Warning: This story contains offensive language
Ten years ago, Luis Castilleja was a free-wheeling creative seeking his fortune as an actor in Hollywood, enjoying the liberal Los Angeles lifestyle. Now he's better known as El Temach, Latin America's biggest manosphere influencer, whose misogynistic and hyper-masculine content has netted him more than 11 million social media followers. His sister Alex says the transformation is shocking, and they no longer speak. "I don't like saying El Temach because for me he's a completely different person. So I'm sister with the human that he was," she says.
Alex, a design engineer from Mexico, says her brother's metamorphosis shows how even the most unlikely people can be tempted into making manosphere content once they realize the money and fame to be made. The impact of Western influencers such as Andrew Tate has been well documented, but a BBC World Service investigation scrutinized the content and followings of 15 other influencers based in South and East Asia, Latin America, and Africa, finding that their followings have tripled on average in the past three years. These regions have seen relatively recent gains in gender equality, and experts say this environment is fueling men's hunger for manosphere content.
Alongside El Temach, the investigation focused on Andrew Kibe - a household name in Kenya who promotes male self-empowerment and misogyny on social media. Both have repeatedly attacked single mothers and regularly accuse women of being "gold diggers" who manipulate men. Both influencers, the BBC found, are earning large sums from their platforms. El Temach and Kibe strongly deny their content is misogynistic, with Kibe even disputing the existence of the concept in an interview with the BBC.
To gauge the impact, the BBC analyzed the social media activity of two Gen Z followers - one in Kenya and one in Mexico - over several years. Mexican Julián first started using Instagram at 16, liking content about cars, fitness, and self-development. His history shows he first liked a video from El Temach a few months later after it appeared in his recommended feeds. Now 19, he has liked more than 3,000 videos from dozens of manosphere creators. Julián told the BBC he felt "feminism has made men's problems invisible."
That sentiment is a key tenet of El Temach's messaging, but he didn't always hold these views, according to Alex. He grew up wanting to be a performer, studied theater in Mexico City, and moved to LA to pursue acting. But he returned home a couple of years later after a breakup and failure to book regular work. These setbacks motivated him to help other young men navigate difficult experiences, and he began in 2020 to post content focused on male self-development. "I think at the beginning it was very noble how he wanted to help other men to feel worthy and valuable," Alex says. But this quickly "twisted" into something else: "He got this Messiah complex, like he's the one that has to fix [men's issues]."
She says he soon began to blame women for the difficulties his male followers were navigating, and she's not sure how far her brother actually believes the misogyny he espouses - and how much is just for social media likes and views. "He believes some things - and others, he's just experimenting what works best with the algorithm." Her brother admitted he was simply copying Andrew Tate, says Alex: "Tate was super big at that time, [and] since he saw it worked he just started pushing [his argument] further and further." She says her brother's content soon became mirrored in his behavior toward her: "Anything I would express… was taken like a feminist belief… an affront to his persona."
The BBC asked El Temach to take part in their documentary. He initially agreed, inviting the team to film his world tour starting in the US, but days before the flight, he went live on YouTube telling followers he had no intention of participating: "BBC and Miss Jacqui from the BBC, we don't need your permission to be men. Make your documentary, don't involve me or my bros. [Expletive] the BBC."
The BBC nevertheless went to his show in Las Vegas, which mixed self-improvement advice with sexist rhetoric, including advising fans to avoid "sluts" because they will never change, and that single mothers are "not a good catch" because their status reflects poor life decisions and character flaws. When the BBC tried to confront him about these statements, his security blocked the way.
El Temach's earnings from content, including these shows, are sizeable. According to the BBC's analysis, from April 2025-26, El Temach made an estimated $1.5m (£1.1m) from social media views alone. He also made $200,000-300,000 (£149,000-£223,211) from YouTube "Super Chats" - where fans pay to boost comments during livestreams, often asking for relationship advice - as well as $800 (£595) per person for small-group workshops, plus money from merchandise and regular stage shows. His team told the BBC they consider it "highly irresponsible to publish the estimated income of El Temach." Kibe also monetizes his popularity, selling merchandise and even a crypto coin. He told the BBC: "If anybody is really my fan, the only thing I tell them is make sure you send me M-Pesa [money via a Kenyan app]."
One group of men outside El Temach's Las Vegas show told the BBC they appreciate his content because he encourages discipline, inspires self-confidence, and acknowledges their problems. "He focuses a lot on men as having been dismissed by society, and [the narrative that] women have, you know, been the stars of the show," says Dr. Ali Siles, gender and masculinities researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. "He has this message of: 'You do matter, believe in yourself.'" Fan Julián echoes this: "The teaching that impacted me the most was about feeling confident." Kenyan university student Ryan, who follows Andrew Kibe, says as a young man raised by a single mother, he views the influencer as a surrogate father figure. Using analytical tools from the University of Queensland, the BBC found Ryan had watched Kibe's TikTok videos - whose hashtag has attracted more than 500 million views - after searching for terms like "success," "self-improvement," and "masculinity tips with no father."
But Siles says manosphere content tends to come "at the expense of" women and other gender identities: "It's very harmful to women's rights and development, because it's also trying to put them back in places a lot of them have been trying to get out of, with limited choices, with very stereotypical roles." Julián's social media history shows how such messaging soon becomes mirrored by followers. When Julián broke up with a girlfriend in late 2023, his interactions with manosphere content spiked, and he began referring to women as "sluts" in online comments and praising subservience. "If you're a feminine and submissive woman, then perfect," he wrote in one post. Julián says he regrets the tone of his past Instagram comments but stands by their content.
Many of Julián's generation believe feminism has come at the cost of men's rights, according to a recent global survey of 23,000 men and women by King's College London. More than half of Gen Z men - 57% - agreed with the statement: "We have gone so far in promoting women's equality that we are discriminating against men." Manosphere influencers are tapping into this belief, says Awino Okech at SOAS in London: "It's this gender equality thing that is leading to boys underperforming… It's gender equality that is leading to mental problems for men and boys."
These misleading narratives can have real-world impact. Fernanda, a doctor from Mexico City, says her ex-partner, also a doctor, used El Temach's messaging to justify his controlling behavior. On the day they split up, she says he locked her in a room and forced her to watch El Temach's videos for four hours: "He kept saying: 'See? I'm not doing anything wrong… You're the one who's wrong.'" She told the BBC the situation escalated to the point where he threatened to kill her: "His eyes were empty, he was acting purely on impulse. In that moment, I was really very afraid of what might happen to me." Though she doesn't blame El Temach directly, Fernanda believes this type of content affects real-world relationships: "I think [my former partner] was already a sexist who was hiding it. But El Temach influenced him to no longer feel bad about it."
Alex, El Temach's sister, thinks her brother is in denial about the negative impact of his content: "I think he knows what he's doing on some level. I think that he sees and realizes that if he ever owns up to what he did, it'll destroy him." She feels he has drifted from the path he was destined to follow "into this weird dystopic hell and he's just this... violence robot." The BBC asked El Temach to respond to allegations that he promotes misogynistic content. His team responded that they "categorically rejected the allegations and that they were unfounded and taken out of context." Kibe, when challenged, denied the term applied to him and said: "No man hates a woman. We love you - we are like gods to you, worship us."