Rolando Díaz.
Southeastern Oklahoma State University
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Cultural, Linguistic, and Historical Hybridity in Black
Widow’s Wardrobe by Lucha Corpi
A study of Black Widow’s Wardrobe (1999), by Lucha Corpi reveals the elements of cultural, linguistic, and historical hybridity that are interwoven throughout the narrative. The framework for this literary analysis can be based on the theories proposed by Homi Bhabha in his book Location of Culture and by Gloria Anzaldúa in her book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. For Bhabha it is a third space “where the negotiation of incommensurable differences creates a tension peculiar to borderline existences” (Location 218). For Anzaldúa, “That third element is a new consciousness – a mestiza consciousness – and though it is a source of intense pain, its energy comes from continual creative motion that keeps breaking down the unitary aspect of each new paradigm” (Borderlands 102). Lucha Corpi takes into account the historical, folkloristic, cultural, and social aspects of the Mexican-American / Chicano identity. She develops her narrative as the constant conflict between differences and inequalities. The female protagonist, Gloria Damasco, then, exists as a hybrid within a larger social context. Corpi takes the reader on a journey to explore the historical origins of the meta-narrative that is the Chicano novel.
As a seasoned author of the Chicano experience, Lucha Corpi takes into account the historical, folkloristic, cultural, and social aspects of the Mexican-American / Chicano identity. This is the third element, the new consciousness, to which Gloria Anzaldúa refers. Corpi develops her narratives as the constant conflict between differences and inequalities, as Bhabha defines them. The female protagonist, Gloria Damasco, then, exists as a hybrid within a larger social context. Corpi takes the reader on a journey to explore the historical origins of the meta-narrative that is the Chicano novel. Through her detective narratives, Corpi provides the reader with a unique perspective of the Chicano cosmovisión, or world view, from the inside.
The detective narratives of Lucha Corpi reflect the Mexican and indigenous (Nahuatl) aspects of mestizaje, and incorporates into them the Chicano identity of Southern California[1]. Her Gloria Damasco novels can be read simply as fast-paced detective fiction, but it can also be read as detailed historical studies of the Chicano experience in the United States. It is almost as if the reader is asked to pull up a chair at the kitchen table, grab a piece of pan dulce and a tacita de café, so that the narrator can tell a story that weaves real historical figures from Mexico’s past, like Hernán Cortés and La Malinche, with detective fiction that features Chicano characters of the present day who are still struggling to define themselves and their place within the dominant society of the United States. The historical aspects of their hybridity gives them a cultural context from which to understand their roots, while their present day dissention from the mainstream reflects the systemic, and at times self-imposed, marginalization.
The introduction of Black Widow’s Wardrobe serves as the focal point for the entirety of the narrative that follows. In the first few pages of the novel, Lucha Corpi introduces the hybrid nature of the Chicano identity as an amalgamation of Spanish and indigenous histories. Examples of the hybrid elements include the Chicano identity of being La Raza, Licia Lecuona’s connection to Malintzín Tenepal / La Malinche / Doña Marina / La Llorona, the Mexican charros, matachín dancers, and the reference to La Virgen de Guadalupe.
Black Widow’s Wardrobe (1999) (“Black Widow”) is the third in a series by Lucha Corpi that features Chicana detective Gloria Damasco and introduces another Chicana detective, Dora Saldaña. However, it is the first novel to directly connect the direct forbears of the Chicano identity, Hernán Cortés and La Malinche, as vital parts of the novel. As such, it is presented here as a novel that explores the beginning of Chicano history. Black Widow is a fast-paced crime narrative that blends supernatural, historical, cultural and linguistic elements to tell a tale that begins at a Day of the Dead festival in San Francisco and culminates in the tunnels and caverns within Tlacatepetl, or Man’s Mountain, in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Corpi uses her knowledge of the rich heritage and history of the Chicano and Mexican cultures and the classic first-person narrative style of hard-boiled fiction to tell her story. Throughout the narrative, the Chicana detective pieces together key elements from her investigation, including the aforesaid cultural, historical, and oniric elements, the result of which is the cultural hybridity of the story. In this manner, Damasco brings resolution to what was in fact a mystery that was almost twenty years old.
This is the story of Licia Román Lecuona, otherwise known as the Black Widow, a woman who killed her husband some twenty years before the opening of the novel, and who has only recently been released from prison. Gloria and her family see Licia being attacked during a celebration of Día de los Muertos in San Francisco. This is the inciting incident that pushes forward the plot of the novel. Through cesarean section, Licia gave birth to twins when she was in prison, but was told that she had only had one baby, and that it had died not long after birth. She finds out years later that she did in fact have twins, a boy and a girl. This serves as a strong motivation for her to serve her jail time and then get out and search for her children. Much like La Llorona, Licia Lecuona searches for her children.
Her husband’s brother, Juan Gabriel Legorreta, a professor of anthropology who smuggles illicit drugs and pre-Columbian artifacts from Mexico, and his wife, Isabela Legorreta, however, illegally adopted her children. Licia’s children, Martín and Inés, now around eighteen years of age, have been raised to despise their birth mother. In fact, Martín is the one who tries to kill Licia three times; first he stabs her at the start of the novel, then he enters her home and tries to kill her again, and finally, at the climax of the novel, he threatens her with a gun before realizing that he has been wrong about Licia all along.
Interwoven within the narrative are Gloria’s continued visions that not only give her insights about the characters she is investigating, but also foretell key moments of the story. Before the narrative of the novel even begins, Gloria describes a vision that does not fully make sense until the last page of the novel, when she states: “…my feelings and dreams had become inextricably intertwined with the threads of Black Widow’s life. I knew that the visions would follow, and that I would give myself no choice but to work toward freeing myself form their hold” (iii).
