La Llorona and La Malinche Are Chicana Daughters

LA LLORONA AND LA MALINCHE ARE CHICANA DAUGHTERS: HEALING MATRILINEAL TRAUMA BY TRANSFORMING “BAD” MEXICAN MOTHER ARCHETYPES by Diane Brinkman, B.A. A thesis submitted to the Graduate Council of Texas State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts with a Major in Literature December 2019 Committee members: Sara A. Ramírez, Chair Geneva Gano Beatriz Aldana Márquez COPYRIGHT by Diane Brinkman 2019 FAIR USE AND AUTHOR’S PERMISSION STATEMENT Fair Use This work is protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States (Public Law 94-553, section 107). Consistent with fair use as defined in the Copyright Laws, brief quotations from this material are allowed with proper acknowledgement. Use of this material for financial gain without the author’s express written permission is not allowed. Duplication Permission As the copyright holder of this work I, Diane Brinkman, refuse permission to copy in excess of the “Fair Use” exemption without my written permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis would not be possible without the guidance, encouragement, and enlightenment from so many others, both within and outside of the academic community. Through my studies in the field of Chicana feminism, and in subsequently broadening my understanding of what it means to heal and to be empowered, I am privileged to have met so many amazing woman scholars and writers, whose works and influences have inspired me deeply to continue the conversation. In particular, I would like to acknowledge and graciously thank my thesis advisor and committee chair Dr. Sara Ramírez, for helping me to articulate my ideas and encouraging me to adopt confidence and bravery in my writing; Dr. Geneva Gano, who has taught me to sharpen my critical eye and look closer in the works I study, especially those of Sandra Cisneros; Dr. Beatriz Aldana Márquez, whose help in directing me toward more sociological perspectives has equipped me with the understanding of machismo and family dynamics necessary for this study; Dr. Samuel Saldivar, who reminded me to expand my scope of how La Llorona influences an entire culture; and both ire’ne lara silva and Sandra Cisneros, authors whose works are vital to my analysis of La Llorona and La Malinche in the Chicana psyche, and both of whom I have had the honor of listening and speaking to about their works, which in turn has shaped how I write about them. iv Lastly, I thank my family for all their support. Especially my mother, Catalina Brinkman, whose help in translating several words and passages for this thesis has created an exchange of ideas and understanding between us. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………..…………………………………..…….. iv CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………...… 1 II. LA MALINCHE’S LEGACY: EARLY EFFORTS TO CHALLENGE THE HETEROSEXIST SCRIPT ………………………………………………… 21 III. FROM GHOSTS TO WOMEN: RESTORING LA LLORONA AND LA MALINCHE ……………………………………………………………….. 45 IV. PATRONESSES OF ACTIVISM AND CONVEYORS OF TRUTH …….. 77 V. CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………… 101 BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………..………………………………………….………... 109 vi I. INTRODUCTION Hijas de Cuauhtémoc1 son las flores de nuestra nación, dieron la luz a nuestra gente Azteca, fueron sacrificadas al Dios Huitzilopochtli, fueron violadas por los españoles y dieron luz a nuestra gente mestiza. Hijas de las Adelitas de la revolución, Luchadoras por la libertad. Les damos gracias a ustedes, nuestras madres, que nos han dado el sagrado privilegio de ser también, Hijas de Cuauhtémoc, luchadoras por la libertad no solo para nuestra Raza, pero libertad para nosotras, las Hijas de Cuauhtémoc que somos las reinas y madres de nuestra nación. —Leticia Hernández, 1971 1 English Translation: Daughters of Cuauhtémoc / are the flowers of our nation, / shed light on our Aztec people, / were sacrificed to the God Huitzilopochtli, / were violated by the Spaniards and / gave birth to our mestiza race. / Daughters of the Adelitas of the revolution, / Fighters for freedom. / We give you thanks, our mothers, / who have given us the sacred privilege / to be, too, Daughters of Cuauhtémoc, / fighters for freedom not just / for la Raza, but freedom for / us, the Daughters of Cuauhtémoc, who / are the queens and mothers of our nation. (My translation, edited by Catalina Brinkman). 