Senior Capstone

   So where does the greater guilt lie
for a passion that should not be:
with the man who pleads out of baseness
or the woman debased by his plea?
 

  Or which is more to be blamed—
though both will have cause for chagrin:
the woman who sins for money
or the man who pays money to sin?

In addition to her defense of women’s rights to study like men, Sor Juana also argued that Aztecs and other indigenous tribes were indeed human beings, a radical view among Creole and Spanish communities.  This information has been left out of most of the discourse about Sor Juana.  She is mainly looked at for her defense of women.  In my literature review only one source even mentioned a play in which she defends indigenous rights. The following is taken from the loa, (short play) "America."  An Aztec woman’s (whose forces have been defeated by Spanish soldiers) killing is prevented by the pleas of the Spanish woman, The Aztec women says to the Spanish woman:

If your petition for my life 
and show of Christian charity
are motivated by the hope
that you, at last, will conquer me,
defeating my integrity
with verbal steel where bullets failed,

then you are sadly self-deceived.
A weeping captive, I may mourn
for liberty, yet my will grows
beyond these bonds; my heart is free,
and I will worship my own gods!        

 [lines 226-236; p.19]

In her time in the Convent, she contributed to colonial Spanish feminist discourse, a discourse almost non-existent during her time period. Her message was simple: women should be given the opportunity to study just like men. She believed that there was no reason that women should not be given the same opportunities that man have. She also critiques the attitudes and hypocritical behavior of men in her poem, “hombres necios.”  (excerpts below, full poem in appendix). The ecclesiastical hierarchy did not like this message. 

 In 1691, the bishop sent her a letter “praising Sor Juana for her brilliance, but telling her that her duty was not to be brilliant, but to serve God. The role of women was to be silent, not heard.” (NietoGomez 54).  Sor Juana politely wrote her famous response 'Respuesta a Sor Filotea', defending the right of women to study and write. She said,

Surely you must know more than I; however, as I recall, Jesus did not say that women should be silent not heard. You forget the temple was a place of learning and discussion, and that women were preaching and talking to their people there, not just bowing their heads in silent prayer or absent-mindedly planning their’s weeks activities…Yes its my duty to be a servant of God, but how can I understand theology if I cant understand biology, geology, psychology?  If the world’s supposed to be a manifestation of God’s great goodness, how can I understand that if I don’t know anything about it? (54)

'Respuesta a Sor Filotea'has been hailed as the first feminist manifesto  (Kantaris).

While Malinche broke her traditional norms through speaking as a woman, Sor Juana broke her societal norms by writing as a woman.  In both cases, their voice was a tool of survival through the second death. After all their loved ones had passed away, they are living in contemporary texts, plays, songs and writings. 

Sor Juana used the limited tools that she had to talk back to the dominant paradigm, which viewed ignorance as feminine.  But she was constantly being challenged and criticized for her views until the Church ultimately silenced her.  Respuesta A Sor Filotea was the final piece that she ever got published.  Sor Juana signed a renunciation letter declaring her humility, in “yo la peor de todas” signed in blood in 1670. (Nettie Lee Benson Library Archives).  Were it not for Sor Juana’s challenge to the dominant paradigms, contemporary Chicano and Mexican communities would not have progressed in their views on women nearly as rapidly. She was essential in the historical genealogy of Chicana feminist such as Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Morraga, and Ana Castillo- to name a few. 

Gloria Anzaldua

Gloria Anzaldua embodies what Sor Juana strove for, she never married and yet devoted her life to reading, writing poetry, and challenging patriarchy.  In her shortest biography, she is described as a “feminist visionary spiritual activist poet-philosopher fiction writer.” (Keating, 3). Like Sor Juana, she is indeed a renaissance woman who describes herself as a “chicana, dyke-feminist, tejana patlache poet, writer and cultural theorist.”   She has been an influential woman in Chicano studies, queer studies, and discourse on mestizaje. Unlike Sor Juana, Anzaldua was praised for her studies and writings during her lifetime. She won a number of awards for her work, such as the Lambda Lesbian Small Book Press Award for Haciendo Cara, an NEA Fiction Award, the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award for This Bridge Called My Back, and the Sappho Award of Distinction. In addition, her text Borderlands/La Frontera was selected by the Literary Journal as one of the 38 Best Books of 1987 (Voices).