To complicate matters further, Licia believes herself to be the reincarnation of Malintzín Tenepal, also known by her Christian name, Doña Marina, and by the disparaging name of La Malinche, one of the most reviled characters in Mexican history, being that she was the woman who served as translator for Hernán Cortés, Spanish conqueror of Mexico. As his lover, La Malinche also bore him a son, Martín Cortés. After Cortés gave La Malinche to one of his captains, she had another child, María Tenepal Jaramillo. To understand Corpi’s characters means to have an awareness of Hernán Cortés and La Malinche, two of Mexico’s most important historical figures, for they speak to the hybridity of the Mexican and Chicano identities. Corpi also incorporates the legend of La Llorona into Licia’s character, for they are both in search of their lost children and both are described as being dressed in white.
In the end, Gloria solves the crime of who initially tried to kill Licia Lecuona at the start of the novel. It was her own son, Martín Legorreta, who had been raised by a domineering father to despise his own biological mother and who had been manipulated by his step-father, Juan Gabriel Legorreta. This discovery, however, comes at a high price, as Dora Saldaña shoots and kills Juan Gabriel Legorreta at the same moment that he shoots and kills Martín, who fires his gun and hits Gloria (183). The male sibling, Martín, dies and the female sibling, Inés, survives. Licia reconciles with her daughter and her step-mother, Isabela Legorreta, and provides for them in her will before disappearing. The last image of the novel is of a “woman wearing a white dress” who was seen entering the house that would soon burn down and where no human remains were ever found (193)
Hybrid mythos refers to origins, beliefs and, of course, identity (including history, legend, folklore and language), essentially the genesis of any given ethnic group. The history of the Chicano is a mix, like Mexico, of Spanish and indigenous, but what makes it uniquely Chicano is that it also contains the elements of life, history, and linguistic development within a third social context, that being the United States. A Chicano contains the essence of the Mexican identity, to be sure, but he also incorporates the essence of being an “estadounidense” into his hybrid identity. Gustavo Segade comments on this in his article, “Toward a Dialectic of Chicano Literature” when he states, “Chicano reality cannot, by itself, destroy the antithetical elements which created it. Chicano reality must continue to relate to that of Mexico and the United States, while affirming its own, unique existence” (4).
Randall Keller follows up on this in his article, “The Past in the Present: The Literary Continuity of Hispanic Folklore In New Mexico and the Southwest when he states, “For the contemporary Chicano writer, there is the opportunity to dwell in the hyphen of Mexican-American, cultivating creative advantages not only to spring out of either side, but to call in each side in order to create a whole that is more than the sum of the two parts” (107). This is consistent with the idea proposed by Homi Bhabha that the Mexican / Chicano is neither the colonizer nor the colonized, but something else entirely, encapsulating its roots, but amalgamating into something new (13). Lucha Corpi presents her detective narratives within the context of cultural hybridity because one needs to understand the dynamics and discourses at play within and between the Spanish, Indigenous, Mexican, and Chicano identities to fully understand the multi-layered meanings of her novels.
A reader can certainly pick up a Gloria Damasco novel and read it cover to cover without any knowledge of the historical, cultural and linguistic elements in the narrative and still enjoy a good read. However, if one has some degree of understanding of what makes the Chicano culture tick, then one will be able to fully appreciate Corpi’s craft as a novelist and as a commentator on the Chicano experience. In the opening paragraphs, Corpi introduces the reader to such hybrid elements as the Procession of the Dead, matachines, charros, La Virgen de Guadalupe, and the historical characters of La Malinche and La Llorona, each piece coming together like a jigsaw puzzles to firm various aspects of the Chicano hybrid identity.
Corpi also incorporates the hybridity of time and place in her Chicano detective narratives. The European / American concept of time is that it is static. It is a commodity to be traded and bartered. It is linear, leading from cause to effect. The Mexican/Chicano concept of time is more fluid, at times circular, where the future precedes the present and where the past bares a direct influence on the present. Corpi uses these elements in the visions Gloria Damasco experiences her “dark gift”. Through prolepsis and analepsis, Corpi jumps to different points in time to tell her tale. This all has a directing impact on the places where the actions take place in Corpi’s narratives. Chicano sensibilities color the perceptions of the protagonists, antagonists, and other important characters. The narrative voice describes and experiences actualities that can best be understood as hybrid realities of past, present and future and of Spanish, Indigenous, Chicano and American. All of this, then, is what makes the landscape depicted in Corpi’s detective narratives uniquely Chicano. From a traditional point of view Lucha Corpi’s novel is a classic detective novel. It has all of the typical elements necessary for a good yarn, a murder, a mystery and a detective. But it is also a novel imbued with a strong sense of history, myth, lore, and a tacit if not explicit element of the supernatural. But all of these latter characteristics stem from the fact that it is not simply a detective novel, but a Chicano detective novel.
Hybridity makes its appearance immediately following the aforementioned diary entry that prefaces the novel, in the opening paragraphs of what could be referred to the narrative proper Black Widow.[2] As can be seen from the paragraph below, Corpi integrates the theme of Chicano hybridity from the beginning of her detective’s telling of the story:
We joined the candlelit Procession of the Dead as the marchers turned from Mission to Twenty-fourth Street, moving toward the Galería de la Raza. The procession was headed by Don Mariano Tapia and his matachines – dancers in Aztec dress – and Mexican charros on horseback, wearing death masks over their faces. Two of the horsemen held a Mexican and a U.S. flag respectively. They flanked one in the middle who carried a banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe. (1)
As can be seen, the procession is a representation of the syncretism which, as noted by among others, Octavio Paz, is the staple upon which Mexican Catholicism is based, a blend of Mexican Catholicism and Indigenous beliefs, all of which is carried over from the conquest of Mexico. In El laberinto de la soledad, Paz states: “Resulta innecesario añadir que la religión de los indios, como la de casi todo el pueblo mexicano, era una mezcla de las nuevas y de las antiguas creencias. No podía ser de otro modo, pues el catolicismo fué una religión impuesta” (105). Mexican Catholicism, then, is a blend of Spanish and indigenous beliefs resulting from the imposition of the Catholic faith.
