Masculinity after Trujillo begins with a reference to the 2012 presidential election in the Dominican Republic, when Hipólito Mejía, the former president, adopted the slogan “Llegó Papá,” translated as “Daddy's here.” Mejía's campaign littered the landscape with posters bearing that phrase, which Maja Horn uses to introduce her argument that notions of hypermasculinity left over from the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo (1930–1961) are now seen as traditional. The author, who teaches Spanish and Latin American cultures at Barnard College, asserts that Trujillo-style manhood permeates Dominican culture and politics, preventing the country from making progress toward equitable gender relations. “Papá” Mejía's claim to be a national father figure is a convenient example of the masculine milieu this study interrogates. As Horn writes, “This slogan largely overrode more usual political promises, evincing the power of the discourse of masculinity in Dominican politics” (p. 1). Mejía's paternalist pitch appears in the first paragraph,...
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