Gloria Anzaldua breaks free from traditional cultural norms and stigmas through her desire for education. She remembers, “That racial, cultural stigma was to me so unbearable that I had to do anything to get out, and the only way I could get out was to educate myself even though my family, my relatives, the people in surrounding areas, the farms and the ranches, they were not people who went to school.” (Anzaldua, 3). Gloria Anzaldua challenged and rebelled against the traditional Chicano values placed upon her by her family and her society, from the time when she was a young girl until her early death. When she was young, she was harshly disciplined and called selfish for preferring to read and write as opposed to washing the dishes or cleaning up after her brothers.  She says in an interview, “…my mother and my sister said I was selfish because I didn’t want to do housework.  I preferred reading to doing dishes or ironing my brother’s shirts.”

Gloria Anzaldua was born with some major health problems.  Due to a rare hormonal imbalance, she began menstruating while still an infant and went through puberty when only six years old.  (Keating, 5) Anzaldua remembers,

I never had a childhood, my body, my hormonal activity, made me a freak…I was different, because I had breasts and the other girls didn’t…I bled and the other muchachitas didn’t bleed.  And because I had very thin skin, everything came in—peoples words, people’s looks, any kind of put down.  If another person was hurting I would hurt.” (Anzaldua archives)

This physical difference shaped her work and gave her tremendous compassion for those who are marked as outside the norm. (Keating 6).

 As she grew older, her rebellion took on different forms.  She began to rebel through her sexuality. In fact, she made the choice to be a lesbian, she claims, “for the lesbian of color, the ultimate rebellion she can make is through her sexual behavior. She goes against two moral prohibitions: sexuality and homosexuality…I made the choice to be queer (for some it is genetically inherent)” (Anzaldua 41). She made the choice to talk back to the patriarchic cultural prohibitions. As a Chicana, mestiza woman, she was caught in the middle of two cultural norms the Spanish and the indigenous.  And yet both were repressive to her, she claims, “Sexuality was one of the aspects of myself personally that was relegated to the deepest depths because of my uterus and because of my two cultures.  The Spaniards and the Indians are very sexually repressive of female sexuality.”    She sees sexuality and spirituality as inherently interconnected, when one is explored, the other opens up.  Likewise, when one is repressed, the other is repressed.  To be a good a daughter, mother, and woman meant that she remained pure that she cooked, cleaned, helped raise the kids, and remained passive, submissive, and most of all silent.

In addition to sexuality, she rebels through her spirituality; Gloria Anzaldua chose not to be the obedient Catholic girl her family wanted her to be.  She explored many different spiritual practices including pre-colonial Aztec spirituality, Chinese astrology, and pagan spirituality.   Furthermore she was educated, she could write and she had choices that the other women did not. She remembers, “when I started reading books I realized there were other roles besides being a Mexican farm worker.” This escape enabled her to explore and embrace her mixed spirituality which included a devotion to “la Virgin de Guadalupe, Nahuatl/Toltec divinities, and to the Yoruba orishás Yemayá and Oshún,” (Anzaldua 52) For example, she sees la Virgin De Guadalupe as the most potent religious, political and cultural symbol of the Chicano/mexicano, “She, like my race, is a synthesis of the old world and the new, of the religion and culture of two races in our psyche, the conquerors and the conquered.  She is the symbol of the mestizo true to his or her Indian values.” (Anzaldua 52).

 In her most famous text, Borderland La Frontera, The New Mestizashe talks about the 'mestiza' mentality, which is about flexibility and self-transformation of a Chicana.  She claims that a connection to spirituality is essential in this self-transformation:

The patriarchal culture dominated by men instilled in us the picture of weak, vulnerable women. But in reality, females are subject to dualities. Womenare capable of being both strong and weak, invincible and vulnerable, serpent-goddess, embody heavenly and underworld powers, mother-warrior characteristics just as the female goddesses.”(Anzaldua, 54)

Anzaldua’s emphasis on spirituality as a means of strength is a powerful and enlightening image.

