Daddy Issues and Amar a Muerte

This blog post is gonna be a spoiler alert if you are watching Amar a Muerte:

Last week (or the week before that), Dr. Acosta Alzuru talked about machismo and marianismo in Latin America. She commented about how men are not expected to be as involved in the family as the women. She talked about how the pillar of the family is the mom, if the dad leaves, everything is going to be fine because everything revolves around the mom. This is definitely true, most of my Hispanic friends at UGA and I talk about this a lot, sharing our experiences growing up and our 'daddy issues'.

The novela I picked was Amar a Muerte and something that caught my attention the most was the ending. The main plot of the novela is that these two characters were given a second chance in life. Leon thinks that he came back to get revenge on the people that killed him and maybe a second chance at love, but no, he came back for a second chance at being a better father. Leon, in his first life, was a very successful businessman and he had three kids. His kids grew up without a mother, and Leon always focused on his work because he believed that providing a lot of money and leaving a legacy was the definition of being a good father. The whole telenovela has many subplots and lots of love, but in the last episode, when you think you are going to end happily ever after love story, the female protagonist is killed. Then we see that the real message for Leon's reincarnation is to be a better father.
This was me, a hopeless romantic, not getting her romantic happy ever after:

But the more I thought about it, the more I liked that the novela was addressing this issue. In my mental health for Latinx Immigrants class last semester, we talked a lot about machismo and parental figures. How men are taught that showing their emotions is perceived as weak, how they are expected to provide well for the family, all these stereotypes that at the end do us no good. You can see all these stereotypes in Leon, he used to be a dad that wasn't very expressive with his kids, and he focused on work to give them the best life possible. He focused a lot on creating a legacy that they could follow rather than listening to what they wanted, and this messed them up a little bit rather than helping them.  When he came back to life in Chino's body, he got a chance to get to know his kids better without them knowing he was their father. He got to see what he needed to do for him to be a better father for his children.

I actually see a lot of Leon in my dad. He is a businessman in Venezuela and not a very sentimental man. He has given me an amazing life and everything I've ever asked for, but he is not very affectionate and that affected me a lot growing up. I have many half-siblings, and there are some of them that resent my dad a lot because of his lack of affection and it shows. They resent him just like Leon's older daughter resented him. But something I've gotten to understand in the past years, is that they are different love languages, words of affirmations and touch are not my dad's and that's ok... they are not mine either. My dad is the way he is because he grew up in the lower class and he always saw his dad trying to provide to his family. He grew up lacking many things, and he shows us his love by giving us everything he didn't get to have. I've talked to my dad about this a lot, and I am very lucky to have him as my dad... no second chance needed. But these stereotypes need to be broken and I am glad that this telenovela addressed that.