In addition to this rich blend of culture and religion that is a part of Mexican heritage, Corpi adds the perspective and reality of Chicano culture that inhabits what has become part of the southwestern United States. The Procession of the Dead was and is part of the Mexican tradition of the Día de los Muertos celebration, which takes place beginning on November 1 and ending on November second of each year. This is a hybrid of pre-Hispanic cultures and customs that go back hundreds of years before the Spanish conquest of the Americas. It began as an indigenous holiday and was eventually blended with the Catholic observation of All Saints Day (Brandes, 360). As a hybrid of both indigenous and Spanish traditions, it acknowledges the death of loved ones, but also celebrates the life they lived and serves as a reminder of the fate that awaits every living thing. The Chicano experience with el Día de los Muertos is unique in that it blends the indigenous/Spanish Catholic hybrid with secular contexts involving art, ethnicity, and political expression (Marchi, 273). As reflected in the narration of Black Widow, other elements associated with this observation include marigolds (cempoalxuchitls), flowers of the dead according to Mexican tradition, pan de muerto, or bread of the dead, and altars and ofrendas to the dead (2). Thus, from the beginning, the reader is immersed in the hybrid worldview of the Chicano.
The fact that the Corpi’s detective opens her narrative with the Day of the Dead ceremony can hardly be considered mere happenstance or dramatic effect. Indeed, one cannot discuss Dia de los Muertos without considering the origin and nature of this particular cultural practice in Mexican and, by extension, Chicano culture. As Paz has observed, Mexican culture is marked, among other things, by its obsession with Death:
Para el habitante de Nueva York, París o Londres, la muerte es la palabra que jamás se pronuncia porque quema los labios. El mexicano, en cambio, la frecuenta, la burla, la acaricia, duerme con ella, la festeja, es uno de sus juguetes favoritos y su amor más permanente. (63)[3]
What this means is that the figure of Death is a constant for both the Mexican and the Chicano. According to Paz, this presents a contrast with the general Anglo majority population of the United States who chooses to shy away from its own mortality and uses euphemisms and other obfuscating language to distance itself from the ultimate reality of death. In this novel the concept of death marginalizes the Gloria Damasco and Licia Lecuona and separates them from the mainstream American society. Licia uses death, or rather murder, to free herself from her abusive husband, while Gloria spends the majority of the narrative trying to save Licia from an impending death.
Paz maintains that the Mexican and Chicano sees death as something to be courted and even something to be made fun of. It is something to be played with and something that is a constant companion and a perpetual amorous infatuation. This is arguably why, in Corpi’s novel, the element of Death is not just a constant, but is portrayed in a manner that represents the Chicano fatalistic worldview as part of its Mexican heritage. Paz maintains that the manner in which a person dies is more important for the Mexican than the death itself. If a person does not die the way he or she lived, then his or her life was not something that belonged to that person, says Paz, and he adds a variation to a Mexican saying: “Dime como mueres y te diré quien eres” (59). Throughout the novel, Gloria Damasco constantly refers to the acrobat dressed as Death, for it is a constant vision that haunts her. In more practical terms, it is the threat to Licia’s life that sets the plot of the novel into motion. Death exists as both an abstraction and as a real life manifestation in this novel. In the end, Licia die the way she lived, as a sacrifice for her own children. She dies so that her daughter, Inés, may live (193).
The fact that Gloria also mentions the Galería de la Raza is also relevant to the idea of hybridity that is taking shape as the story begins. Even the term “galeria”, which, among other things is an area used to exhibit or to showcase given items of works of art (The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, 307), can be seen to play into the novel’s overarching function: a showcase of La Raza, the Chicano community. In this regard, it is worthy to keep in mind that José Vasconcelos identified people from Latin America as “the cosmic race” in his book La Raza Cósmica (1925) where he proposed that the Hispanic race in the Americas would be the amalgamation of the other four races, Black, White, Indigenous, and Asian: “En seguida, debajo de estas cuatro alegorías, debieron levantarse cuatro grandes estatuas de piedra de las cuatro razas contemporáneas: la Blanca, la Roja, la Negra y la Amarilla, para indicar que la América es hogar de todas, y de todas necesita.” (52).
Within the context of the Chicano experience in the United States, leaders like José Ángel Gutierrez, Xenaro Ayala, Willie Velasquez and others adopted this term and applied it to the Mexican American communities of the 1960s and 1970s. La Raza Unida Party, which sought to elect Chicanos for positions in the city government of Crystal City, Texas grew to become the National Council of La Raza, a political organization that exists to the present day. Corpi’s brief mention of La Raza can be seen as no mere happenstance, but a strong and persistent element in the guise of the Chicano identity. In the opening paragraphs of her narrative, she forthrightly informs the reader that Black Widow is going to be a Chicano narrative, composed of the various nuances of the hybrid Chicano identity.
Another element of hybridity in the preceding quote that warrants mention is the figure of the matachines. As Harris notes, the dancers often tell the tales of the conquest, as such, matachines are characters that represent a dance which is a hybrid of both the indigenous and the Spanish (Harris 122). Various origins have been proposed for the term “matachín”, from the “il matacino” that appears in Italian comedy, to “matachins” and “mattasin” bouffons that appear in French operas and plays, to the “matachin” in popular Spanish cancioneros, to the Nahuatl “matlachines”, and have also been related to the morisca dances of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Robb 87-88). Generally, these dances involve re-enactments through dance and rituals of historical events such as the perpetual fight between Christians and Moors to the dances that tell the tale of the Spanish conquest of the New World. The spectacles include sword fights, elaborate costumes, masks, music, religious artifacts such as images and figures of la Virgen de Guadalupe and outlandish props such as bulls. The matachín, therefore, is a concept based in European tradition, brought to the Americas, and used to tell the tales of the conquest. In other words it is a mini-re-telling of the how the Mexican, and by extension Chicano identity is formed. Titles of matachín dances include “La Batalla,” “La Mudanza,” “La Entretejida,” “La Procesión,” and, of course, “La Malinche” (Robb 100).
