With Her Machete in Her Hand: Reading Chicana Lesbians

CHAPTER 2. The Mystery of the Weeping Woman

CHAPTER 2 The Mystery of the Weeping Woman During my second year as a Ph.D. student, I was a teaching assistant in my first-ever Chicano/a studies class, and I was alternately dubious, furious, and inspired. One of the lectures by Shirley Flores-Muñoz, the instructor, was titled “Post-Colonial Myth, or, A Message from the Past: La Llorona, La Malinche, La Virgen de Guadalupe.” I remember the lecture clearly. Flores-Muñoz described hearing about La Llorona and the way the story stayed with her: La Llorona was said to be a woman who neglected her children, partying and dancing into the night, a mother who either abandoned her children or killed them by drowning them in a river. La Llorona was barred from entering heaven until she recovered her children from the river; it is said that she wanders the rivers at night weeping and wailing for them. As a child, the legend of la Llorona reinforced my fears about living up to the expectations that were placed on me by my family and society. Yet when I grew up, I wondered about this poor woman. (1997, 165) Flores-Muñoz linked the tradition of La Llorona stories with the violence of the conquest: the indigenous men murdered, the indigenous women mourning. She talked about reevaluating the three Mexican mothers: La Llorona as the survivor, not the murderer; La Malinche as finding a way to work for the lives of her people; and La Madre Virgen and the need to make peace with her impossible standard. That lecture was a real experience of Llorona storytelling: the students were hanging on Flores-Muñoz’s every word but also arguing against her The Mystery of the Weeping Woman 23 deconstruction of La Llorona, her excavation of conquest, patriarchy, and rape. When I began my own research, I discovered that Chicana lesbian literature, too, is haunted by this mysterious woman of sadness. She walks the waterways. Her cries echo in the night, striking fear into the hearts of children. Mythic Mexican Mothers Chicana feminist scholarship has long been concerned with the iconography of Mexican womanhood, and Flores-Muñoz’s theorizations are part of on ongoing dialogue. Discussions have focused on three key figures, La Malinche, La Virgen de Guadalupe, and La Llorona, all of whom are closely tied to the Spanish conquest of Mexico, to colonialism and mestizaje. These mythical Mexican mothers form a maternal trinity in the Mexican and Mexican American cultures. Although each of these figures has been viewed differently during different historical periods, today they are commonly figured as the sexual mother, the virgin mother, and the murderous mother, respectively. Yet, as Gloria Anzaldúa (1993a, 108) argues, Chicana writers and artists consistently “reread” them through their work. La Malinche No, Malinche was not a lesbian, in so far as the records of her sexuality suggest, but we can make her one if we choose. (D. González 1991) Variously described in the historical record as Malintzín, Malinalli, and Doña Marina, the first of this trinity is best known as La Malinche. This Indian woman has figured as the original/originating mother of the mestizo peoples of the Americas and thus as a symbol of the rape, conquest, and colonization of the native peoples under Spain. Born to an Aztec cacique family, La Malinche was sold to Mayan traders as a child, who sold her again on the Yucatán coast. She “knew the language of Coatzacoalcos, which is that of Mexico, and she knew the Tabascan language also” and was able to serve as translator for Hernán Cortez: “without Doña Marina we could not have understood the language of New Spain and Mexico” (Díaz del Castillo 1963, 86–87). A key instru- 24 With Her Machete in Her Hand ment in the downfall of the Aztec empire in 1519, La Malinche has been figured as a traitor to her people since the end of the colonial period.1 The stigma of malinchísmo/vendidísmo has been repeatedly used to keep Chicanas “in their place.” This Mexican nationalist strategy was appropriated by Chicano nationalists in the 1960s. Chicana feminists in particular were identified with La Malinche. Adelaida Del Castillo’s 1977 study, “Malintzín Tenépal : A Preliminary Look into a New Perspective,” identifies discourses of La Malinche while contributing to them and...