ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the representation of Carlos Vives as, potentially, an exemplar of feminist masculinity in Angeles Mastretta’s best-selling novel Arrancame la vida. Arrancame la vida, set largely in Puebla and Mexico City in the 1930s and 1940s, tells the story of Catalina Guzman’s marriage to General Andres Ascencio and follows her experiences, including her affair with symphony orchestra conductor Carlos Vives, from the moment they meet to the moment they are separated by his death. The positive patriarchal power of Carlos, creative and lovingly sexual, stands alongside the power of Catalina’s father, which in the early chapters describing her childhood finds expressions in practices that are supportive and intimately playful. Emasculation is typically associated with women who overpower men, but in Arrancame la vida Andres ultimately emasculates Carlos and reasserts his status as the hegemonic male in national politics and in his personal life.