The figures of Hernán Cortés and La Malinche are often included in the stories (Harris, 108). The reader can see a foreshadowing of the themes that will later be developed in the narrative. As is the case with Mexican and Chicano history, culture and lore, the figures of Hernán Cortés and La Malinche, go on to play a major part in the development of the narrative and in the complexity of Licia Lecuona’s story. If one considers that the figures of La Malinche and Moctezuma, Aztec emperor when Hernán Cortés arrived in the New World, are also interconnected in the various versions of the danzas de los matachines, then the figure of La Malinche takes on an even more profound significance. In these dances, she is not only the first indigenous person to be converted to Christianity, but she is also presented as Moctezuma’s wife. In the article, “The Return of Moctezuma: Oaxacas ‘Danza de la Pluma’ and New Mexico’s ‘Danza de los Matachines,’ Max Harris describes a version of the danza in which Moctezuma is accompanied by two women, La Malinche and Doña Marina and: “Malinche and Doña Marina are clearly distinguished. Malinche, in indigenous dress, represents Moctezuma’s wife and remains with him throughout. Doña Marina, in Spanish costume, begins with Moctezuma, but transfers to the Spanish side halfway through the dance” (112). This one historical icon represents the conqueror and the conquered, the Spanish and the indigenous, the true hybridity that is the Mexican, the Mexican Indian, and ultimately, the Chicano.
Lucha Corpi uses this blending of cultures, languages, and histories to develop complex characters and an intricate plot that reflect the amalgam profundity of the Chicano identity. Along this line, a critical hybrid element in Black Widow is the “black widow” herself: Licia Román Lecuona. Corpi presents this hybrid character as the reincarnation of Malintzín Tenepal, also known as Doña Marina, who has been generally recorded by official Mexican history as the traitorous figure of La Malinche[4].
Carlos Fuentes points out, in The Buried Mirror, that La Malinche was one of twenty girls who were given to Cortés as a special tribute (111). Out of this group, he chose one, “this woman’s name” says Fuentes, “was Malintzín, a word that indicated that she had been born under the signs of strife and misfortune” (111). Fuentes goes on to tell the reader that her Spanish name was Marina, meaning “she who ca me from the sea” (111). Her own people, however, called her La Malinche, “the conquistador’s woman, the traitress” (111). Malintzín Tenepal’s hybridity, then, hinges on the various identities that have been imposed on her. Her first name is Nahuatl in origin. Doña Marina, literally meaning she who comes from the sea, is Spanish in origin. La Malinche, the disparaging term given to her by the indigenous people of Mexico, is the resulting term based on the alleged treason of her people. By translating for Cortés and eventually becoming his lover and subsequent mother of his child, she betrayed the Aztecs and all of the indigenous people.
In this manner, one can see that in Corpi’s novel Licia and La Malinche are one and the same: the oppressed woman who must make a life dealing with circumstances that are beyond her control. Much like La Malinche was branded a traitor to her people, Licia, who murdered her husband and “abandoned” her children, was condemned as a traitor by her family (particularly, her son Martín). It is during her prison stay that Licia comes to feel that she is the reincarnation of the hybrid historical figure Malintzín Tenepal / La Malinche / Doña Marina.
Sister Rosa Catalino, a prison inmate who served time with Licia and who went on to become a spiritualist and reader when she was paroled, reaffirms the direct connection between Licia Lecuona and Malintzín Tenepal:
Malintzín Tenepal, a Nahuatl princess in the region of Coatzacoalcos. Sold into slavery by her own widowed mother, who had remarried and wanted only her son to inherit everything. The young Malintzín – almost fifteen when she met Cortés – was given to him as a gift, together with nineteen other young women. She was a gift from heaven, and he knew it right away. He used as her his interpreter, in other words, his tongue, ears, and mind. Without her, the Spaniard’s mighty sword might have been useless. She was also his lover, friend, comrade-at-arms, and the mother of his son, Martín Cortés. (57)
Here, Sister Rosa provides a brief overview of Malintzín’s life. She was a fifteen-year-old princess who was sold into slavery and eventually given to Hernán Cortés. She went on to serve as translator for Cortés and played a key role in the Spanish conquest of the New World. Together they had one son, Martin Cortés. However, Cortés never married her, since he had ambitions to marry into the Spanish nobility. Instead, he gave her lands and property but eventually married her off to one of his captains, whose last name was Jaramillo (58). Both Licia Lecuona and Malintzín Tenepal had gone through “loveless marriages to men who had squandered their fortunes” (58). Sister Rosa advises Nina and Gloria to look into the death of Malintzín, who had been fatally stabbed outside her house in Mexico, for a clue as to who might be trying to kill Licia.
