La Malinche Essay

When she decided to abandon her vows and run away to America there was still the romantic appeal of an unconquered land, the Spanish Wild West. There was not much law and order, and the intuitions that contribute to a healthy and thriving society were not yet in place. Yes there were courts, judges, and the Church but their prestige was much lower than it would grow to become. De Erauso was able to escape the law many times and roam across vast areas land without much in her way, one hundred years later the established institutions that were just in their infancy during her life would have probably put a stop to her journey and life much, much sooner. During this time the name of the game was still conquest, and the newly arrived Spaniards and the Crown were not as enamored with building a civilization as they were with gaining riches and the hidalgo status that went along with it. Many just expected that they would get rich and return to Spain and this attitude was reflected in the lack of institutions in the society at this time along with De Erauso’s memoir.

The author depicts Malintzin as a subjugation of Cortés. Malintzin used her position to help herself. She was given away as a slave at a young age. For someone like her this was her only way to escape poverty and make sure she was cared for by the Spanish. She used her skills to obtain a better life than the other 19 slaves who had been given to Cortés. She was loyal to Cortés because the Spanish had finally given her a position of power that she had never had before with the natives. “She did so only to remind her purported masters of her loyalty” (82). She was very loyal to Cortés and in fact loved him as she birthed his first son Martin Cortés.

Although there were not many women in the film, those who were portray held important roles. The first being Dona Isabel or Tecuichpo, the interpreter for Hernan Cortes and sister of Topiltzin. She is first introduced when Topiltzin is brought in front of Cortes. As is stated in the film, she is the replacement for La Malinche or Dona Marina. As is stated in Socolow’s The Women in Colonial Latin America, “She (La Malinche) showed her gratitude to the

In “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria,” the incidents on the bus, in the hotel, and at the poetry involved prejudice and stereotypical misconceptions of Puerto Rican women. While Cofer was on a bus trip to Oxford University, a man “broke into an Irish tenor’s rendition of “Maria” from West Side Story” (Cofer 103). This implies that Latinas dealt with people who automatically assume that a Latina’s name is “Maria” or “Evita” based on a fictional movie. While at a hotel with a colleague, a middle-aged man called Cofer an “Evita” and he “began shout-sing a ditty to the tune of “La Bamba”---except the lyrics were about a girl named Maria” (Cofer 107). Then Cofer realized that “[she] was just an Evita or a Maria: merely a character in his cartoon-populated universe” (107). The men that sung stereotypical songs viewed Cofer as a sexual object and referred to her as an image displayed by the media.

The primary intended audience was Charles V to in an attempt to gain support from him to have authority over the territory of New Spain. Cortés wanted to set up a position where he did not have to answer to the governor of Cuba but only had to address himself to the Emperor. The audience of the document was not only meant to be for Charles V, but most people in Spain were able to read. Cortez went into great detail about the power of the Aztecs to add to his glory of how he was able to conquer a whole nation. As a result, Cortés did his best to relate what he was experiencing to cities in Spain and the old world to allow readers get an idea how the cities and culture functioned in the new world. Cortés also made sure to touch a lot on the culture and the traditions of the natives in an effort to convey the Aztecs way of life. As result anyone who would end up doing the research on the Aztec culture would see this source as a helpful primary document.

You can see how Maria’s El Salvador is empty of people, full only of romantic ideas. Jose Luis’s image of El Salvador, in contrast, totally invokes manufactured weapons; violence. Maria’s “self-projection elides Jose Luis’s difference” and illustrates “how easy it is for the North American characters, including the big-hearted María, to consume a sensationalized, romanticized, or demonized version of the Salvadoran or Chicana in their midst” (Lomas 2006, 361). Marta Caminero-Santangelo writes: “The main thrust of the narrative of Mother Tongue ... continually ... destabilize[s] the grounds for ... a fantasy of connectedness by emphasizing the ways in which [Maria’s] experience as a Mexican American and José Luis’s experiences as a Salvadoran have created fundamentally different subjects” (Caminero-Santangelo 2001, 198). Similarly, Dalia Kandiyoti points out how Maria’s interactions with José Luis present her false assumptions concerning the supposed “seamlessness of the Latino-Latin American connection” (Kandiyoti 2004, 422). So the continual misinterpretations of José Luis and who he really is and has been through on Maria’s part really show how very far away her experiences as a middle-class, U.S.-born Chicana are from those of her Salvadoran lover. This tension and resistance continues throughout their relationship.

