On the other side of the political situation that women fleeing Central America represent for the United States are the individual stories of the women and children who populate the prison in Dilley Texas. As a psychoanalytically oriented clinician, I was struck by stories I heard, one after the next, each reflecting the long-lasting effects of trauma that could hardly be explained or understood other than as outcomes of the culture of machismo. So often the rape, physical abuse, and murder of loved ones the women had endured had been acceptable to some degree at home, for long periods of time, …