Decolonisation and Depatriarchal Narratives: Violence, Power and Language in Contemporary Chicana and Mexicana Writing on La Malinche

2021年9月，国际特赦组织将公众的注意力重新集中在“墨西哥的失踪和女性杀戮流行病”上，并证明在2020年全年，每天有10名女性被谋杀（国际特赦组织2021）。该项目认为，该国的殖民历史和父权权力结构是了解这种系统性暴力根源的关键。我的研究是第一个分析墨西哥的性别殖民历史和当代墨西哥妇女通过La Malinche，谁，在征服者在1519年抵达波通昌的土著贵族妇女的数字的情况下，现在被认为是一个国家的叛徒（Trexler 1995）。我的研究评估如何当代墨西哥和奇卡纳（墨西哥裔美国人）文学La Malinche使我们能够解释这一波基于性别的暴力。我研究的主要文本是卡门·塔福拉的诗《马林切》（1978），格洛丽亚·安萨尔杜阿的《边疆》/《边疆》：《新梅斯蒂萨》（1987），桑德拉·西斯内罗斯的短篇小说《永远不要嫁给墨西哥人》（1991），帕特·莫拉的诗集《圣水》（Agua Santa/Holy Water，1995）和劳拉·埃斯基维尔的小说《玛琳切》（Malinche，2006）通过与一个从事墨西哥社会“去父权化”的墨西哥女权主义团体Las Constituyentes Feministas举行的研讨会，我的研究将是对La Malinche的第一次跨学科、双语、跨界分析。这次合作的一个中心目标是建立La Malinche作为墨西哥女权主义运动隐喻的力量。首先，我将进行几次采访，以确定La Malinche在集体中的存在程度，讨论成员是否将对墨西哥妇女的社会/身体暴力追溯到该国的殖民历史。其次，我将组织一个阅读小组，讨论我的项目的主要的奇卡纳/墨西哥文本。我将收集关于活动家对La Malinche的看法的数据，作为文化/文学隐喻，解决集体参与的问题，作为语言在传播思想和暴力中的作用。随着La Malinche奖学金（加斯帕尔德阿尔巴2014年）和基于性别的暴力在墨西哥的长期关注的重叠，我的项目将扩大学术界以外的前者。

In September 2021, Amnesty International refocused public attention towards the 'epidemic of disappearances and femicides in Mexico', testifying that throughout 2020 ten women were murdered per day (Amnesty International 2021). This project contends that the country's colonial history and patriarchal power structures are key to understanding the roots of this systematic violence. My study is the first to analyse Mexico's gendered colonial history and the situation of contemporary Mexican women through the figure of La Malinche, the Indigenous noblewoman who, upon the Conquistadores' arrival in Potonchán in 1519, became Hernan Cortés's translator and is now considered a national traitor (Trexler 1995). My study evaluates how contemporary Mexicana and Chicana (Mexican American) literature about La Malinche enables us to interpret this wave of gender-based violence. The primary texts for my study are Carmen Tafolla's poem 'La Malinche' (1978), Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), Sandra Cisneros's short story 'Never Marry a Mexican' (1991), Pat Mora's poetry collection Agua Santa/Holy Water (1995) and Laura Esquivel's novel Malinche (2006).Through a workshop with a Mexican feminist collective engaged in the 'depatriarchalisation' of Mexican society, Las Constituyentes Feministas, mine will be the first interdisciplinary, bilingual, cross-border analysis of La Malinche. A central aim of this collaboration is to establish the power of La Malinche as metaphor in Mexican feminist activism. Firstly, I will conduct several interviews to establish to what extent La Malinche's presence is felt within the collective, discussing whether the members trace social/physical violence against Mexican women back to the country's colonial history. Secondly, I will organise a reading group concerning my project's primary Chicana/Mexicana texts. I will gather data on the activists' views on La Malinche as cultural/literary metaphor, addressing issues that the collective engages in, as the role of language in the propagation of ideas and violence. With the overlap of La Malinche scholarship (Gaspar de Alba 2014) and the long-lasting concern of gender-based violence in Mexico, my project will extend the former beyond academia.