Hernán Cortés and La Malinche represent the two bloods, the Spanish and the indigenous, that would come together to create the mestizos, the mixed-bloods. In this vein, it is hard not to notice that Martín is also the name of the son born of the union of Licia with Peter Lecuona, who considers himself of “noble Spanish blood” (14).[5] This is reiterated once again, in Chapter thirty, in the dénouement of the novel, Gloria’s mother makes a direct connection between the lives of La Malinche and Licia Lecuona when she states, “Like Malinche, Licia married a Spaniard, who not only didn’t love her, but mistreated her and was unfaithful to her. She had a son named Martín, who hated her” (Black Widow 190). [6]
Damasco’s tale is interwoven with history, myth and religion. One of the most outstanding elements of this hybrid story is the well-known legend of La Llorona. The archetype of the mother who murders her children can be traced back to such characters as Medea, the Greek tragic figure who murdered her children and fed them to her husband Jason. The Mexican/Chicano historical/mythical iteration to this figure is La Malinche. According to certain interpretations of history, La Malinche betrayed her own children when she helped Cortés conquer the Aztecs. Corpi clearly steers the reader in this direction when Damasco’s mother says, referring to the Black Widow: “Es la llorona” (Black Widow 6).
Indeed, the Black Widow, Licia Lecuona is a direct allusion to this fundamental part of the Chicano/Mexican mythos. As the story plays out, Licia Lecuona takes on the role of La Llorona/Malinche: giver and taker of life, creator and destroyer at the same time, but also, the ultimate scapegoat. Just as does La Llorona, Licia inhabits both the world of the living and the world of the dead; myths perpetually dressed in white and eternally searching for their lost children. Although La Llorona is mentioned but once in the novel, it is enough to plant the seed of mystery associated with myths and legends. It is also sufficient to add yet more layers of tone and meaning to the tale told by Corpi through her story-telling detective. She also adds the tone of a cuento and the several meanings of a reference to this Mexican/Chicano mythical icon. In this manner, as Corpi tells the story of Licia Lecuona, she also brings the reader into the myth and folklore of the Chicano. Corpi’s reference to La Llorona is central not only to understanding the character of Licia Lecuona, but to understand some of the background of Mexican/Chicano history. La Llorona, as various historical accounts have stated, is a woman who cries out for her lost children.
La Llorona is central to the understanding of the character of Licia Lecuona. Not only do they share an alliterative quality to their names, Licia Lecuona and La Llorona, they also share an eternal obsession with their children. The book, Visión de los vencidos: Relaciones indígenas de la conquista, describes one of the earliest known historical references to La Llorona, as one of eight omens of doom (presagios funestos) that foretold the arrival of the Spaniards. Told from the indigenous perspective, this omen tells how a crying woman was heard many times in the night. She cried out to her children, telling them that they had to go far away. She was also heard wondering aloud where she could take them (4). Gloria observes the woman in white, Licia Lecuona, walking about fifty feet in front of her and her family (Chapter Two: “Horsemen Pass By”). Since she is dressed in white, she evokes the image of La Llorona (6). Much like La Llorona wanders the nocturnal world looking for her children, Licia Lecuona spends much of the novel in a somnambulant state search for her children as well. The Chicano oral tradition connects La Llorona with various indigenous entities. She has been associated with the Aztec goddess Matlacíuatl who stalked and preyed on men, the goddess Ciuapipiltin, who wandered about in the night with an empty cradle lamenting her lost child, Ciuacóatl, an earth goddess, and La Malinche, who forever blames herself for betraying her children, the indigenous generations born after the conquest of Mexico (Shular 97).
The opening scene also represents the perpetual hybridity of the Chicano, when the narrative voice describes how La Virgen de Guadalupe is flanked on both sides by the U.S. Flag and by the Mexican flag. The Chicano identity is a fusion of the countries represented by these two flags and is forever traversing the border between the two. Gloria describes how, “Two of the horsemen held a Mexican and a U.S. flag respectively. They flanked one in the middle who carried a banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe” (1). The symbols, then, represent the hybrid nature of the Chicano identity, composed of the red, white, and blue, star-spangled patriotism of the United States, the red, white, and green Mexican flag with the Aztec eagle devouring a snake on a bed of cactus, and the Catholic influence on both sides of the border, as represented by the banner of La Virgen de Guadalupe.
As students of Mexican history know, the first unofficial “flag” of Mexico was a banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe (Meier 25). This happened when Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla stopped with his militia at the Sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Atotonilco and affixed her image to a lance and adopted it as his banner. As Octavio Paz notes, La Virgen de Guadalupe has major significance in the formation of the Mexican psyche as such:
La Virgen es el Consuelo de los pobres, el escudo de los débiles, al amparo de los oprimidos. En suma, es la madre de los huérfanos. Todos los hombres nacimos desheredados y nuestra condición verdadera es la orfandad, pero esto es particularmente cierto para los indios y los pobres de México. (El laberinto de la soledad 93)
According to Paz, then, la Virgen consoles the poor and the weak, and is the beacon of hope for the oppressed. Mankind is born in a state of disinheritance, and his true condition is one of orphanhood. Paz maintains that this applies especially to the indigenous and the poor of Mexico. Corpi applies this sense of orphanhood to the Chicanos of the United States when she describes them as “the abandoned children of divorced cultures” in Black Widow (147).
History records that she appeared early December in 1531 in one particular mountain, Tepeyac, to one particular man, Cuauhtlatoatzin / Juan Diego (Fuentes 145). Our Lady of Tepeyac appeared four times, significant because four is the sacred number of completion for many indigenous people. The sacred fifth element is the center, and she appeared to Juan Diego’s Uncle, Juan Bernardino, a fifth time, after he miraculously recovered from a grave illness (Castillo xvi). Juan Bernardino also identified the Virgin as Tlecuauhtlacupeuh, or She Who Comes Flying From the Light Like an Eagle of Fire. Other variations of her name include Tequantlaxopeu, or She Banishes Those That Ate Us, and Coatlaxopeuh, or She Who Crushed the Serpent’s head (xvi).
The image of La Virgen de Guadalupe has important significance relative to the hybridity of the Chicano identity. As Paz notes, la Virgen de Guadalupe is an important component of the syncretic (ergo hybridity) of Mexican Catholicism. As the author of Laberinto de la soledad explains:
[n]o es secreto que el catolicismo mexicano se concentra en el culto al la Virgen de Guadalupe. En primer término: se trata de una Virgen india; en seguida: el lugar de su aparición (ante el indio Juan Diego) es una colina que fue antes santuario dedicado a Tonantzín, “nuestra madre”, diosa de la fertilidad entre los aztecas (93).
