Marianismo
""Marianismo"" originally referred to the devotion to Mary (). The term was first used by political scientist Evelyn Stevens in her 1973 essay ""Marianismo": The Other Face of "Machismo"". It was in direct response to the male word "machismo" and was meant to explain the phenomenon in Latin America in which women were either "saints or whores". It is the supposed ideal of true femininity that women are supposed to live up to—i.e. being modest, virtuous, and sexually abstinent until marriage—and then being faithful and subordinate to their husbands. In essence, marianismo is the female counterpart to machismo, and as such, probably originated during the time of the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
Marianismo
When Spanish colonists brought Catholicism to what is now modern-day Mexico, a Native American man, who took the name Juan Diego, saw a vision of the "Most Holy Mother of God" on a mound in Tepeyac, north of what is now Mexico City. Before Christianity was introduced to the continent, Native Americans in the region believed the mound to be a sacred place to worship the goddess Tonantzin, or "Our Mother". The vision Diego saw was eventually deemed "Our Lady of Guadalupe" and patroness of Mexico by Pope Benedict XIV in 1756. Our Lady of Guadalupe quickly gained prestige in Latin America. Father Hidalgo lead rebels with the famous Grito de Dolores in 1810: "Viva Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, muera el mal gobierno, mueran loas gachupines!" (English: "Long live our Lady of Guadalupe, down with bad government, down with the spurred ones" (or Spanish Mexicans))