abstract

This article explores the connections between machismo and dictatorship through Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Feast of the Goat, which depicts male homosociality and the traffic in women as two central components of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic (1930-1961). Beginning with a review of the key literature on male homosocial relations, which highlights the general connections between male homosociality and the traffic in women, the paper continues with a more specific discussion of the traffic in women in conflict situations and totalitarian states, where they become particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse and oppression. So as to illustrate women’s special vulnerability to sexual traffickin under militarization and dictatorships, the article goes on to analyze Vargas Llosa’s novel.