Blame the tlaxcaltecs - Elena Garro

How does Elena Garro's Blame the Tlaxcaltecs play upon/reconfigure/subvert the figure of the Malinche, as she is described by Octavio Paz in his text "Los hijos de la Malinche"?

Comparing this text with Octavio Paz's Los hijos de la Malinche, Elena's Garro way of playing La Malinche is in a very feminist-liberal way, because throughout the reading, the reader can identify characteristics of an indigenous person as well as her strong personality and her role as a woman. Octavio Paz, in his text, La Malinche is described as an indian woman known as "La Chingada" after being raped by Hernan Cortés, he describes her as a woman with no voice and humiliating person, as in Mexico using those words is very offensive. He minimizes the voice that a woman can have, as he is only offending her and not saying any virtues, for him, La Malinche is just an open woman, who lets anyone inside her life, without knowing her and without knowing the consequences. Also, what he emphasizes is in the traition she did in The Conquest, by blaming La Malinche of being open. In contrast, Garro tries to convert that description into a different one, as she describes her as a very close woman that is difficult to be opened-to. Garro is breaking Mexican's indian tereotype of a woman by describing La Malinche as independent, strong and brave, and by letting her question her traition. She also reconfigures Paz's manliness perspective about this famous Mexican figure, by changing the perspective into a feminist proposal of what a "traitor" woman could think about.

Elena Garro (1916 - 1998) was a novelist and dramatist who is commonly related to the "magic realism". She was Octavio Paz's wife. Elena wrote within her stories themes that upset the Mexican society of the time such as: marginalization of women, women's freedom and political freedom in Felipe Ángeles. His literary figure has been considered a libertarian symbol.

Bibliography

• https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Garro
• Garro, Elena. "La culpa es de los Tlaxcaltecas." La semana de colores. Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, 1964.
• Paz, Octavio, 1914-1998. El Laberinto De La Soledad. México :Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1972.