            She also challenges the widely accepted notion that the Spanish conquered the Indians, “When the Spaniards conquered the Indians, gave us speech and language and took over the whole of Mexico and the Southwest perhaps they did not really conquer the Indian? Chicanos are 80% Indian.  Most everything in our culture is Indian. There is very little Spanish.  That’s history.” (Anzaldua 4)

            Initially I chose these women because they embodied women who have transcended expectations of the feminine role in their societies. But the more I researched, the more commonalities I found that braid their stories together.  Each woman had a unique narrative from a very young age that could have destroyed her, yet each woman instead chose to use these differences as assets to transcend expectations of them.  For example, La Malinche’s mother sold her into slavery, after her father declared that she should rule over Paynala.  From servant, to interpreter, negotiator, and bridge between two cultures, she rose out of the ashes and used the languages this experience provided her as a tool to transcend expectations of woman.  Juana Ines De La Cruz was marked with a genius mind in a poor single parent household, which marked her as different from most women and men.  This difference was not welcomed by most of her society, but she used it to impress the marques of Mancera who then invited her to become her lady in waiting.  Because of this transcendence into the viceroy’s court, she never had to worry about money.    Finally, Gloria Anzaldua’s hormonal imbalance could have destroyed her self-confidence, and ability to honestly write her own narrative, since her family always told her to keep her constant bleeding a secret.  But it was in writing about her marked difference that ultimately healed Anzaldua, and gifted her with compassion for those who are different. 

These women all had strong connections to La virgin Guadalupe, the mother who unites people.    According to Gloria Anzaldua, La Virgin de Guadalupe is “the symbol of the mestizo…Guadalupe unites people of different races, religions, languages, chicano protestants, American Indians and whites.” (Anzaldua 52).   Malinche’s connection to La Virgin de Guadalupe is one of time and geography.  The apparition occurred right around the time Malinche would have been in her late 20’s.  No one knows for sure the date of Malinche’s death. Some accounts date her death around 1529, though other sources give 1550’s. The apparition of la Virgin in Mexico happened in 1531.  In her infamous, Respuesta A Sor Filotea, Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz uses the son of Mary- Jesus to defend women’s right to know about the world around them.  And Gloria Anzaldua uses the image of La Virgin de Guadalupe to unite different cultures.

            All three women spoke more than one language.  All of them spoke Spanish. Malinche also spoke Maya and Nuahuatl, Sor Juana spoke Latin and some Nahuatl.  And Gloria Anzaldua spoke English and Spanish with dialectical varieties such as: Standard English, working class and slang English, standard Spanish, standard Mexican Spanish, North Mexican Spanish dialect, Chicano Spanish, Tex-Mex, and Pachuco.  This ability to communicate across cultures provided them with a dual understanding of different ways of life, perspectives of viewing the world, and finally placing them in the nepantla state.[3]

             They also all have connections to mestizaje.  Malinche is the mother of the first mestizo; Sor Juana herself is a mestiza, being Basque and Creole; and Anzaldua wrote and theorized about mestizaje. All three of them excelled despite their limited circumstances.  Malinche was one of the first translators between the Spanish and the Aztecs, despite being sold as a slave twice.   Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz was published internationally and her story has gone on to inspire women worldwide to develop their intellectual pursuits.  Gloria Anzaldua inspired a Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldua whose mission is to  “provide a place for scholars, students, and community to come together with the intention of engaging in the continued study of Anzaldúa's intellectual and spiritual work.” All three women had internal tensions between pre-colonial and post-colonial spiritualities. Malinche was raised believing in the pre-colonial Aztec and Toltec gods and goddesses, but was later baptized into the Catholic faith.   Despite not having Nauhuatl blood, Sor Juana learned the language and wrote some poems in that language. All three will continue to live in the minds, spirits, and hearts of men and women for generations to come.

Performance Analysis & Details

Each medium that I am using has a specific purpose.   All three mediums will be used with each woman, splitting the performance into three parts.  For part one, storytelling will be used to introduce each woman’s childhood.  For part two, dance will be used to express each woman’s theory.  For part three, I will close with poetry (or prose in the case of Sor Juana) written by the woman, or myself.  I will end with a poem I wrote about all three women.  By using three mediums, diving the three women’s stories into three parts, I am figuratively braiding the women’s stories together.  I will be using storytelling because individual memories of lived and experiences are the “features that makes storytelling so powerfully alluring.” (Sanchez, 4) Personal stories are extremely powerful, and they affect people in a direct way.  I will be using various dance mediums to represent the different cultural contexts of each of these women.  Specifically, dance in Mexico “is a dynamic cultural expression widely practiced throughout Greater Mexico.”  According to early Spanish writers, “dance was an important and integral part of indigenous people’s lives.” And finally, “dancing is a powerful means to express personal and cultural identities” In essence, dance serves as a nonverbal mode of cultural expression.

