It is
possible to trace the relationships between sex, gender, and nation-states through the
textual material of essays by contemporary Mexican women writers such as Sabina Berman,
Julieta Campos, Rosario Castellanos, Brianda Domecq, Margo Glantz, Bárbara Jacobs, Marta
Lamas, Elena Poniatowska, Martha Robles, and Sara Sefchovich.
These authors play a significant role in
developing and disseminating ideas and theories that illustrate how patriarchal society
manipulates constructed categories of gender and representations of monumental and
archetypal female figures of Mexican history in order to subordinate women.
These
intellectuals critique and subvert the typical manipulations and (mis)representations of
images of the Virgin of Guadalupe as the glory of motherhood, of La Malinche as the
embodiment of the “bad” and sexual woman, and of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz as
the reminder that women’s intelligence is “abnormal.” All three historical/cultural figures and female
archetypes are from the time of the Conquest or the Colonial period in Mexico.
However, through the nation-state, their
archetypes have endured to the present time with the purpose of maintaining women in a
position of the “other” within the Mexican nation.
Mexican women writers share a mission of making
progress in the struggle for women’s rights in Mexico, so that women have the right
to assert themselves in society without repercussion.
From the standpoint of a conceptual framework, their ideas are highly
relevant to theories orbiting around history, myth, culture, and gender.
