Por trás da voz de Malimalli: mapeamento das identidades histórica e literária de Malinche

Abstract

This paper analyzes the historical figure Malinalli-Malinche and stablishes a comparison between the historical and the fictional character of Malinche (2007), written by Laura Esquivel. The study takes literature as a humanizing reference of the character whose historical tradition stigmatized the native who translated Cortez’s speeches for the conquest of Mexico as the Mexican Betrayer. Therefore, the paper aims at problematizing Malinalli's character in literature as a representation of a woman and a historical figure, whose abilities as a translator empowered her in a doubly patriarchal scenario - mexica (Aztec) and Spanish - trying to map the different ways this character was portrayed, represented and translated over time and analyze the power relations associated with the places of speech that provide different discourses. In order to do so, from a biographical investigation of the character and a history of its people, related by writers of the time and contemporaries, as opposed to the Spanish conquistadors, we enter into concepts of Canclini (2003) referring to the hybrid cultures formed in the borders of the peoples in contact, and Todorov (1993) that analyzes Malinche as the symbol of blend between Aztecs and Spaniards. The second moment presents an overview of historical and social contexts that promote the different manifestations to the female subject, starting from the analysis of the hegemonic discourse and the construction of the identity in Enlightenment and the Romanticism and the resignation of the idea driven by gestures of counterculture, Cultural Studies and feminist movements in the guise of authors such as Hall (2003, 2005) and Todorov (2008) discussing the question of identity, Bourdieu (2007, 2009), and Foucault (1979, 1996), highlighting the concept of power and analysis of hegemonic discourse, and then, entering in the critical feminist authors like Simone de Beauvoir (2016), Showalter (1994), and a question of intersectionality based on Davis (2017) and Crenshaw (2017). The analysis of the work presents a symbology of the language and the principles of miscegenation and the metaphor of a liquid Malinche, which, like the water element, shapes and adapts according to the environment. The metaphor refers to the studies of Bhabha (1998) and Santiago (2000) that theorize the conception of cultural hybridism and inter- place in culture. Finally, we highlight the importance of a revisionist writing, theorized by Lemarie (1994) and Zinani (2006), who call for a revisit to the past in order to search for characters who have passed their story being described from the eyes of an outsider, and so re-signify its identity and represent them, as well as Malinche, as the subject of her history.