Introduction

27th of April, 2007

After centuries as a scapegoat, in the 1970s la Malinche has

Essay for SO453 - Gender and Post-Colonial Theory

found a new political belonging in the Movimiento de las Chicanas,

Candidate Number - 32061

the new voice of La Raza that speaks out, (Vidal, 1971) questioning
the political line of the Movimiento Chicano (Moya, 1997). The
central point of the political discussion opened by the Chicanas
concerns the space for the political demands of emancipation related

La Malinche: A symbol of emancipation for

contemporary chicanas?

to gender discrimination, which is inexistent in the discourse and in

the practices of the Chicano Movement: Ive been told that the
Chicanas struggle is not the same as the white womens struggle.
Ive been told that the problems are different and that the
Chicanas energies are needed in the barrio and that being feminist
and fighting for our rights as women and as human beings is antiChicano and anti-male (Vidal, 1971:12). Mirta Vidal records these
words by Elma Barrera in May 1971 in Houston where more than
600 Chicanas met to discuss a response to the Plan Atzlan (1969),
formal pillar of the Chicanos Movement.
La Malinche was blamed by the Mexican nationalist

movement for the role she had as translator and concubine of Corts

that La Malinche conveys. These ambivalences have been more and

in the destruction of the pre-Columbian society. She was condemned

more complex to manage in the context of North America where the

in the name of La Raza Mestiza and her name came to mean traitor

Chicanas took back the spectre of La Malinche as a discursive

and violated mother of the Mexican Pueblo (Paz, 1985; Tafolla,

weapon to reclaim autonomy from their complex political position

1978). Nonetheless, her ambivalence and her stigmas of shame have

as migrants, coloured and women.

permitted her name to survive the silence of official history, passing

from mouth to mouth in the popular stories. Today Malinche is
still a vernacular word: it is the name that the drunks sing in the
cantinas, it is the insult that triggers quarrels in the streets, it is the
blame against every anonymous women in the widespread gender
violence in Mexican domestic spaces. Malinche, Chingada, whore,
raped, screwed, corrupted, traitor (Tafolla, 1978, Nevarez 2004).
In the 1970s the Chicanas released La Malinche from her

In order to deepen the analysis of the functional use of la

Malinche by the Chicanas feministas, it will be necessary to face
some questions: what is the ulterior space opened by the crisis
between Chicanos and Chicanas? What is the concrete tactical use of
la Malinche to inhabit this space? Which are the productive
contradictions of this figure?
Three names for one body

traditional definition as scapegoat and she became a symbolic body,

Malintzin and Doa Marina: two names that meet each other in 1519

a root paradigm (Cypress, 1992), a feminist prototype (Candelaria

during the Conquista of Mesoamerica ruled by Herman Corts.

1980): a collective name from where the Chicanas took back their

While moving from Yucatan towards Teotihuacn, the Spaniards

history and spoke out.

faced several populations: some were the allies, while others were

This essay will try to investigate the use of La Malinche by the

Chicanas. In order to do this, one needs to track the evolution of La
Malinche as a literary and historical figure through the centuries, an
evolution that constitutes and shapes the contradictions and symbols

the subjected or the enemies of Moctezuma, the Aztec emperor who

fell in June 1520 defeated by the cruel determination of the
Conquistadores. Malintzin and Doa Marina represent the two faces
of the clash between these cultures, the violent conquest of
Mesoamerica, but the two names belong to the same woman.

Malintzin is the name evoked in the History of Moctezuma. It

both Moctezuma and Corts enact their power. The experience of

is the name of the first daughter of a cacique family of

'Marina' and 'Malintzin' is an example of how the traditional

Coatzacoalcos, in the South of contemporary Mexico, sold by her

feminine position has been one of the main battle fields of the

mother at the age of nine in order to preserve the inherency of her

Conquista: the female subject conceived as an object to dominate,

half-brother (Cypress, 1992). Malintzin travelled as a slave through

excluded from any public space of power and from the sphere of

the different lands of Mesoamerica, learning Nauhatl, the lingua

production, confined in the domestic and in the social reproduction

franca of the complex Aztec empire. In March 1519 Tabascans gave

(Taylor, 2006).

her to Cortes, together with other nineteen women, as a gift to

achieve an armistice with the Conquistadores (Diaz, 1963: 85
[1580]). After this last transaction, Malintzin was not only forced to
abandon her people, but also to lose her name: in the History of
Corts she was baptized with the name of Marina, to inscribe her
into the words and rituals of the Conquista (Candelaria 1980, Diaz
1963).

