Chicana Sexuality and Gender

I found it really interesting how in Chicana Sexuality and Gender, Debra Blake deconstructs the violence that the stories of "La Malinche" and "La Llorona" perpetuate by how they label each woman a traitor and a murderer. I had never really thought of how La Llorona would be a product of toxic masculinity in the way that her identity is used to warn children. Yes, she might have murdered her children, but from Blake's findings, she was believed to be an indigenous woman left by her no-good upper-class husband.

Through Blake's interviews of semi-professional to professional Chicanas, Blake asserts “ If women are rendered as tools of the ruling male elite in these accounts… they are also conceived as powerful figures that ennoble dynasties, inaugurate ideas…,” meaning that they should be asserted as more than the men who used them (15). For example, Blake talks about how Malintzin should be thought of as a unifier between indigenous and Spanish culture in Mexican history (16). In addition, La Llorona is a spiritual being who takes space in rural areas and uses her voice “disrupting silence and colonial authority through her wailing” (16). Although La Llorona is thought to be an angry and sinful woman like Malintzin, her existence is actually the product of emotional abuse set on by her husband who abandoned her. La Llorona and Malintzin’s stories have been survived through Mexican folklore meant to warn others of deviant women, but it is through the counter-memory of Chicanas and Mexicanas that they become women of prestige and power in Mexican history.