In this regard, according to Ana Castillo, La Virgen de Guadalupe can be traced back to Nuestra Señora Santa María de Guadalupe. In other words, under Castillo’s interpretation, the Virgin of Guadalupe is “The Virgin Mary imported from Guadalupe, Extremadura, Spain, the province in Spain where many of the conquistadors, including Cortés, originated” (xv). As Castillo states, Nahuatl accounts from before and after the conquest also state that she may have identified herself as Tequatlasupe, but given that church officials of the time may not have been able to translate every Nahuatl sound directly into Castilian and thus her name was as Guadalupe (xv). Another possible Nahuatl name that she may have been given, concludes Castillo, is Tequatlanopeuh, or She Whose Origins Were in the Rocky Summit. She is also known as Tonantzín, ‘Our Mother’” or Mother Earth, since she can be found in every summit and in every mountain (xvi).
La Virgen de Guadalupe is a vital part of the Chicano hybrid identity. In the book A Chicano Theology, Andres G. Guerrero explains the importance of La Virgen de Guadalupe to the Chicano:
To understand the symbol of Guadalupe is to understand the essence of being Mexican. Traditionally, this essence has carried over to the Chicanos of the American Southwest, where the symbol of Guadalupe exists vividly… Many Chicanos, both male and female, bear her name. Guadalupe, like Jesus, is very real to us (96)… For Mexicans and Chicanos, Guadalupe is not a companion, a wife, sister, or daughter. She is a mother. (98)…Guadalupe was and continues to be the mother of the oppressed Native Americans and mestizos in Mexico and in the Chicano Southwest. (98)
The established depiction of La Virgen de Guadalupe (la virgen morena) reflects the physical attributes of the indigenous, and by extension of the Chicano. Thus, just as the brown virgin was appropriated by the indigenous Mexicans of the 16th century, so was she adopted by the Chicanos of the United States. The multiple layers of her hybridity are clear: she is Spanish; she is brown, she is indigenous. She has therefore been claimed by the Chicanos as their own. Her name is given to both males and females among Mexicans and Chicanos. She is the mother of the Christian Christ that was used as a tool of conquest and domination and she is the mother of the oppressed, the marginalized.
Another element of hybridity are the Mexican charros[7] in the opening sequence. They represent the machismo still prevalent in the Chicano southwest and Mexico. In The Buried Mirror: Reflections of Spain and the New World, Carlos Fuentes describes charros as “machos, outlaws, bandits on horseback, independent and lonely men in a lonely natural setting, never far from the violence of our social life” (287). Fuentes goes on to say that charros are always willing to take a stand against such crimes the usurpation of lands, rapes, and foreign interventions. As such, they are perpetually on the brink of starting the next revolution against perceived injustices. In this regard, it is pertinent to add that, the charro can be traced to the state of Jalisco in Mexico and to the state of Salamanca in Spain (El Pequeño Larousse Illustrado 232).
Gloria Damasco examines hybridity through the names of some of her characters. A specific example is Lester Zamora’s daughter, Xochitl Zamora. When she arrives at the Zamora home, Gloria sees a young woman leave the house. It turns out to be Xochitl, Zamora’s only daughter. This character again exemplifies yet another element of the indigenous / Spanish hybridity present in this novel. The first name is Aztec, but the surname is Spanish. Although a minor character in the overall structure of the novel, Xochitl Zamora is the blending of the Old and the New Worlds, yet generations removed from the Spanish Conquest. This character’s name is also a reminder of the historical connection between past and present. It is the Nahuatl word for flower. Generally speaking, Corpi’s detective narratives are Chicano novels because they are formed by elements that constitute Chicano cultural heritage, where a consistent theme is the blending of past and present.
As mentioned before, Corpi’s detective novels display a true exposition of Chicano culture, within the genre of detective fiction. In her novels the reader can find the hybrid mythology of the Chicano experience. From this point of view, Corpi’s novels display a true exposition of Chicano culture. Corpi’s works are most certainly entertaining and make for a good detective yarn, but they can also be read as a detailed presentation of Chicano culture. One of the strong components of Chicano culture is Hybrid mythology. The Chicano mythos is a mix of Mexican, Spanish and Chicano proper, which is part Indigenous Mexican, part European Spanish, part United States American, all mixed up in an individual who struggles for identity within cultural, linguistic, and socials matrixes that are often at odds with one another.
According to Octavio Paz, another psychological/cultural element of the Mexican psyche is self-loathing. The Mexican feels this, says Paz, because he caught in the dichotomy of being both the Spanish conqueror and the vanquished Mexica (Laberinto 96). Corpi’s character, Lester Zamora exemplifies this idea. In describing his relationship with each of his two aunts, Sofía and Clara, he says,
[t]hey’re both very old now. They live in Salinas. When I visit them, my aunt Sofía, who, unlike me, is light-skinned and has green eyes, proudly tells me that we haven’t a drop of Indian blood in us [. . .]. But my aunt Clara … [. . .]. She’s practical, straightforward, and doesn’t have an ounce of prejudice in her heart. Over the years, whenever I’ve gone to see her, Aunt Clara has always told me what she sees in store for me. She’s been right many times. So, you see, you don’t have to convince me that people with dark gifts exist. (34-35)
For many Chicanos, there is a rejection of anything Indian or indigenous. As a Chicano, Lester Zamora is the product of a European and Indigenous hybrid history, Gloria describes him as having an oval face, brown skin, and straight hair (4). Even though he is a lawyer, in other words an educated person, he still harbors deep-seated beliefs that are a fusion of both. Lester Zamora is a fusion of Mexican Catholicism and Indigenous beliefs., the product of the hybrid mythos of the Chicano.