The same body reclaims a third name, a name that resists the
objectification imposed on her by this History: La Malinche, the
tongue of the Spaniard (Candelaria, 1980). By breaking with the
official tradition, the character of La Malinche reclaims another
history. As a translator and stratega for Corts, she played a central
role in the Conquista, explaining to the Spaniards the division
among the Mesoamerican peoples, dealing with, as well as for, the

The names of Malintzin and Marina are written on the same

indigenous peoples during the wars and being the principal

symbolic body. The first is the name of an object of exchange, sold

interpreter of Corts during the negotiations with Moctezuma in

to preserve the patriarchal order of familial power. The second is the

Teotihuacn in November 1519. And she was the mother of the first

name for a slave, imposed to affirm the irrevocable colonial

Mestizo: Martin Corts. (Mirand and Enriquez, 1981).

domination of the pre-Columbian cultures. (Harris 2004). But

'Malintzin' and 'Marina' also sketch an ambiguous continuity
between Moctezuma and Hernn Corts: her double body is one

Inks: the History that shifts

territory - materially disputed but conceptually shared - on which

The

transformation

of

Malinches

role

in

the

historical

characteristic of the narrative form used to convey the incredible and

representation makes explicit the complexity of this character and

mysterious 'discovery' of the new World. This - initially positive -

the different tactical uses she has been subjected to through the

historical portrayal does not last for long. In Alvas chronicles

centuries.

(Candelaria, 1980), written a generation after the military campaign

on Mexico, La Malinche rapidly becomes a background figure in the

La Malinche in the History of the Conquistadores

epic history of the Conquistadores. As Candelaria proposes Alva

The first time that la Malinche appears is in the first pages of Diaz

was perhaps incapable of adjusting to the anomaly of a females

chronicle of la Conquista. Before speaking about the great

crucial role in molding the otherwise maleshaped events [of la

Moctezuma () I should like to give an account of Doa Marina,

Conquista](1980:5). Through time, the face and the name of Doa

who had been a great lady and a Cacique over towns and vassals

Marina do disappear from the history of la Conquista, where there is

since her childhood. () Doa Marina was a person of great

no longer room for the narration, the exploration and the negotiation

importance and was obeyed without question by al the Indians of

that the Malinche was performing. It is Alva that writes over the

New Spain. () I have made a point of telling this story because

political and military role of La Malinche and shifts her figure to

without Doa Marina we could not have understood the language of

that of new preacher for the Catholic Church: Marina, the tongue,

New Spain and Mexico(Diaz 1963: 86-87). As Somonte outlines

() was very important in the conversion of the natives and the

Doa Marina did not limit herself to being an interpreter only, but

promulgation of our blessed Catholic Faith (Alva in Candelaria,

rather a collaborator involved in speaking and discussing with the

1980:5)

caciques: and with her brilliant mind, persuasion and dialogue were
facilitated [for the Spaniards] (Somonte quoted and translated in
Candelaria 1980:3)

The discussion of La Malinche as both a vehicle for dialogue and a

translator between different cultures is here discarded, deemed
counter-productive to the normalizing project of colonial domination

The symbolic alliance between La Maliche's sensual beauty,

that emerges in the XVII century. This erasure is consistent with a

tactical wisdom and Mayan aristocracy in these first chronicles, is

significant shift - from military appropriation to economic

valorisation - that occurred between the XVII and XVIII centuries,

Mexican nation: her body not only represents the subjugation of the

when the project of New Spain as a productive colony of the

Indigenous people, but also the betrayal of the Mother-as-traitor for

Spanish Empire arose from the campaigns of discovery and

los hiojs de la chingada (Paz, 1985). The Mestizo as original

conquest. Blurring the border between the Savage Indian and the

identity becomes entangled in the violence of the Conquista, in

Catholic Spaniard, the symbolic figure of La Malinche is

which racial purity is both an aspiration and an impossibility.

