Machismo IV: Why do men learn to dance tango from each other in some cultures but not others?

Rural workers, Argentina: Alejandro Witcomb (1835-1905), via Wikimedia Commons

In pictures like this, of gauchos [Argentinian cattle herders], payadores¹ and rural workers there is often a guy with a guitar.  Music was part of the working rural lifestyle in Argentina in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

 You can hear on the Practimilonguero videos, testimony from Argentinian men who learned to dance from other men. So why didn't Argentinian guys, within living memory, have a problem learning that way, but guys from some cultures today (Punjabi, Levantine), where there is still similar male dominance and machismo, do? 

Argentinian culture is more tactile than ours.  Men kiss and hug each other, as in Italy but this is also true in Arab cultures. Social learning, learning from each other was more probably common before learning became more professionalised and commercialised. Now, with less tight-knit communities classes with strangers, run by strangers have  appeared. In a society harbouring, valuing, machismo, men were unlikely to learn to dance from women, although there are stories of men in the early days of tango paying to dance with women.  But learning from men in the barrio was the main option and the desire to dance with and embrace women was the spur. 

These elements might explain why men in the culture where tango evolved, danced with other men, but not why men from the Levant do not do so. The religion is different, but someone  irreligious, who had had a  religious upbringing defined by traditional male role models had said that of course one is shaped by that.  I was referring to someone from the Levant in the last sentence but the same sentence could refer to an Argentinian from the time tango was born. Catholicism there was the norm.

Argentina had displaced populations of economic migrants, mostly men, from Europe.   In a population where women were in the minority, to stand a chance of dancing with them, how else were men to learn but with their friends and compañeros. Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan today host about 5 million displaced Syrians, with Syrians making up about 22% of Lebanon's population but the circumstances are very different. 

Argentina already had an established gaucho culture, where the activities of a cattle herding and horsemanship, were considered masculine and that culture was associated with chacarera, milonga and zamba. 

In Argentina, some combination of these elements, the values of compadrismo together with the proud loneliness and desire for companionship that Geraldo spoke of within the immigrant life trumped any qualms, religious or otherwise that men may have had and and led them to dance together and to learn from each other.  

The first entry on Machismo is here

¹The payada, is improvised verses sung to the accompaniment of a guitar. The verses are often in the form of a competition between two or more payadores.