(This is not the post it's supposed to be on Octavio Paz. Forgive me, Jane!)

Today, Casey talked me down from slight panic over my 25-30 page paper by forcing me to write an outline and e-mail it to him before he got back to New Haven.  He also wants me to write each section of the paper in mini-versions, one or two of which he wants to see by Wednesday.  Thinking of it all in mini-form is actually really helping me, and he liked my outline, which I will now post as a blog entry because I'm a rebel.

La Malinche Paper Outline

1. Introduction – discuss how the variations in name (Dona Marina, La Malinche, Malintzin) also give way to variations in her role in the formation of Mexican nationality?
2. Historical Presence
1. Entrance into conquest via slavery, given as a gift to Cortes in the Yucatan
2. Multiple languages give her the role of translator, along with Aguilar.  Maybe discuss how the difference in gender between her and Aguilar may affect interpretations of her later on
3. Her story is presented by European men – Diaz, Cortes, Gomara
4. Role as Cortes’s mistress and birth of her son – the “first mestizo”
5. Disappearance from the historical record after conquest is complete

3.    Role During Spanish Colonial Era
1. Idea of her as the Virgin Mother – mother of the mestizo nation
2. How does this positive view of her tie into imperial goals?
4. Role During the Mexican Revolution and Chicano Movement
1. Need to disassociate from Spanish colonial thinking, leading to the need to vilify La Malinche and her role in the conquest
2. Shaping as the Mexican Eve – betrayal of her people for the white man
3. Use of la chingada and la malinchista to secure the gender binary in the Chicano movement in the United States – how should I shift to the United States after talking about Mexico for so long?  Talking about Mexican-American War?
4. Octavio Paz and his ideas on Mexican identity as subservient and the role of La Malinche in the formation of this identity
5. Artworks and poetry that tie La Malinche first to Cortes – la chingada – and take away her agency but then blame her for the conquest of Mexico and assign her complete agency (this may take many, many pages to explain and may be unnecessary?)
6. Chicano use of La Malinche to discourage women from seeking powerful positions in the movement, keeping then in traditionally female roles and out of interaction with white society – i.e. discouraging feminism by associating it with the second-wave U.S. movement which for the large part involved middle-class white women
5.    Role During the Rise of the Chicana Feminist Movement
1. Assigning agency to La Malinche – what does this do for common power structure in the movement and in Mexican-American society?
2. Is it revisionist to assign this role to her? 
3. How did the role of betrayer limit the women of the movement and how did they overcome it?  (This is the part of my paper that has not been researched enough.)
4. Some more stuff about Chicana feminists and La Malinche once I do the reading. 
6. Conclusion.