ambiguous and dangerous, posing a threat to the disciplinary

apparatus of colonial governance. Her face fades away and the
Virgen de Guadalupe appears as the new symbolic mother and
protector. Guadalupe - as Paz (1985:73) highlights - is pure
receptivity (): she consoles, quiets, dries tears, calms passions.
The Virgin articulated the complex re-composition of preColombian credence and rituals inside the governance system of the
Catholic Church: loyalty, virginity and devotion to The God and The
King substituted the sensuality, the ambivalence and the mystery of
La Malinche (Taylor, 2006).

This is one of the reasons why, in the XIX century several

authors tried to produce a parallel history, stigmatizing the
Malinchian behaviour and constituting a mythical, lost history to
which the birth of Mexican pueblo (Harris, 2006, Nevarez 2004)
might refer: Xicontencatl, published anonymously in 1826, and Los
martires de Anahuac, 1870, by Eligio Ancona are particularly
relevant to illustrate this point (Nevarez 2004).
In both of these texts the attempt is to produce a mythopoeisis
of the Mestizo origins. In Xicontencatl, Teutila the main character,
who represents la Malinche, is a slave sold to Corts: she embodies

La Malinche in Mexican History

the Savage who has a natural tendency toward Truth (especially

At the hand of the Mexican nationalist writers La Malinche

concerning the existence of God) and who would not betray her

reappears in official History in the XIX century, when she is

pueblo: she repels Corts and tries to kill him. Failing in the effort of

reinstated to investigate the birth of the Mexican people, defined as

resisting to the Conquista, she commits suicide to avoid subjection

La Raza. However, her experiences inhabits a problematic space,

to the Colonial power. As Nevarez argues, The moral of the story

because she blurs the linearity of the political production of the

is that indigenous women must die to preserver their honour or turn

10

traitor. This step comes at the cost, however, of denying

existed but the victor fails to mention [them], and the author takes

motherhood (2004:75). Los martires de Anahuac, instead, recounts

up the challenge of adding to the chronicles (2004: 74).

the history of Gelitzli: violated by the Conquistadores, she finds

refuge with her child among the Aztec populations. Here, the
traditional religious ministers affirm that she must give up her son to
calm the fury of the God Quetzalcoatl and the violence of the
Conquista. The last scene of this account is the ritual sacrifice of the
child accompanied by the impotent pain of Gelitzli. The newborn
represents the possible positive ancestor of La Raza and his mother
the positive counterpart of La Malinche: her desperation thus
represents the pain of the whole Mexican pueblo that constantly and
in vain searches history for the proud and free origin of La Raza
(Nevarez, 2004). In these narrations, the mythic linearity of preColombian history as origin of the homogeneity and the unity
of Mexican identity (Nevarez, 2004) - is proposed in opposition to
the heterogeneity of its population where La Malinche shows the
Nation as similar to the Bhabhas proposal of the Nation as a
"liminal signifying space that is internally marked by the discourses
of minorities, the heterogeneous histories of contending peoples,
antagonistic authorities and tense location of cultural difference"
(Bhabha, 1994:212) . As Nevarez highlights, these mythopoeises
establishes their bases in the 'moral' that these stories could have

11

This movement takes place on the terrain of a complex and

discontinuous Mexican history: here long dictatorships ruled by
post-colonial elites continuously and brutally correspond to popular
Levantamientos, producing a permanent dichotomization of the
Mexican society along the process of nationalization and
independence:

Indigenous/Spanish

and

campasinos/aristocracy

dualities dominate the cultural representation as well as the social

composition of Mexico (Meyer and Sherman 1995). It is in this
dichotomy that the representation of La Malinche appears in Orozco,
1926, in which her downcast eyes symbolize the weakness of the
indigenous population. On the other hand, Orozco represents the
double-face of the Spanish power: Cortes, warmly takes the hand of
La Malinche while preventing her from helping her people,
massacred beneath her feet (Taylor, 2006). In representing La
Malinche as an independent figure, another image, this time by Frida
Kahlo, is the first to signal the complex role of La Malinche in the
history of the Mexican feminine subject. Interestingly, Kahlo takes
the name of La Malinche as a pseudonym for her own diaries,
blurring any difference between the painter and her subject. Kalhos
portraits of La Malinche, as those by Rivera in Palacio Nacional of