For example, to represent Malinche I will first use Aztec dance to represent her indigenous background.  Additionally, when interviewing some Aztec dancers, I have learned that Aztec dance is a spiritual practice and a philosophy of viewing the world.  Through Aztec dance, the practitioners are able to see that the macrocosms and the microcosms are entirely connected, that what goes on in the macrocosms, in the planets affects what happens within each of us. Aztec dance will represent Malinche’s connection to pre-colonial spirituality.  Visually it will involve Malinche dressed in Aztec dress with a feathered headdress with three peacock feathers and ankle shakers made from seeds.  She will light sage and perform a short Aztec dance.  She will then be baptized into the Catholic religion by the symbolic pouring of water over my head, while a Mexican colonial skirt with La Virgin De Guadalupe on the front put on over her Aztec traditional dress.  Aztec music will begin, and she will dance los tapatios Mexican traditional dance to represent the tension between two different cultures. The visual representation of the two overlapping dresses and the two distinctive traditional dances will represent the symbiosis between the two unique cultures. 

 The next dance medium, Flamenco will be used to depict Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz.  While I go back stage to change costumes, I will have prerecorded pieces of her poetry and words, as images of her flash on a large screen. I will walk out slowly and a prerecorded version of “hombres necios”, in English will play and I will dance, to the poem.  Visually, Sor Juana will be dressed in a deep red flamenco dress, and blue flamenco shoes.  But she will be covered with a black silk cloth to represent the silencing.  She will physically be on a platform, to represent the convent she was not allowed to leave, and she will be covered from head to toe.  Despite this attempted silencing, she will dance with loud stamps and beautiful elegant movements.

Sor Juana also spoke about women’s hair, how hair was a symbol of beauty, but if it covered an empty mind, it was nothing but a mask.  According to Anna Nietogomez, “[Sor Juana] said that not until a woman’s mind was equal in beauty to her long hair should she have her long hair, so in three months, she would plan to read a certain amount, and if she hadn’t she would cut off her hair.” (54). In the performance, I will cut a section of my hair to honor Sor Juana. Between the dances, each woman will tell a story about herself; excerpts have been included.  During the dress changes, prerecorded poems and images will be displayed.

For Gloria Anzaldua, she will begin with a pre-recorded poem about drumming. I will then break free from traditional dance forms and will use interpretive dance and belly dance to represent the sexual freedom that she created for herself and the break from traditional life.  I will end with her views on nepantla and spiritual activism (see script below) Since her work was widely published, I will use her own poetry to depict her in the performance.  The following is a poem about being mestiza taken from Borderlands:

“Because I, a mestiza

continually walk out of one culture

and into another,

because I am in all cultures at the same time,

alma entre dos mundos, tres, cuatro,

me zumba la cabeza con lo contradictorio.

Estoy norteada por todas las voces que me hablan

Simultaneamente.

(Anzaldua,  99)

Works Cited

Anzaldua, Gloria. "Coatlalopeuh, She Who Has Dominion Over Serpents." Goddess of the Americas/La diosa de las americas. Ed. Ana Castillo 52-55. New York: Riverhead Books, 1996.

Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands, La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lude Books, 1987.

Anzaldua, Gloria. Ed. Analouise Keating. The Gloria Anzaldua Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.

Arenal, Electa. "Sor Juana and Company: Intellectuals and Early Feminists." Approaches to Teaching the Works of Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz. Ed. Emilie Bergmann and Stacey Schlau. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2007. 37-46.

Blake, Debra J. Chicana sexuality and gender cultural refiguring in literature, oral history, and art. Durham: Duke UP, 2008.

Brandt, Jane Lewis. La Chingada. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979.

Castillo, Bernal Díaz del. Conquest of New Spain. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963. 

Castillo, Bernal Díaz del. La Verdadera Historia De La Nueva Hispana. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963. 

Chorba, Carrie. Mexico, From Meztizo to Multicultural, National Identity and Recent Representations of the Conquest. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2007.

Contreras, Sheila Marie. Blood Lines Myth, Indigenism and Chicana/o Literature (Chicana Matters). New York: University of Texas, 2008.

Cuizon, Gwendolyn. "Gloria Anzaldua's Borderland: Spirituality is the Essence of Being a Mestiza." Biographies/Memoirs. Web. 03 Jan. 2010. <http://biographies memoirs.suite101.com/article.cfm/spirituality_in_borderland_la_frontera>.

Fernandez De Castillejo, Federico. El Amor En La Conquista. Buenos Aires: Emece Editores, 1943.

"Gloria Anzaldua :." Voices From the Gaps : University of Minnesota. Web. 03 Jan. 2010. <http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/anzaldua.php>.