1 “We give you thanks, our mothers,/ who have given us the sacred privilege/ to be, too, Daughters of Cuauhtémoc,/ fighters for freedom not just/ for la Raza, but freedom for/ us, the Daughters of Cuauhtémoc, who/ are the queens and mothers of our nation” Leticia Hernández proclaims in her poem, “Hijas de Cuauhtémoc,” evoking an empowerment of two separate kinds of motherhood: physical motherhood and symbolic motherhood (Hernández, my translation). Motherhood in Mexican/Chicanx culture has long occupied a complex position in gender and familial dynamics, in large part due to how motherhood and womanhood are conflated as one—and the primary—dimension of a Mexicana/Chicana experience. Good daughters become good mothers. To resist conformity, to resist putting the community before the individual and rebel against sexist standards, is to risk being labeled “bad,” the mujer mala or, at times considered worse, being viewed as rejecting Mexican-ness itself and becoming una “vendida” or “malinchista.” Such were the terms flung at early Chicana feminists like Hernández, comparing them to the figure of La Malinche for supposedly also betraying their community by branching off from the larger Chicano nationalist movement—the same movement that painted on its banners a different symbolic mother as its holy Catholic patroness/indigenous mestiza goddess figure: la Virgen de Guadalupe. This “good mother/bad mother” dichotomy between la Virgen and La Malinche is not new but is in some ways specific to the cultural climate of the Chicano Movement, reflecting traditional values that have long existed and have been used by a patriarchal society to scrutinize and control women’s behavior. La Malinche is immortalized in Mexican history with the title “La Chingada” as the national scapegoat for her part as 2 Cortés’s translator and mistress during the conquest of Mexico, the emphasis on her initial role as Cortés’s concubine only further incriminating her through a conservative Catholic lens. La Virgen, through this same lens, is raised on an untouchable pedestal as the female ideal for her status as both virgin and mother, muted through the prevalence of her physical image in Mexican culture and ultimately obedient to male authority, the Christian God. Additionally, the ghostly figure of La Llorona comes between La Malinche and la Virgen to create the triad of Mexican maternal figures known as las tres madres. Like La Malinche, La Llorona is condemned as a “bad mother,” for her infanticide and the selfish motivations that drive her murders in the conventional versions of the tale (needing to rid herself of her children before she can be with her lover). And like la Virgen, she also possesses antecedents in the form of Mexica goddesses— Coatlicue and Coatlalopeuh for la Virgen, Cihuacoatl and the deified spirits called Cihuateteo for La Llorona. All three foremothers are influential figures in the Chicana psyche and have been utilized by the Mexican patriarchy to control women with shame, demanding, “Do not be unchaste or impure, do not be selfish or forget your culture or community.” In questioning the ways these female figures have been frozen into one- dimensional icons, and how the iconography of these mothers has been used to shape Chicanx societal attitudes on how women and mothers should act, early Chicana feminists began the process of reclaiming las tres madres—and in doing so, reclaiming Mexicana/Chicana motherhood from patriarchal values. The purpose of my study is to analyze literary works by Chicana feminists who address the “bad” mothers 3 specifically—La Llorona and La Malinche—and locate where the loss of agency for these figures in these narratives may be rectified or restored. Although la Virgen has also been used as symbol to control women’s sexualities and identities over time, my reason for not extensively analyzing media about la Virgen or Guadalupana figures is that unlike the other two foremothers in the tres madres triad she is not associated with predominantly negative attributes like La Llorona or La Malinche. Furthermore, my focus is on the separation or fracture between mother and child, which occurs in both La Llorona’s and La Malinche’s respective narratives, and not in the traditional depiction of la Virgen de Guadalupe. This severance between mother and child—more literally in the case of La Llorona, more symbolically with La Malinche—serves as another subject of reclamation, particularly through the daughter figure. Chicana daughters of the movement, like Hernández, are pioneers of a new resistance ideology for Chicanas that includes reclaiming the women deemed “bad” by cultural standards into a Chicana sisterhood. For the purpose of this thesis, “daughterhood” can mean the literal biological concept (as all women are someone’s daughter) but we may also apply a figurative meaning. Just as with the symbolic nature of a “sisterhood” of Chicanas which unites them through similar experiences of trauma and even a shared decolonial awareness, for Chicanas to identify as the daughter figure rather than a maternal one—as Mexican women and Chicanas are often pressured to—can be a form of patriarchal rebellion, if only to demand for herself personhood separate from the

Load more