12

Mexico City, convey the sadness and the loneliness of La Malinche;

of la Malinche is the root of the abject passivity (Paz, 1985) of the

but make explicit her political function during the Conquista.

woman: she does not resist violence, but is an inert heap of bone,

However, this complex vision disappears once more in the

1960s when la Malinche becomes a focal point in the narrative
analysis of Mexican identity by Octavio Paz (1985), El Labirinto de
la Soledad, which situates La Malinche in the transnational context
of the Mexican pueblo spread out in the United States. The violation
of La Malinche here stands in for the shame and eternal humiliation
of La Raza (Paz, 1985; Taylor 2006) and the origin of the Chicanos

blood and dust. Her taint is constitutional and resides () in her sex.
This passivity, open to the outside world, causes her to lose her
identity; she is the Chingada. She loses her name; she is no one; she
disappears into nothingness; she is Nothingness. (). And as a
small boy will not forgive his mother if she abandons him to search
for his father, the Mexican people have not forgiven La Malinche for
her betrayal. (Paz 1985:87).

non-participation in public and political spaces. Through this text

As outlined, from the Spaniard chronicles to Mexican

Paz accounts for Machismo as a social behaviour (Mirand and

literature, the representation of La Malinche changes deeply. At

Enriquez, 1981): presenting the weakness of the women as

once, she has come to represent the traitor of pure origins, to

foundational to any understanding of Mexican male aggression.

disclose the concrete process of La Conquista, to remind us of the

Paz here writes la Malinche into the Movimiento Chicano

through an intellectual framework that re-inscribes the exclusion of
Chicanas from the collective articulations of

Mexican identity:

Every women is torn and open by the man, is the Chingada. In a

certain sense all of us, by the simple fact of being born of woman,
are hijos de la Chingada. But the singularity of Mexican resides, I
believe, in his violent, sarcastic humiliation of the Mother and his no
less violent affirmation of the Father (1985:85-86). In this the view

13

historic violence of pre-Columbian societies, and to reveal the

primary contradictions of the Mexican Nation. As a result La
Malinche can be read symbolically (Taylor, 2006) as a counternationalist and therefore dangerous for the project of the maleshaped Mexican Nation (Candelaria 1980).
The Chicanas and the reinterpretation of La Malinche
As emerges from the former paragraphs, the Malinche figure has
been represented in the Mexican history as both the traitor of her

14

own roots and as the passive receptor of colonial power. But the

the most: her mother, her lover and her son Martin. (Price,

tricky linear and a-historical proposal of Paz has more and more

2001:251). From here a process of identification from the Chicanas

dangerous consequences since his proposal regards not only the

to la Malinche arises, when during the 1970s the Chicanos

Mexican context but also the South of the United States where the

movement refuse any feminist demand, betraying the loyalty of the

identity of Chicanos has appeared since the second half of the XIX

women to the claims of La Raza. She is a positive symbol because

century. Indeed, if it is true, as Annalisa Taylor underlines, that

malinche has become identified with vendido, or traitor labels

Mestizo nationalist construction cast Malinche and Corts as

which Chicana feminists have also endured (Mirnad and Enriquez,

racialized and gendered icons of the two halves () of modern

1981:242).

Mexican nationhood, one half Indian, female and dominated and the
other half male, European and power hungry(Taylor, 2006:825),
the context of the 1960s anti-colonial, anti-imperial, labour and civil
rights struggles, reshaped the processes of racialization and
gendering inside the rise of the Chicano Movement.