Juana, Inés, Electa Arenal, and Amanda Powell. The Answer: including Sor Filotea's Letter and New Selected Poems = La Respuesta. New York: Feminist at the City University of New York, 2009.

Kantaris, Geoffrey. "Lecture on Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz." Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge. 03 Jan. 2010. <http://www.latin-american.cam.ac.uk/culture/SorJuana/>.

Kirk, Pamela. Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz; Religion, art and Feminism. New York: The Continnum Publishing Company, 1998.

Lanyon, Anna. Malinche’s Conquest. South Austrailia: Griffen Press, 1999.

Najera-Ramirez, Olga, Norma Cantu, and Brenda Romero, eds. Dancing Across Borders, Danzas Y Bailes Mexicanos. Chicago: University of Illinois, 2009.

Nietogomez, Anna. “Chicana Feminism.” Chicana Feminist Though. Ed. Garcia, Alma. New York: Roudledge, 1997.

Novas, Himilce. Everything you need to know about Latino History. New York: Penguin Group, 1994.

Appendix

Hombres Necios by Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz

Hombres necios que acusáis
a la mujer sin razón,
sin ver que sois la ocasión
de lo mismo que culpáis:

   si con ansia sin igual
solicitáis su desdén,
¿por qué quereis que obren bien
si las incitáis al mal?

   Combatís su resistencia
y luego, con gravedad,
decís que fue liviandad
lo que hizo la diligencia.

   Parecer quiere el denuedo
de vuestro parecer loco,
al niño que pone el coco
y luego le tiene miedo.

   Queréis, con presunción necia,
hallar a la que buscáis,
para pretendida, Thais,
y en la posesión, Lucrecia

   ¿Qué humor puede ser más raro
que el que, falto de consejo,
el mismo empaña el espejo
y siente que no esté claro?

   Con el favor y el desdén
tenéis condición igual,
quejándoos, si os tratan mal,
burlándoos, si os quieren bien.

   Opinión, ninguna gana:
pues la que más se recata,
si no os admite, es ingrata,
y si os admite, es liviana

   Siempre tan necios andáis
que, con desigual nivel,
a una culpáis por crüel
y a otra por fácil culpáis.

   ¿Pues cómo ha de estar templada
la que vuestro amor pretende,
si la que es ingrata, ofende,
y la que es fácil, enfada?

   Mas, entre el enfado y pena
que vuestro gusto refiere,
bien haya la que no os quiere
y quejaos en hora buena.

   Dan vuestras amantes penas
a sus libertades alas,
y después de hacerlas malas
las queréis hallar muy buenas.

   ¿Cuál mayor culpa ha tenido
en una pasión errada:
la que cae de rogada
o el que ruega de caído?

   ¿O cuál es más de culpar,
aunque cualquiera mal haga:
la que peca por la paga
o el que paga por pecar?

   Pues ¿para quée os espantáis
de la culpa que tenéis?
Queredlas cual las hacéis
o hacedlas cual las buscáis.

   Dejad de solicitar,
y después, con más razón,
acusaréis la afición
de la que os fuere a rogar.

   Bien con muchas armas fundo
que lidia vuestra arrogancia,
pues en promesa e instancia
juntáis diablo, carne y mundo. 

(English)
   Silly, you men-so very adept
at wrongly faulting womankind,
not seeing you're alone to blame
for faults you plant in woman's mind.

   After you've won by urgent plea
the right to tarnish her good name,
you still expect her to behave—
you, that coaxed her into shame.

   You batter her resistance down
and then, all righteousness, proclaim
that feminine frivolity,
not your persistence, is to blame.

   When it comes to bravely posturing,
your witlessness must take the prize:
you're the child that makes a bogeyman,
and then recoils in fear and cries.

   Presumptuous beyond belief,
you'd have the woman you pursue
be Thais when you're courting her,
Lucretia once she falls to you.

   For plain default of common sense,
could any action be so queer
as oneself to cloud the mirror,
then complain that it's not clear?

   Whether you're favored or disdained,
nothing can leave you satisfied.
You whimper if you're turned away,
you sneer if you've been gratified.

   With you, no woman can hope to score;
whichever way, she's bound to lose;
spurning you, she's ungrateful—
succumbing, you call her lewd.

   Your folly is always the same:
you apply a single rule
to the one you accuse of looseness
and the one you brand as cruel.

