Malinche: The Voice of a Nation
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things from their own frame o f reference. Their works affected the
people o f their time and those in the future. Pat Mora, a Hispanic author
o f children’s books reminds us in her poem, “Malinche’s Tips: Pique
from M exico’s M other” that children are not bastards, they are just
children. “I hear your sticks-and-stones: whore, tradora, slut. W hat
happened to M other?” Mora argued that we “must desist in throwing
stones at the indigenous mother and accept miscegenation as a reality o f
colonization” (Nevarez 82). Chicana writers, poets, artists, and
commentators o f today have done that.
Malinche Chicana Archetype
Damn! How it hurts to be Malinche!
Adaljiza Sosa-Riddell, “Como duele”
The Chicano movement began in the United States during the
1940’s with the Mexican Civil Rights movement. The economic protests
o f the United Farm Workers organized by Cesar Chavez and his wife,
Dolores Huerta, were the most notable. In the fight for civil rights,
members o f the movement sometimes ignored the rights o f women.
Feminist theory inspired Chicanas to challenge traditional roles and
develop a more complete sense o f identity. They appropriated the reviled
Malinche into a Symbol that implied strength, intelligence, and cultural
multiplicity.
Gloria Anzaldua, a Chicana feminist theorist, articulated this
post-modern acceptance o f multiplicity in Borderlands/La Fronteria:
The New Mestiza. She suggested that there is something beyond the
binary Option o f either/or. She feit that just as she was not one race or the
other, that she possessed multi-sexuality. She called for the development
o f understanding and tolerance for contradictions and ambiguity in
matters o f race, d ass, and gender. She believed that such distinctions are
intertwined. The end result o f this connectedness is “knowing,” the inner
power that results from our underworld joum eys into consciousness
(Gaspar de Alba 55).
Tey Diana Rebolledo, Distinguished Professor o f Spanish at the
University o f New Mexico, detailed four ways in which the Chicana
movement considers Malinche one o f their own. First, the Conquerors
took her and raped her. Second, she is representative o f the indigenous
groups subjugated by the Europeans. Third, she is a language mediator.
Fourth, she is a survivor (quoted by Romero 40).