Since then, as Moya argues, "Chicana feminists have addressed

the myth of Malinche and several have attempted to recuperate and
revalue

her

as

figure

of

empowering

or

empowered

womanhood"(1997:130). As read in the following poem by Tafolla

(1978) they give new voice to the Malinche: they want to hear her

It is not for chance, thus, that, since the 1960s, the Chicana

words to understand the genealogy of gender power inside Mexican

Feministas strongly rejects the traditional point of view of La

society (Pratt, 1993). Her thus voice becomes a strategic body from

Malinche. Firstly, the Chicanas underline the complex articulation of

which to affirm their autonomy and disobedience.

La Malinche character: is she the princess or the sold out daughter?

Yo soy la Malinche.

Is she the abandoned lover or the violated concubine? The

involuntary mother or the one separated from her child? (Moya,

My people called me Malintzn Tenepal

1997). The Chicanas point of view on La Malinche eventually

the Spaniards called me Doa Marina

becomes more and more complex while she is recognized as

I came to be known as Malinche

innately loyal yet tragically betrayed by those she loved and trusted

15

16

and Malinche came to mean traitor.

()
My homeland ached within me

And you came.

(but I saw another!).

My dear Hernn Corts, to share your civilization to

play a god,
... and I began to dream . . .

Another world
a world yet to be born.

I saw

And our child was born ...

and I acted.

and I was immortalized Chingada!

I saw our world
()

And I saw yours

And I saw

But Chingada I was not.

another.

Not tricked, not screwed, not traitor.

For I was not traitor to myself

()

I saw a dream
and I reached it.

No one else could see!

Another world

Beyond one world, none existed.

17

18

la raza.

In the 1950s, the social exclusion of this population implied a

marginal participation of the Chicanos both in the North American

La raaaaa-zaaaaa . . .

labour movements of the first half of the XX century and in the

Black American movements for civil rights after the second world
La Malinche here is an explorer of the world to come. She is

war. It is in the 1950s when the Chicanos started to organize both for

not anymore the object of the violation, but the subject of an action

labour and social rights that, in their organization, probably due to

that performs in a context the violence of la Conquista - that

the double exclusion from the broader movements, two important

produces a new space where neither loyalties nor rules are prefixed.

features emerged: firstly the Movimiento coped with the analysis of

La Malinche escapes from the objective function imposed to the

the internal colonialism of United States and linked itself to the

women both in the pre-Columbian and the Spaniard culture (Pratt,

Mexican revolution and to the anti-colonialist movements (Young,

1993) and represent the political escape of the Chicanas in the face

1972; Mirand and Enriquez, 1981); secondly, from here emerged

of the anti-feminist reaction of the Chicanos Movement.

the identitarian definition of La Raza as subject and the Barrio as

This strategic role of la Malinche arose inside the specific

history of Chicano Movement, when the perspective of the Mexican
pueblo was not rooted anymore only in the national space of the
Mexico (Paz, 1985). Both the sale of the north part of the country to
United States in the 1850s and the (politically and economically

strategic space for organization (Plan de Aztlan, 1969). These

resulted in the involvement of the community and its different social
subjects in the struggle, but also led to the subordination of any
other issue to the Chicanos demands and to their relegation of any
internal clash to the principle of loyalty and membership.

motivated) migration flows of the first half of the XX century

In Denver in 1969 the Plan de Aztlan affirms the priority of La

(Meyer and Sherman, 1995) produced a significant settlement of

Raza claims over any other demands: this implies a priority of

Mexican population in the major cities of the southern part of the

Chicano ethnic identity over any other subjective layer (Plan de

United States.

Aztlan, 1969). Likewise, the message is clear towards any foreigner

out of the community: For la Raza todo. Fuera de la Raza nada

19

20

(Plan de Aztlan, 1969). Autonomy, loyalty and unity are the tenets

periodicals, organizing interpersonal networks of communication,

of the Movimiento.

discussing their issues in womens panels in the Chicano

conferences and opening feminine projects for civil rights and

Feministas, vendidas, malinches

labour struggles (Mirand and Enriquez, 1981). This emergence of a

When the Plan de Aztlan ratifies the internal political Pact of the

spontaneous movement to affirm the will of liberation of the mujeres

Movimiento Chicano, the rupture and the internal clash with the

chicanas led to the Conferencia de Mujeres por la Raza held in

feminist Chicanas is an open battlefield. As Longauex y Vasquez

Houston in 1971 (Moya, 1997).

recorded when the time came for the women to report to the full
conference, the only thing that the workshop representative had to
say was this: it was the consensus of the group that the Chicana
woman does not want to be liberated (Vidal, 1971).

