Redefining what it means to be Mexican

At the imposing two-story stone house at 57 Higuera St. in the Coyoacan district of Mexico City, for example, there is no plaque to indicate that Marina once lived there. Although for centuries she had been described as a beautiful, noble woman who commanded respect, 19th-century depictions began to condemn her for her role in the Spanish conquest. Out of these portrayals arose the peculiarly Mexican concept of malinchismo, which means the betrayal of one’s own.

Paz contended that the Mexicans’ fixation on — and ultimate rejection of — both progenitors in their origin story left them in a state of “orphanhood, an obscure awareness that we have been torn from the All.” The history of Mexico, he wrote, “is the history of a man seeking his parentage, his origins.”

This alienation resonates profoundly throughout the culture. On the one hand, Mexico proudly acknowledges its Indian ancestry; on the other, it clearly prizes whiteness as a status symbol. It endlessly questions its identity: Is it modern or ancient, Spanish or Indian? And the Cortes/Malinche story, instead of defining Mexico’s origins in a constructive way, merely prolongs and exacerbates the country’s ambivalence about its history as a conquered nation.”*

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