I read Privilege at Play: Class, Race, Gender, and Golf in Mexico by Hugo Cerón-Anaya. This article was a full analysis on why golf remained unpopular among women and “low-class” individuals throughout the country.
As stated in the title they tackled the issues of class, race and gender in Mexican golf. I felt the author made some good points regarding some of the issues regarding golf in Mexico, mostly with class and race which he tied together. One example he mentioned was how the members of the golf club communicated with the workers. Some of the golfers used the informal tú to speak to workers while others used the more respectful usted. The workers always used more formal language. Cerón-Anaya also cited an example of locals denying the construction of golf courses in Mexico City among other cities throughout the country, likely because it wasn’t fair to the poorer communities.
At times in this article, I was caught shaking my head, because some of the points made from the author were questionable. It felt like he would use a point from quote to make a hasty generalization that may not be true for everyone. One example was when speaking about caimanismo and how “men get away with not having a well-defined handicap”. He went on to cite his interviewee, Ruth, who said something along the lines of ‘women follow the rules, men don’t’ and I didn’t feel like that was a fair way to back up his point. Outside of those occurrences that happened every so often, I felt that it was an interesting article.