At the time, Chicanas opened different fields of struggle: they

self organized as women in the textile factories and in the farms
(Young, 1972), they launched campaigns for health and education
involving the whole Barrio community (Mirand and Enriquez,

The refusal of any political role for women could not have

1981), they problematized the sphere of sexuality, starting a tough

been more bitter, but many Chicanas were already rejecting the

conflict with the Catholic Church, strategic ally for the Chicano

philosophy that a womans place is in the home as a mother of a

Movement (Vidal, 1971). Their movement in the political space was

large family. The Chicanos excuse was that they were rejecting

unpredictable and they did not respect any established belonging:

their culture when they attempted to reclaim rights, to be visible in

the affirmation of autonomy of the Chicanas challenged any

the public sphere, to study in the universities: [the Chicanas]

classical conception of membership and introduced in the debate the

response to the charge that they betrayed their culture and heritage

topics of temporality, reciprocity, tactics and strategies for political

was Our culture, hell! (Mirand and Enriquez, 1981:253).

identities. In other words, the attempt of Chicanas feminists was to

From this moment until 1971, several groups emerged opening

local chapters in the college campuses, writing for several

21

perform a variable geometry of alliances, which was transversal to

all the relations of powers in which they were inscribed. In order to
reclaim their political space, they (had to) deconstruct both the

22

linearity of the internal colonial opposition (imposed by the

The first link between the Chicanas and la Malinche was produced

Chicanos) and the universality of gender emancipation (proposed by

by the Chicanos who, when the feministas articulated their position

the anglo-feminists ), moving among these discursive fields in

as Mexican-American and women, accused them of being

tactical instead of ideological terms.

Malinchistas, resurrecting the connotation of La Malinche as traitor.

In order to deal with this double political opposition, the

Chicanas needed to root their struggle in the Mexican revolutionary
soldaderas - the Mexican feminist who had an important role during
the Madero and Zapatas revolutions, conquering rights and political
power. Through this rooting process, the Chicanas movement also
affirmed its political independence and non-negotiable egoism
(Candelaria, 1980). In other words, they did not look for any recomposition in the existent political space but for a new path and
new roads of subjectivation (Mirand and Enriquez 1981); in this
decision to act and move towards an ulterior space, the character of
La Malinche was strategically useful for both the symbols and the
ambivalences she brought with her.

The Chicanas decided to inhabit this pejorative brand because, reusing Bhabha words, they recognized themselves as vernacular
cosmopolitans (Bhabha, 2002: 24) that have to translate between
cultures and across them in order to survive, not in order to assert
the sovereignty of a civilized class or the spiritual autonomy of a
revered ideal (Bhabha, 2002: 24). This permanent movement for
survival linked them to la Malinche: she has also occupied a
territory filled with contradictions, but did not renounce from this
(imposed) position (Taylor, 2006) to tactically move to reach her
goals: negotiating and dealing she abandoned the lines of resistance,
of opposition and of frontal struggles, problematizing, beyond any
nationalistic rhetoric, both the utopian history and the everyday life
of the Chicano society.

Exploring the third space

Disclosing this rhetoric, la Malinche challenged the conception

of the History proposed by both Paz and by the Mexican nationalist:

It is the case of the rupture with the Chicanos as well it is with the Anglo-feminism from
which they need to affirm their autonomy: according to Mirand and Enriquez (1981), the
Anglo-feminists were trying to shape the emerging movement, proposing gender as
universal vector for emanciapation through an alliances of women issues, back grounding
and hiding the different focuses on class or racial division in the American Society.

