Sons of La Malinche
prohibited words | thesis | indiginistas | summary
"We are the only persons who can answer the questions asked us by reality and our own being."
p. 73
“They too carry about with them, in rags, a still living past."
p. 65.
Erroneously, "The European considers Mexico to be a country on the margin of universal history, and everything that is distant from the center of his society strikes him as strange and impenetrable."
"Woman" is "not only an instrument of knowledge, but also knowledge itself."
the worker: "Capitalism deprives him of his human nature."
Mexican hermeticism is due to the Indian Mother (secrecy, hiding the crime of rape)
"the fragmentary man [person] of our time . . . the modern worker lacks individuality."
p. 67.
"It is said that we live in a world of techniques."
"salaried" but "lacks a true awareness of what he creates."
p. 68.
He argues "that we delude ourselves," and as Paz says, "we exhibit the traits of subjected people who tremble and disguise themselves in the presence of the master.”
Paz, p. 70.
"In many instances these phantasms are vestiges of past realties."
prohibited words | thesis | indiginistas | summary
"All of our anxious tensions express themselves in a phrase we use when anger, joy or enthusiasm cause us to exalt our condition as Mexicans: "Viva Mexico, hijos de la chingada!"
it is a challenge and an affirmation, and an explosion in the air.
p. 74.
Aztec word xinachtli [garden seed] or XINAXTLI the fermented juice of the maguay transformed into chingaste used in Spanish --to drink the dregs-- Chingada
chingarse means to make the fool, "molest , censure or ridicule"
"The verb denotes violence, an emergence from oneself to penetrate another by force." "to lacerate, to violate, to injure"
"The magic power of the word is intensified because it is prohibited."
"No one uses it casually in public."
pp. 74-80.
If they are capable humans can create meaning out of the senseless horror of a nightmare
which is our experience of reality.
We are myth makers, story tellers, carriers of the ancient traditions, neither
authentic or Spanish -- neither white nor black.
Mestizo -- narcissism -- gender confusion
prohibited words | thesis | summary
La Malinche; shame of the conquest -- the indian woman who gave herself to Cortés.
The Mexican in opening up to the world-- through the alleged betrayal of La Malinche --was untimely ripped from the world center.
"The Chingada is the violated Mother.
The symbol of this violation is doña Malinche, the mistress of Cortés."
p. 85-86
Aztec -- Mixtec -- Toltec -- Olmec -- Chichimec -- Mayan diversity
"The Mexican condemns all his traditions at once, the whole set of gestures, attitudes and tendencies in which it is now difficult to distinguish the Spanish from the Indian . . . . The Mexican does not want to be either Indian or Spanish. Nor does he want to be descended from them. He denies them. And he does not affirm himself as a mixture, but rather as an abstraction: He is a man. He becomes the son of Nothingness.
"It is astonishing that a country -- should conceive of itself only as a negation of its origins."
p. 87.
“They are impalpable and invincible because they are not outside us but with in us…they are supported by a secret and powerful ally, our fear of being….
Their origins are in the Conquest, the Colonial period…”
Paz, p.73.
“The Mexican and his Mexicanism must be defined as separation and negation. And, at the same time, as a search, a desire to transcend this state of exile."
In sum, as a vivid awareness of solitude, both historical and personal. History, which could not tell us anything about the nature of our feelings and conflicts, can now show us how that break came about and how we have attempted to transcend our solitude."
p. 88.
