When I was choosing my two potential dissertation topics last month, I found myself struggling for a second choice. I was so set on my first choice that I couldn’t imagine dedicating so much time to a different project. Until I remembered an essay I’d written last year about a Nahua woman known as La Malinche, the daughter of an Aztec chief who has been regarded as either betrayer or betrayed for her role in the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire.

Some searching revealed that La Malinche is not the only woman in Latin American history and folklore who has been used to oppress women. You may have already heard of La Llorona – the weeping woman – as the subject of multiple horror films of varying quality; often conflated with Malinche, she is seen as a murderous mother who abandoned and neglected her children. Finally, we have La Virgen de Guadalupe, often held up as a contrast to the other two in a puta/virgen dichotomy – she is the model of how a woman should be and act.

Historically, these three female archetypes have been represented through a patriarchal lens to limit Chicana’s bodily and sexual agency. Recently, however, there has been a pushback by Chicana feminism to reclaim these figures, and a shift towards understanding them, not as traitors and victims, but as survivors.

Of course, as I’m sure you can already tell, there is so much to say about this topic that a short article like this can hardly touch on it. Nevertheless, though I will not be writing my dissertation about these women, it has made for some fascinating research, and I felt compelled to share it here.

Central to representations of La Malinche, La Llorona, and La Virgen is the concept of motherhood. La Malinche is ‘the sexual mother’, the mother of mestizo and of Mexico, a symbol of rape and conquest. La Llorona is ‘the murderous mother’, a mythic figure whose story serves as a warning to children. La Virgen is ‘the virgin mother’, the good counterpart to La Malinche, and the ‘perfect’ Mexican woman. In this space, I want to try and give a brief rundown of how these archetypes came about, and how Chicanas have begun to deconstruct and reinterpret them.

La Malinche – Betrayed or Betrayer?

Alternately known as Doña Marina or Malintzin, La Malinche was a real historical figure who has since been closely tied to Mexican folklore. As a young girl, she was one of twenty Nahua women who were given to the Spaniards as slaves, possibly with the help of her own family. She was intelligent and had a great gift for languages, which, once discovered, led to her acting as interpreter for Hernán Cortés. She would later become his mistress and had his child, Martín – allegedly the first mestizo.

Contemporary accounts by both Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Cortés himself indicate that Malinche’s role in the conquest was greater than that of a mere translator. According to Cortés, ‘After God, we owe this conquest of New Spain to Doña Marina’, and del Castillo always speaks of her with great respect. Furthermore, and crucially, indigenous accounts display a similar respect towards Malinche, referring to her with the honorific -tzin added to her name. It seems that Malinche bore little ill will towards her people and, in fact, attempted to help them, despite the fact that she had been subjected to enslavement and rape.

Reading Malinche’s history, I find it easy to be sympathetic towards her. Yet, Malinche’s legacy in Mexico is that of ‘la Chingada’ – the violated mother – or, as T. R. Fehrenbach has described her, ‘the ethnic traitress supreme’. Even today, the term malinchista is used to describe those who are seen as denying their cultural heritage, and it has also increasingly been used in reference to Chicana feminists, who encourage a different reading of La Malinche.

They want to view her, not as the passive victim who nevertheless helped to bring about the downfall of her own culture, but as a woman who adapted so that both she and her people could survive in one way or another. Evidence shows that Malinche’s talents for diplomacy saved lives; instead of placing the blame for Mexico’s conquest on her – thus creating a responsibility for women to be society’s perfect moral compasses – she should be praised for how she adapted and resisted when her life changed dramatically.

Chicanas have reclaimed La Malinche as one of them. She was a complex woman, caught between cultures and forced to choose, and she should not be judged for those choices. 

La Llorona – The Weeping Woman

The legend of La Llorona is told through the Hispanic world, often used as a tale to scare children into behaving. As is common with such stories, the narrative varies, but the general consensus is that she was a woman who drowned her two children in anger after discovering her rich husband was leaving her for another woman. She immediately regrets the act, but is unable to save her children, so then drowns herself, and her spirit is cursed to wander forever. 

The origins of La Llorona are likely pre-Hispanic, as she has been tied to the Cihuacōātl in Aztec mythology – a group of motherhood and fertility goddesses. However, the first published reference to her is in a 19th century sonnet by Manuel Carpio. Interestingly, the poem doesn’t contain infanticide, and is instead about a woman who was murdered by her husband.

The version of La Llorona’s story that is told depends on the message that the teller is trying to convey. As well as a warning for children, she has been used as a cautionary tale for poor women, telling them not to marry above their station; she has been a condemnation of female sexuality; a demonstration of the ‘bad’ mother who abandons her children in favour of a good time.

La Llorona is a tale built on a patriarchal logic, which Chicana feminists have begun to reject in recent years. Writers such as Ana Castillo and Sandra Cisneros refuse to pass on the story, instead choosing to sympathise with the dejadas (roughly, abandoned women) whose cuentos are, according to Cisneros, masked by the legend of La Llorona. 

La Virgen de Guadalupe – The Pure Woman

La Virgen today exists as a syncretic mix of mother goddesses from Aztec mythology and the Catholic Virgin Mary. Portrayed in opposition to La Malinche and malinchismo, La Virgen represented purity, used to enforce marianísmo – a model for the ideal woman based on humility and self-sacrifice.

She is the impossible standard that so many women all over the world today are expected to conform to. Particularly in Chicano culture, she is a mirror held up to Chicanas, a figure through which they should evaluate themselves and their behaviour. 

La Virgen – a mother, a virgin, submissive, dutiful – is the ‘perfect’ Mexican woman. This is a damaging archetype for women, which is why Chicana feminists have pushed to reclaim her as their own. Artists now often use her as a symbol of resistance and empowerment, tracing back to her Aztec roots; the goddesses she came from were worshipped as powerful and independent.

By making peace with the impossible standards, and by representing La Virgen as a human woman, Chicanas have come to understand her, thus removing the power the patriarchal version of her story has.

“La gente Chicana tiene tres madres. All three are mediators: Guadalupe, the virgin mother who has not abandoned us, la Chingada (Malinche), the raped mother who we have abandoned, and la Llorona, the mother who seeks her lost children and is a combination of the other two…In part, the true identity of all three has been subverted—Guadalupe to make us docile and enduring, la Chingada to make us ashamed of our Indian side, and la Llorona to make us long- suffering people”

Gloria Anzaldúa, Chicana feminist and writer, in ‘borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza’

Sources:

• The origin of La Llorona, La Malinche, and La Virgin de Guadalupe (nuestraverdad.com)
• Chicana feminism – Wikipedia
• Esquibel, Catrina Rueda, With Her Machete in Her Hand: Reading Chicana Lesbians, (Texas: University of Texas Press, 2006)
• Alarcón, Norma, ‘Traddutora, Traditora: A Paradigmatic Figure of Chicana Feminism’, Cultural Critique, 13, 1989, 57–87