23

sold by her family, she was forced to renounce any membership to

any people. Instead, she opened up an unpredictable third space
(Bhabha, 1994 or another world, Tafolla 1978), learning that hard

24

lesson of ambivalence and forbearance (Bhabha, 2002: 24). In this

resides properly in the possibility to find in this space she opens a

space of ambiguity, she has to negotiate her identity, abandoning her

critical but original position and a voice to use strategically for their

inherited identity without any possibility of inclusion in the Spaniard

aims. Moya, however, underlines here the risk of an extreme use of

society. In this space, both the Chicanas and la Malinche

La Malinche: also if the experience and the theorizing of

experienced the impossibility of belonging, because their freedom as

marginalized or oppressed people is important for arriving at a more

women was not figured in either their mythic origins, nor in the

objective understanding of the world (), I would suggest that

political project of La Raza (Pratt 1993; Vidal, 1971). It is from this

neither marginality nor survival are sufficient goals for a feminist

positionality, where identity is constructed and re-constructed, that

project(Moya, 1997:131).

they situated their own identity and built their strategy for
emancipation. La Malinches project, as Tafolla (1978) outlines,
posited another world and another pueblo, with a view and a strategy
that were grounded in her concrete situation.

Conclusions
More than even Corts, or Moctezuma, it is important to note

Similarly, The

that it is La Malinche who is blamed for the violence of La

Chicanas neither abandoned the Chicanos struggle, nor denied

Conquista. We might consider this fact in light of two primary

themselves a strategy based in their specific struggles as women.

threats La Malinche has come to pose: one, the impossibility of the

They renounced universalism, while affirming the need for an

pure origins, and two, her disclosure of the concrete memory of la

alliance of singularities (Mirand and Enriquez, 1981).

Conquista, with its violence, its materiality and its choices. As

Yet the decision to inhabit this space is complex and

interesting at the same time: as argued by Taylor, re-using Spivak
(1990), la Malinche [becomes] a symbol of the postcolonial
condition [] finding herself in the ambivalent position of having to
critic a space one inhabits intimately(Taylor, 2006:825): the force
of the extreme choice of La Malinche for the Chicanas discourse

25

observed, the complexity and the ambivalence of Malinches

movement between different identities destabilises the Mexican
nationalist project: La Malinche unveils some real aspects of the preColumbian societies, the division of the peoples, the presence of the
slave system, the condition of the woman, showing the original and
contradictory complexity of the Mexican Utopia.

26

This position is key to understanding why her figure has been

context. The first is the de-universalization proposed by the Chicana

so important for the Mexican feminists, involved in two battles at

emancipation project, which affirms that equality and freedom are

the same time: for their rights as Mexican and as women. This

"not negotiable. Anyone opposing the right of women to organize

power of La Malinche becomes stronger in the North American

into their own form of organization has no place in the leadership of

context, where the contradictions of the social Chicano Movement

the movement. FREEDOM IS FOR EVERYONE". However, we

regarding identity and machismo explode in the 1970s.

might also look to the definition of La Malinche proposed by Donna

In this multiple, historical and political rupture, that involves

both the images and the language of their original culture, the
Chicanas open a third space and inhabit it through the symbolic
body and the collective name of La Malinche (Tafolla, 1978).
Through this appropriation, there is a shift in the historical and
symbolic function of La Malinche, that assumes a tactical role in the
definition of a strategic identity for the Chicanas: in this shift the
historically negative connotation of La Malinche fades away and
some concrete dimensions of her experience become visible once
again, strategically useful to the political project of emancipation of
the Chicana feminists in the contemporary context.

Harraway, that inscribes her in a new space of struggle as cyborg

mother: the story of the indigenous woman Malinche, mother of
the mestizo bastard race of the new world, master of languages,
and mistress of Corts [carries] special meaning [] Sister Outsider
hints at the possibility of world survival not because of her
innocence, but because of her ability to live on the boundaries, to
write without the founding myth of original wholeness []
Malinche was mother here, not Eve before eating the forbidden
fruit (Haraway 1990).
While contradictory, these two proposed trajectories for La
Malinche, one singularizing, the other re-inscribing her into a post-

However as Moya outlines, the marginal position of La

Malinche can only be a starting point for any feminist political
project: in this sense it is interesting to look at two trajectories that

human universality, might, in their tension pose La Malinche as an

enfant perdue, a living, political prototype for the lexicon of transnational feminism.

the figure of La Malinche might open up in the contemporary

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