Time to respond to some of the awesome (and hard!) things Jane posited in her reply to my last post about the very strange Haniel Long. She said:
“Your observation about Long’s inability to represent Malinche as an entity distinct from Cortes is terrific. Perhaps you could explore these ideas in your next post? What’s so weird about the way Long imagines Malinche?”
I’ve been reading a lot about views of Malinche in myth and literature this week (more work for Professor Ewing!) I actually was in the research library on 5th Ave
This is all stuff I’ve picked up from just my Malinche readings, so this may not be the whole story. As I understand it, after the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, Mexican Americans began the fight for Mexican American Civil Rights. There was somewhat of a division between those who called themselves “Mexican American” and those who preferred to be identified as “Chicanos/as.” Chicanos were considered to be more radical according to what I’ve read in Sandra Messinger Cypess’s La Malinche in Mexican Literature. The Chicano Movement involved an exploration of Mexican origin as well as some sort of revolutionary planning. Chicanos appropriated the image of Malinche as a traitor, a woman who led her people into servitude, and actually used her image to suppress the women in their own movement. In Feminism, Nation and Myth: La Malinche, Amanda Nolacea Harris discusses how the derogatory ideas behind Malinche were used to discourage Chicanas (women in the movement) from attempting to step outside tradition gender norms: “The Movement assigned limited roles to women; the Chicana as faithful follower and sexual partner or nurturing mother figure to the Chicano revolutionary – or ‘the three f’s’ as Cherrie Moaraga articulates it…:’feeding, fighting, and fucking’” (x).
However crude, the view of women in this movement really helped me to understand the view that Mexican history has taken of Malinche. The dual view of her as a traitor and a tool seems to negate her role. How can she have betrayed her people if she was merely being used and was in her place? Many Chicana feminists took up this cause: while Chicanos were labeling those women in the movement as “Malinchistas” if they took an Anglo-American partner, entered into a relationship which would not result in breeding (such as with a same-sex partner), or sought higher education in Anglo-American institutions. Even feminism was viewed as an Anglo-American institution (which is not necessarily an incorrect view, given how the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s was spurred on by middle-class white women and was for the most part concerned with their own problems as women – housewifery, birth control, job opportunities – that poor women, minority women, and lesbians did not often have the privilege of caring about) and many Chicanas refused to label of “feminist” while fighting for the cause.
So! Getting to the point! These Chicana feminists women decided to take on the myth of Malinche. Why did she have to be a traitor or a whore or a chingada (the fucked one)? Why did these labels have to be negative? Chicana work usually takes one of two angles: Malinche as justified in her assistance to Cortes or Malinche as a woman with agency working in a system that assigns her none. This gets all sorts of crazy!
Deena J. Gonzales writes: “Malinche, to Chicano/a nationalists, is a traffic figure, a woman duped by the great white man…To view Malintzin’s time with Cortes, or even her interests in Cortes, is not so much a question of ‘was she a whore?’…but rather requires a leap of faith that perhaps she knew what she was doing, perhaps she was using Cortes, perhaps women simply, plainly, as we say in lesbian-feminist discourse, are appropriating semen, agency of the worst kind” (Romero and Harris 11). What Gonazales means by “lesbian-feminist discourse” could take up a whole different post…probably on a different blog. The important thing that comes out of her discussion is the varied views of Malinche and what they mean to both the Chicano Movement and the Chicana feminist revolt.
Now I will attempt the amazing feat of winding this all back around to Haniel Long! Stand back!
Haniel Long writes Malinche as a woman who is at once completely devoted to Cortes but also doubts his actions and what they mean for her. And even though I was very doubtful about this whole interpretation, after reading some secondary texts I am starting to understand where this is all coming from. There is a need to deny agency to Malinche and grant her this agency at the same time no matter how one intends to use her. For the Chicano Movement, Malinche’s agency allowed them to convince women to deny their own agency and stay in their traditional roles despite the revolt occurring around them. But! They also needed to blame the death of indigenous Mexico/the “Aztec” empire on the presence of Europeans/white men. And this could only depend on claiming that Malinche was forced into helping Cortes.
