Marianismo

La Virgen de Guadalupe and La Malinche

Chicana feminists look to Spanish colonization as the site of the entrenching of patriarchal ideologies in Mexican society. Whereas the stereotype of the Latina is a nurturing woman, non-feminist historians often ignore the matriarchal roots of the Americas. This is not to say that pre-Columbian Mexico did not have oppression or suppression of women, but rather to illuminate how colonization and conquest shaped expectations about women's behavior and gender roles that came directly from Europe.

Scholars tend to ignore the great mother Coatlique who ruled Aztec society as a god. She is the mother goddess of the earth and also birthed the moon and stars. With the arrival of Hernán Cortés in Mexico and the dominance of Catholicism as a tool of conquest, La Virgen de Guadalupe became the figure women should aim to emulate, replacing Aztec reverence of stronger female deities. La Virgen's endless love for her children, the ideal qualities of self-sacrificing woman, chastity, and purity free from sexual carnality mark La Virgen as the ideal woman, or “la mujer buena.” “La mujer buena” is ideal in the macho‘s patriarchal domination because she puts the needs of her father, brother, husband, and children before her own. The model of subservience, however, is limiting and dangerous in the ways that it is often proscribed uncritically onto Latin American cultures.

This representation of womanhood is held in stark contrast to “la mujer mala,” who can be seen as La Malinche or Malintzín, the indigenous woman who aided Cortés's conquest of Mexico in the role of his interpreter. She is credited as the mother of the birth of Mexicans as she was indigenous and the child she bore with Cortés, who was Spanish, was the first mestizo. As the mother of modern Mexicans, she has been characterized as a traitor; to be called a Malinche is to be a traitor to one's people.

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