Although Corpi introduces the hybrid elements of the Chicano identity in the opening sequence, they do not become clearly evident until one reads the novel in its entirety and then takes a look back to the various points in the narrative where Gloria’s narrative voice points out the eternally conflicted Chicano, who is both Spanish and indigenous, and who is both Mexican and American. The Chicano is both the conqueror and the conquered, and the subjugator and the subjugated at the same time.
Chapters Eight and Nineteen present the reader with yet two more historical elements vital to the Chicano identity.[8] In Chapter Eight: “Shadows in the Attic,” Gloria meets an old woman who lives across the street from Licia’s house and who once worked for Miss Roman, Licia’s grandmother. The character of Miss Roman can be interpreted as a direct reference to the Roman past of Spanish Peninsular history. When one looks at the etymology of the term “roman” one can see that Corpi’s selection of this surname for Licia’s grandmother is no coincidence. The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology states that, “…as a surname Roman (1205) developed from Old English romane inhabitant of ancient Rome or of the Roman Empire (before 899)” (669). As Licia’s grandmother, her last name can be interpreted as representing the Latin Christianity introduced to the Iberian Peninsula during the Roman Empire. She is the historical European part of Licia’s past, before the Spanish Conquest of the New World.
In Chapter Nineteen: “The Jade-eyed God,” Gloria finds out that Licia’s mother’s name was Elena Tomasa Briones Castillo (105). As mentioned before, nomenclature matters in the novel of Corpi. In this case, Licia’s mother’s name is a strong reminder of the Spanish heritage of Chicano identity. The Breve Diccionario etimológico de la lengua Española defines castillo as deriving from the Latin castellum literally meaning a small encampment, or diminutive of castrum, meaning fortress or fortified encampment (152). This dictionary further states that as a surname Castillo means “fortress” or one who lives within the fortress (152-53). The kingdom of Castilla in Spain derives its meaning from the many castillos, or castles, constructed by the Christians as defense against the Moors in the VIII and IX centuries (152). Here, one can see the Moorish/Castilian hybridity that is such an important element of Licia’s character and of the Chicano experience in general. Much like Licia’s grandmother’s last name of Roman, her mother’s last name represents the next step in Peninsular history, the Castilian, yet another element in Licia’s hybrid character. Licia herself represents the next step in the evolution of the Chicano identity. The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology defines Chicano as a term that was coined around 1954, “borrowed from a Mexican Spanish dialectical pronunciation of Mexicano Mexican, with the loss of the initial unaccented syllable me” (120).
Also in this chapter, Gloria incorporates the indigenous element into the RomanCatholic/Castillian/Indigenous hybridity when she describes a statue that she sees at the Church of the Holy Trinity—La Santísima:
As usual, the Son and the Holy Spirit were represented by the cross and the white dove, but the artist’s rendition of God the Father broke with Western tradition. The artist—a native craftsman, no doubt—had depicted the Father as a man with high cheekbones and arched brows, large slanted eyes, and a long straight mustache down each side of his mouth—a god deserving of prayer in Nahuatl or Chinese. (163)
As can be seen, in this passage, the narrative voice describes Mexican Catholicism as a hybrid of both Spanish and indigenous elements. The Christian images of the Son and the Holy spirit remain unchanged, but the public perception and understanding of God himself from the indigenous perceptive, bears indigenous physical traits. The narrative voice of the Chicana protagonist makes special note of the fact that the artist “broke with Western tradition” by depicting “God the Father” in terms that are applicable to both indigenous or Chicano physical characteristics.
When one takes the images of the cross and of “God the Father” as presented above and compares them to the images to be found in books of Chicano art such as, Chicano Art: Inside Outside the Master’s House, Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art: Artists, Works, Culture, and Education, Chicano Art for Our Millennium, and many more, one can see that, much like the Indigenous of Mexico appropriated Christian images, digested them, and then recreated them from their own perspective, Chicano artists in the latter half of the twentieth century did the same thing. In Contemporary Chicano Art: Color and Culture For a New America, George Vargas states that, “Throughout its unfolding, Chicano art has served as an art of identity, asserting the uniqueness of Chicanos and their dual cultural backgrounds – of Mexico and the United States” (XVI). Thus, persistent images to be found in the Indigenous religious art of Mexico and in Chicano art are the cross, La Virgen de Guadalupe, Aztec deities, the one Christian God, and countless saints. Included in contemporary Chicano art is the continued struggle of everyday life within the United States.
The Chicano identity is a hybrid of the constant struggle between conflictive, bellicose tendencies and pure and chaste qualities as demonstrated both in Chicano art and in Corpi’s detective narrative. Martín and Inés Legorreta represent two important sides of the Chicano identity, with Martín demonstrating the confrontational, war-like tendencies of his adopted father, and Inés showing the pure and chaste tendencies of her adopted mother. Martín Legorreta turns out to be the figure that Gloria sees dressed as Death at the start of the novel. Much like his historical predecessor of the same name, Martín Cortés[9], Martín Legorreta was separated from his own mother when he was an infant. He is also the one who repeatedly tries to kill Licia. Inés Legorreta represents the more innocent and chaste aspect of the Chicano. Curiously, Corpi’s answer seems to be that for the Chicano community to continue as a whole, the confrontational, hate filled side must be destroyed so that the more peaceful and noble side may survive. If Martín represents the masculine, machista side of the Chicano identity and if Inés represents the feminine, acquiescent side, then Corpi’s narrative seems to suggest that the destructive macho, represented by Martin, Peter, and Juan Gabriel, must be destroyed so that the Chicano may continue alongside the maternal hembra represented by Licia, Inés, and Isabel.
