The article “Missing Beauty Queen, Sister, Found Dead in Honduras” found on LatinDispatch, talks about the tragic deaths of Miss Honduras María José Alvarado and her sister Sofía. Both women were found in a riverbank grave on November 19, 2014 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras after they went missing on November 13. The police say they were killed the day they went missing, and arrested Sofía’s boyfriend Plutarco Ruiz who they considered to be the main suspect. An accomplice, Aris Maldonado, was also arrested. The police believed that the murders occurred after the sisters attended Ruiz’s birthday party, where he got jealous since Sofía had been dancing with someone else. Ruiz shot Sofía after they got into an argument, and then shot María after she tried to get away. Former presidential candidate Salvador Nasrallah said that these murders were not a crime of passion but rather machismo. These murders …show more content…
The reading defines machismo as being ideals and practices that determine a man’s masculinity. The ideal man needs to be macho, and as the reading says, “he exercises unquestioned authority, especially over women” (p. 7), he needs to be fearless and dominant. Like Nasrallah said in the article, the two women being murdered is machismo. The reading also says, “Machismo is also often responsible for domestic violence against women…” (p. 7), men needing to prove their masculinity and dominance over women leads to abuse. In the article, Ruiz is believed to have shot his girlfriend Sofía in order to show dominance since she was dancing with another man. Machismo beliefs want women to be submissive, since the ideal woman is humble and self-sacrificing. The article mentions that the epidemic of femicide brought up in the article; has increased by 263% between the years of 2005 and 2013. Machismo is also the cause of this since men show their dominance through targeting women and