Still with me? I’m barely with me.
Chicana feminists, on the other hand, grant agency to Malinche in attempting to illustrate her role in history as a powerful woman who got revenge on her people/family (who apparently sold her into slavery. This needs further investigation, though Diaz does go on and on about it. I should read the Diaz) by destroying the empire/people that forced her into slavery. The denial of agency actually is rare in Chicana feminist work, but it often involves her inability to stop Cortes from taking her son to Spain
Okay one more time, back to the Long!
Haniel Long denies Malinche agency when he irrevocably ties her entire story to Cortes, only allowing her thoughts to spring from his actions. But! He also grants her an amazing amount of agency without (in my opinion) really meaning to. Malinche is constantly saying things like “I am helping Cortes destroy my land, and kill and torture my people” (30). Her recognition of her role is agency in itself, even though Long is attempting to muddle this. The next lines read: “But if I do not help him, my land will destroy Cortes. I have had to choose. I give my life to Cortes…” (30). This seems like an impossible choice, but the entire point is that there is a choice present. It is undeniable. In his later analysis, Long writes “The story is hers, not Cortes’, and she will take her bow from posterity for it” (56). Despite Long’s need to constantly tie Malinche to Cortes, he is able to recognize that the story he has written is an attempt to give a voice to the voiceless. Earlier in his analysis, Long characterizes Malinche as a “heroine who symbolizes an all-round relation with man” (49). Long seems confused (and I feel pretty confused as well) but I cannot get away from the astounding amount of agency I find in his novel now that I have read a bit of the philosophical thought surrounding the Chicana movement.
And this post has turned into the length of three! Which is what I had left to do for this week! Even though I have a lot more to say. But I need to read a bit more before I can go on. I also have a lot I need to think about when it comes to Malinche and her name – which one do I use here? In my paper? Ah! More to come, eventually.
Hi Irina,
ReplyDeleteWow--what incredibly productive thinking. I’m extremely pleased with the seriousness and intelligence with which you addressed the difficult questions I raised. It was really interesting for me to read this terrific post and then the formal paper you wrote for Professor Ewing a week later (why don’t you post that, too?). You reached an important juncture in the research process, often a difficult one, in which your research question shifted. Originally, your question was something like “How does Haniel Long’s 1939 historical novel fit in with the evolution of attitudes about Malinche in the popular imagination?” As a necessary step toward answering that question, you used this post to describe how she’s been a political football from the time of the colonial period through the Mexican Revolution to the Chicano/a movement in the late 20th century.
And in doing that, you became really interested in the ways Chicana feminists used the issue of Malinche’s agency to try to understand the reactionary side of the seemingly progressive Chicano movement, which managed to stigmatize Malinche by assigning her agency and non-agency at the same time. How interesting! You write that “For the Chicano Movement, Malinche’s agency [as a deliberate traitor] allowed them to convince women to deny their own agency and stay in the traditional roles despite the revolt occurring around them. But! They also needed to blame the death of indigenous Mexico/the “Aztec” empire on the presence of Europeans/white men. And this could only depend on claiming that Malinche was forced into helping Cortes.” Well done, Irina! To what extent do you think this phenomenon is unique the Malinche “problem”? Do you see anything similar in the myths of the other “problem” women she’s been compared to by Long and others—Eve, Helen of Troy, Joan of Arc and so on?
A couple of factual questions. When was/is the Chicano movement? Is it assumed to have begun during or after the Revolution and to continue through the present day? And where was/is the movement? Mexico, the “Mexican” parts of the United States, both? And I’m sort of unsure whether the Chicana movement is within or outside the Chicano movement and when it came into being? Late 20th century? Think about what you need to know about the history of the movement(s) for your project. Might be a great task for another post.