In The Underdogs, there are countless cases of physical and verbal mistreatment of women. Smith’s Gender and the Mexican Revolution and Lewis’ taped autobiography of Pedro Martinez also emphasizes on the physical and verbal mistreatment. A prominent example in The Underdogs of verbal and insinuated physical mistreatment of women occurred with Camilla. La Pintada, speaking with Luis Cervantes, refers to her as “your ---” (74). Camilla’s later hatred of him due to him presumably raping her, shows the treatment of women as nothing more than objects even though he tries to display himself as a more

While dealing with the hardships of being Mexican, a woman also had to face the burden of being a female. A social hierarchy was clearly in existence. While the men were inferior to the Spaniards and Anglos because they were

Louise Pubols, Fathers of the Pueblo: Patriarchy and Power in Mexican California, 1800-1880, article concentrated on the de la Guerra family from Santa Barbara, California. Pubols expresses to her audience that she wants to depict Mexicans from California Mexico in a different style from the usual. Pubols starts off by giving the reader a simple description of the way the California Mexican is usually presented. Typically, Californian Mexicans have little to no agency; they lose all their land and belongings and are lost to history. Pubols uses the de la Guerra family to show that California Mexicans not only had agency but also played a large part in society. Pubols second argument was that patriarchal language was being used to describe the de la Guerra’s family governance within their community.

and fame. The accounts are based on the Aztec’s perception of the invasion and include the

- Cortes actions played a vital role in helping establish Spanish settlement in the new world. He and his fleet of about 600 men traveled into Mexico in hopes of finding gold as well as glory. During his time in Mexico he persuaded Indian societies who were rivals of the Aztec Empire, to join his force to take over this mighty empire. He used terror and intimidation to do so along the way. After a few years he took down the Aztec Empire, which opened the door for other explorers to invade the new world as well in their hopes of finding gold as well.

Some of the causes her image has been associated with is the independence and identity of the Mexican and Chicano people (Livingstone). The first time it was used heavily was in 1810 when she was used as the rebel face in the Mexican independence against Spain as their battle cry was: “Long Live Our Lady of Guadalupe” ("Our Lady of Guadalupe"). Appreciation is displayed by how the first independent President of Mexico changed her name to Guadalupe Victoria to show her devotion to the goddess (Livingstone). And the Virgin of Guadalupe was used as a rebellious symbol of the Zapata's followers, who were mostly indigenous people, in the Mexican Revolution in 1910-1920 using her as a symbol for mother nature and freedom (Livingstone). Overall Tonantzin gave many of the people hope that they could succeed and fight for their freedoms throughout Mexican and Latino

To begin, the protagonist Clemencia is like a chameleon, who can blend into any social event and with any class of wealth when she says ““I’m amphibious. I’m a person who doesn’t belong to any class. The rich like to have me around because they envy my creativity; they know they can’t buy that. The poor don’t mind if I live in their neighborhood because they know I’m poor like they are, even if my education and the way I dress keeps us worlds apart”(Cisneros 71,72). Clemencia is a woman who knows how to talk and have a good time. By nature she is a very creative being who loves to impress by wearing the best clothes, and show off to anyone to make herself seem better than others. (Cisneros 71). Clemencia is poor and does not have much being that she works for the school system as a translator, and other various positions. But acts rich and very wealthy to all of her friends (Cisneros 72). This connects with the myth of La Malinche, of how the character is a bad woman who sleeps with lots of men.

The situation of women in the pre-Columbian era was like any other culture because men had power. The woman lacked rights, equality and autonomy. Often, women were treated as an object. In the case of one of the most developed pre-Columbian civilizations, the Aztecs, a situation occurred with the rights of women with Dona Marina, also known as the Malinche. She was a girl of the Aztec culture, who after a clash between tribes was surrender as a slave, because that was the tradition of those times. “Later, Malinche was again ceded as a slave, but this time to Hernan Cortes by the cacique of Tabasco, along with 19 other women, some pieces of another and a set of blankets” (Castillo, 2014). Afterwards, Hernan Cortes learned that Malinche spoke several languages and did not hesitate to use her as an interpreter in order to unite alliances with the indigenous peoples conquered by the Aztecs, thus facilitating the conquest of the empire.

Anachronologically deemed a feminist for her writings, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz stood in the New World as a defiant, female Catholic. Through her work, she displays her head-strong character, illuminating the hypocrisy that was flourishing in patriarchal Mexico while simultaneously creating metaphors that clearly showed how she viewed her situation. Moreover, through extenstive allusions, she displays her aptitude, proving that she had one true love in life: the love for learning. Perhaps doomed from the start because of her sex, any time Sor Juana delved into her passion she was bound to hear insolence from a traditional member of society, namely the Bishop of Puebla,