Foundational Motherhood: Malinche/Guadalupe in Contemporary Mexican and Chicana/Chicano Culture
Rolando J. Romero
"Malinche Global. La Malinche has figured prominently in discussions of Latin American, Mexican, and Chicano identity. Appearing first in the sixteenth-century chronicles of conquest, she reappeared, according to Chicana critic Norma Alarcon, during the nineteenth century as Latin American Iintellectuals attempted to explain why a handful of soldiers were able to conquer the vast Aztec and Inca empires. Used as a scapegoat, the Criollo elite made La Malinche responsible for the conquest of the Americas..." [Excerpt from Feminism, Nation and Myth]
Wisconsin Public Television"Indigenous Always is a fascinating and often beautiful cultural and historical journey" Chicago Tribune 2000 (3.1 ARB)Dan Banda's Indigenous Always: The Legend of La Malinche and the Conquest of Mexico, triggered this project. In order to film the documentary, the Latina/Latino Studies Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, in conjunction with the College of Letters and Sciences and the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, held a conference designed to bring experts on La Malinche together in one setting. The documentary aired nationally on PBS. Dan Banda's documentary won Best Documentary and Best Videography in the 2001 National Communicator Awards. The documentary received five Emmy nominations for artistic achievement from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Midwest Chapter. Feminism, Nation and Myth explores the scholarship of La Malinche, the indigenous woman who is said to have led Cortés and his troops to the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán . The figure of La Malinche has generated intense debate among literature and cultural studies scholars. Drawing from the humanities and the social sciences, feminist studies, queer studies, Chicana/o studies, and Latina/o studies, critics and theorists in the volume analyze the interaction and interdependence of race, class, and gender when studying this controversial figure. Studies of La Malinche demand that scholars disassemble and reconstruct concepts of nation, community, agency, subjectivity, and social activism. Edited by Rolando J. Romero, teacher of U.S. Latina/Latino and Mexican literatures at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the founding director of the Latina/Latino Studies Program; and Amanda Nolacea Harris, scholar, writer and former managing editor of Discourse, Feminism, Nation and Myth originated in the 1999 "U.S. Latina/Latino Perspectives on la Malinche" conference that brought together scholars from across the nation. Filmmaker Dan Banda interviewed many of the presenters for his documentary, Indigenous Always: The Legend of La Malinche and the Conquest of Mexico . Contributors include such noteworthy scholars as Alfred Arteaga, Antonia I. Castaneda, Debra A. Castillo, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Deena J. Gonzalez, Maria Herrera Sobek, Guisela Latorre, Luis Leal, Sandra Messinger Cypess, Franco Mondini-Ruiz, Amanda Nolacea Harris, Rolando J. Romero, Tere Romo and filmmaker Dan Banda. The academic essays themselves are complemented by the creative work of Alicia Gaspar de Alba and Jose Emilio Pacheco, both of whom evoke the figure of La Malinche in their work. The volume includes the following essays: - La Malinche and Post-Movement Feminism
- Post Scriptum and Self-Critique
- Malinchista, A Myth Revised
- Malinche Triangulated, Historically Speaking
- ‘Mother’ Malinche and Allegories of Gender, Ethnicity and National Identity in Mexico
- Foundational Motherhood: Malinche/Guadalupe in Contemporary Mexican and Chicana/Chicano Culture
- Malinche's Revenge
- Aesthetics of Sex and Race
- Coagulated Words: Gaspar de Alba's Malinche
- Malinche, Calafia y Toypurina: Of Myths, Monsters and Embodied History
- Agustín Victor Casasola's Soldaderas: Malinchismo and the Chicana/o Artist
- In Search of la Malinche: Pictorial Representations of a Mytho-Historical Figure
- The Malinche-Llorona Dichotomy: The Evolution of a Myth
- La Malinche as Metaphor
- Malinche Makeover: One Gay Latino's Perspective
- Living in Tongues
The examination of the figure of La Malinche forces us to address sexism and racism simultaneously thus making us look beyond denouncing the dominant culture and to see how we have constructed ourselves. – Amanda Nolacea Harris La Malinche is a kind of monster, a whorish traitoress, betrayer of the Aztecs – she sleeps with the enemy – and she is us. Feminism, Nation and Myth explores these ideas and what they mean in the Mexican oral tradition and about colonial patterns. [SirReadALot.org]
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