This post and your secondary source paper raised another important question for me. In the wake of the Mexican Revolution, why might it have been desirable or helpful to the Chicano Movement to deny agency to women, to reassert the dichotomy of traditional gender roles--activity vs. passivity, complete human being vs. an incomplete one, external, public world vs. domestic, private realm? Was this simply a non-remarkable extension of these deeply ingrained ways of thinking about gender? Or did the movement place a renewed emphasis on the subordination of women? Or what? Keeping in mind I know next to nothing about Mexican history and politics beyond Wikipedia, in times of revolution and war divisions between gender roles sometimes begin to erode. Witness the agency of “she-prophets” like Anna Trapnel or Quaker women who used nakedness to challenge religious authority during the British Civil Wars. See what you can find out about women and the revolution--I know I’ve seen photographs of women who joined the forces of Pancho Villa and Zapata, for instance.
continued
continued from above
ReplyDeleteI know you hate to let go of Haniel Long (not to mention the physical book ;-)—so please don’t! One of the reasons you shifted your research question is the fear of not finding or not having time to find answers to your questions about what that 1939 book has to do with evolving conceptions of Malinche. One way to think about your paper for Professor Ewing is as a piece of a larger project (i.e., the senior project). You could, for instance, use other chapters to investigate the ways La Malinche might have been politically useful at other important moments in the history of Mexico—like around the Mexican War of Independence, during the successive regimes that came after Independence but before the Revolution. (I didn’t know the French/Hapburgs held brief sway in the 19th century!) Can you tell I’ve been cramming Mexican history with the help of Wikipedia? Alternatively, you could organize your SP with chapters about other historical women of the Americans and how they have been imagined for political ends at important moments in nation building or identity forging—Pocahontas, Sacagawea… Start a list!
Investigating the roles of Malinche in 1990s Chicana feminism is right for you in many ways—it blends your interest in early modern history, historiography, feminism, and wish to fill in a blank in your knowledge about North American political history of the late 20th century. But let me play devil’s advocate for a moment. To what extent are you choosing Chicana focus because there’s a wealth of secondary material readily available? (This assumption of a wealth of material may be wrong, but I got that impression from your bibliography.) If Professor Ewing would like you to plow fresh ground, it’s sometimes harder to drown out the voices of smart people who’ve investigated the terrain recently (i.e., the last 15 years of so). I think it’s certainly possible to see Haniel Long’s book as participating in a post-Revolutionary dialogue about the “Malinche problem.” He’s not a dead end, particularly as his novel seems to struggle with the idea of agency. I was intrigued by your observation that “Long seems confused … but I cannot get away from the astounding amount of agency I find in his novel now that I have read a bit of the philosophical thought surrounding the Chicana movement.” Just a thought.
And here’s another. Remember talking last week about what seems to be a recent silence about La Malinche (an assumption that should be interrogated for soundness) and the dearth of images of contemporary Mexican women? Since Cypess takes Malinche up to the end of the 20th century, you could investigate to what purposes she’s being put at the beginning of the 21st century. This would involve some interesting primary source research, particularly with newspapers and magazines. I’m a little concerned that working with the Chicana feminists and poets may prevent you from doing the kind of primary research that you would be good for you to do.
Of course this presents the problem of working with the Spanish language. It’s possible that this may not be as huge an obstacle as you think. Somewhere Presnell talks about a source for finding translations of popular serials. But you do know a bit of Spanish, and the great thing about popular newspapers and magazines is that they’re easy to get the gist of even when you can’t read them word for word. You should give it a go by searching Mexican periodicals for variations of La Malinche’s name and see what kind of hits you get. There’s no quicker way to get going on a language than when you have to know what something says! And you could ask Professor King to help you work through the parts you have difficulty understanding. Another aspect of this approach is that it’s up-to-the-minute and thus could easily lead to a conference paper and possible publication.
Nicely done!
Jane