   What happy mean could there be
for the woman who catches your eye,
if, unresponsive, she offends,
yet whose complaisance you decry?

   Still, whether it's torment or anger—
and both ways you've yourselves to blame—
God bless the woman who won't have you,
no matter how loud you complain.

   It's your persistent entreaties
that change her from timid to bold.
Having made her thereby naughty,
you would have her good as gold.

   So where does the greater guilt lie
for a passion that should not be:
with the man who pleads out of baseness
or the woman debased by his plea?

   Or which is more to be blamed—
though both will have cause for chagrin:
the woman who sins for money
or the man who pays money to sin?

   So why are you men all so stunned
at the thought you're all guilty alike?
Either like them for what you've made them
or make of them what you can like.

   If you'd give up pursuing them,
you'd discover, without a doubt,
you've a stronger case to make
against those who seek you out.

   I well know what powerful arms
you wield in pressing for evil:
your arrogance is allied
with the world, the flesh, and the devil!

Performance Script  (subject to change)

Introduction: prerecorded, spoken word: According to Mexican folklore, there are three types of death of an individual. The first is the death we are all familiar with, the death of the physical body. The second death occurs when all of your loved ones and everyone who ever knew you, all pass away.  The third type of death happens when all memories of you cease to exist.  The third death may be delayed through art, history and storytelling.  In this project, I aim to contribute to the collective memory of three inspiring mestiza women: Malinche, Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz, and Gloria Anzaldua.   All three of these women have strong spiritual connections to both pre-colonial spirituality and Catholicism. While each of their stories is entirely unique, this connection to their spirituality, gave all three of them the strength to survive in the minds and hearts of future generations. 

Malinche walks in slowly, her copili the headdress is on the floor, next to a bowl/vase of water and some sage, a shell, and a candle.  She picks up some sage and lights it, she smudges the entire room returns the sage to center stage and puts on the copilli. She begins her dance with the introduction dance.  The music comes on when she kneels and bows. One minute dance (cut music) attach a storm sound to the music.

When storm comes on- I drop to the floor, the skirt is already on the floor hiding a bowl of water.  I take the bowl of water and pour it over my head (silence) I put on the skirt representing Catholosicm and begin a Los Taptios dance. After the dance, I look into the audience and tell the story of my childhood:

The snake with four nostrils left my father one hour to live.  He chose me as his successor, to rule over Paynala, after all I was his only kin.  My mother never wanted me to rule over Paynala.  Thought I could not handle it. So she sold me.  Sold me to the pochtecas.  I was tied down and carried 200 miles from Paynala to Oaxaca.  I was so thirsty.   I was renamed Ato by the family who purchased me as a slave.  When the white men came, I was given to them, like a string of decorative beads.  They hungered for my female flesh, but Cortez would not let them devour me.  He protected me.  The ocean protected me. She caught me, cradled me to the shore.  Where I was baptized into the Christian Religion.  La Virgen protected me.  I was taught all of the stories of the bible. I came to embrace the miracles of Christianity.  I came to praise la Virgen y el Senor Jesus.  But I never let go of my own faith, my own Gods.  I tucked them away to be saved for later when I needed them.  Took them out from time to time, in secret, asked them to watch over me.  They helped me when I translated between Moctezuma and Cortez.  Embraced me when I gave my flower to Cortez.  Gave me strength when I gave birth to my firstborn. Guided me when I needed guidance. (based on historical fiction by Jane Lewis Brandt)

I gave Cortez everything.  I gave him my tongue, my voice, my life.  My body served as a vessel to please him, to bare our children.  And you know how he repaid me?  He took everything!  He took my life, my soul, my first child. Took him from my arms before I could cradle him.  Before I could love him, be there for him.  Before I could teach him his history, before I could pass on my languages.  Before I could bathe him.  He took him from me.  How could he? He left me, married me off to his cousin, without consulting me.  But the history of my people will survive.  It will survive in the minds and hearts of future generations.  The Chicanos will remember us, they will remember our history. 

Beauty bathed in her hair

her sexual appeal washed over

her body

her wisdom was deeper

her tongue spoke for two cultures

her mothers tongue

and her oppressors voice

her ability to love had no boundaries,

to love him, them,

despite their cruelty

despite their difference

despite their tyranny.

Her genius was to fuse

the oppressed

and the oppressor.

to understand

the Spanish

and the Aztec

and the tlascalans

her ability to love

and forgive

them all

made her the mother of a mixed people.

La Madre de los mestizos.