Marianismo
Evelyn Stevens' essay was very significant to this area of study. However, since its publication, her argument has been debated by other researchers and critics. Although her argument addresses marianismo in Latin America at large, many of the sources she uses mainly focus on Mexican culture, thus severely limiting her frame of reference. Also, she is criticized for implying that, despite other differences among various socioeconomic classes, the ideal woman's characteristics are ultimately the same across social classes. Her critics claim Stevens ignores socioeconomic factors, saying "her description of women as altruistic, selfless, passive, [and] morally pure" is inadequate. There have been some responses in the literature to the concept of marianismo that assert that its model of/for women's behavior is very class-based. In other words, the idea that men do all the hard work, while women remain idle, on a pedestal, is a life that rarely exists, particularly for the peasant, poor and working class women that make up the majority of Latin America women. As Gil and Vazquez remind us, "most of her [Stevens's] data came from middle class Mexican women".
Ideological diversionism
After Raul Castro's speech in 1972, many State intellectuals conceptualized and redefined the term of ideological diversionism as a concept to put into use in the "struggle" against imperialist heterodox social norms. In 1974, one of Cuba most important Marxist cultural critics, Jose Antonio Portuondo, delivered the lecture "Martí y el Diversionismo Ideologico", where he extended Castro's theoretical argument by offering a national genealogy of the concept, tracing it to the history of patriot and national independence martyr José Martí [3]. According to Portuondo, it was Jose Marti, a nationalist and exiled Cuban, well before Raul Castro, who first attacked "ideological diversionism" as a way to unmask those who fought against independence and in favor of the division within nationalist forces of the nation. In Portuondo's reading, Martí becomes the symbolic figure in which ideological diversionism is neutralized and contained, since there is never a possibility to diverge from what is in the interest of the Nation.