Description
Malinalli: Ni Santa, Ni La Chingada, Solo Mujer explores the complex world of Mexican and Chicano men’s self-perception through their indigenous and Spanish roots. This thesis will argue and prove that an elite set of Mexican and Mexican-American male defined la Malinche’s behavior and actions as treasonous through modern day concepts of national identity, maternity, and femininity, in doing so, they developed a patriarchal and self-conscious identity. Men such as Diego Rivera, Gavino Palomares, Ireneo Paz, and Octavio Paz — to name a few — reflect upon their self-perception through the deconstruction of Doña Marina’s historical image. It is through Doña Marina/ Malinalli/La Malinche that this group of men find that characteristics of the perfect bad mother (la mala Madre) and bad woman (la mala Mujer) are seen. Malinalli: Ni Santa, Ni La Chingada, Solo Mujer explores Doña Marina’s negative role in the creation of a new socio-cultural identity. Finally, the men juxtapose the la mala Madre, Doña Marina Llorona, a bad mother figure, to the exemplary mother figure la Virgen De Guadalupe. La Virgen de Guadalupe symbolically, represents motherhood and the perfect woman.