Another type of hybridity to be found in this novel are the folkloristic elements of the Mexican and Chicano identity. In Chapter Fourteen: “Furies in the Mist,” Gloria notices the great collection of pre-Columbian jewels and artifacts the Legorreta family has. In her interaction with Juan Gabriel Legorreta she mentions that she has studied cultural anthropology in college. He claims that cultural anthropology is simply folklore and says that Chicanos, are very ignorant and don’t value what they have. She snaps back by questioning whether anyone has the right to steal Mexico’s national treasure (80). Here the reader can see the juxtaposition of the historical past with the contemporary present. Ironically, the pre-Columbian artifacts are commodities to Legorreta and not intrinsically valued as tokens of history or identity.
Corpi mentions this to point out the fact that these artifacts are not simply folklore, as Juan Gabriel Legorreta would have Gloria believe. The fact is that this character has been robbing Mexico of its history and culture by smuggling these items out of the country and selling them on the black market. As the ultimate “malinchista”, what Paz calls all of those who have sold out the essence of Mexico to outside interests, Juan Gabriel Legorreta tries to throw attention away from himself and instead blames the Chicano for not being intelligent or educated enough to know his own history and culture. When viewed from the perspectives discussed throughout this study, one will note that Corpi is highlighting these artifacts as intrinsic elements of the Mexican and Chicano identities. As mentioned in the introduction of this dissertation, Corpi’s detective narratives, then, are more than straightforward sleuth stories; they are revelations and expositions of the Chicano experience through the medium of investigative fiction.
Corpi further addresses the Chicano’s eternal desire for bicultural harmony and balance in Chapter Twenty-five: “Reprieve from Fear” where Mario and Dora discuss the issue of Mexican and Chicano identity, as something that can find permanency and acceptance in neither Mexican nor American societies. As a hybrid of both, they belong in neither one. Mario asks why it’s so important for Chicanos to be accepted by Mexicans. Dora replies that Chicanos “are like the abandoned children of divorced cultures…forever longing to be loved by an absent neglectful parent—Mexico—and also to be truly accepted by the other parent—the United States” (147-8). As mentioned before, hybridity is what sets the Chicano apart in either culture. Thus, the Chicano is in a perpetual struggle to bring some degree of balance among the various aspects that comprise what it is to be Chicano. According to Dora, the want for bicultural harmony is essential to survival and the struggle to attain it what keeps Chicanos alive. The feeling of abandonment, however, persists. Mexico neglects them and the United States will not accept them. Here, in a nutshell, is one of the ways Corpi presents the hybrid plight of the Chicano in her detective novel.
In this manner, Corpi also presents the idea of the Chicano as an abandoned child of divorced cultures in the way her characters are constantly traversing between the histories, cultures, and languages of the United States and Mexico. These are individuals who have Spanish and/or Indigenous names yet live within an English-speaking environment. These are characters who are familiar with mainstream American cultures and traditions, and yet are also intimately aware of Aztec and Spanish customs. These are persons who live within the frontier or frontera of both countries yet find themselves cast off by both Mexicans and Americans, an experience that makes them all the more Chicano. This is the Chicano identity that Lucha Corpi presents to the reader, from before the narrative even begins, to the last page when the narratives comes a full circle to explain the vision Gloria Damasco had at the beginning. From a traditional point of view Lucha Corpi’s novel is a classic detective novel. It has all of the typical elements necessary for a good yarn, a murder, a mystery and a detective. But it is also a novel imbued with a strong sense of history, myth, lore, and a tacit if not explicit element of the supernatural. But all of these latter characteristics stem from the fact that it is not simply a detective novel, but a Chicano detective novel. As such, the factor that plays a most prominent role in presenting the said characteristics is element of hybridity.
In sum, the detective narrative of Lucha Corpi can be examined from the perspective of hybridity. The hybridity of the Chicano identity can be seen in the narrative, a mixture between English and Spanish, in the historical references, and in the descriptions of the locations in Corpi’s Black Widow’s Wardrobe. Hybridity can also be placed within the context of origins, beliefs, and identity, including history, legend, folklore, and language. Essentially where mankind, in this case where the Chicano comes from. In the case of the Chicano, it is a mix of the Spanish, the Indigenous, and the American (United States). These is the mixes that gives the Chicano his or her respective identities. For Corpi, a Chicano is a marginalized, disempowered, self-conflicted, and at times angry and embittered individual who struggles to balance various identities in the struggle to survive within a larger social context that will not accept him or her. This is the type of Chicano she presents through her narrative. Also presented within this context is the Chicano concept of time. For Gloria Damasco, as a Chicana narrator, time is fluid, with prolepsis (flash forward) and analepsis (flashback), where the past has a direct influence on the present, and where time is not linear but circular. The final element of hybridity for the Chicano is his place, his third space, somewhere between the United States and Mexico. This landscape is a marginalized space between two cultures, two languages, and two countries that do not accept the Chicano as one of their own, but instead sets this person aside in the physical, cultural, and linguistic borderlands between the two.
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[1] While Black Widow’s Wardrobe (1999) reflects historical elements of the Spanish conquest of the Mexico, Corpi’s other detective narratives address other time periods and issues regarding the Chicano experience. Eulogy for a Brown Angel (1992) begins the narrative during the Chicano Moratorium in East Los Angeles on August 29, 1970. Cactus Blood (1995) begins its narrative during the United Farm Workers protests in 1973 and tackles the issues of illegal immigration and exploitation. Crimson Moon (2004) develops its detective narrative against the backdrop of the Chicano Movement and civil rights struggles that took place during the late 1960s and early 1970. Death at Solstice (2009) reflects the influences of such historical figures as Joaquin Murrieta on present-day southern California.
[2] It is important to remember that the actual narrative begins with the foreshadowing dream of Corpi’s detective. This may be considered a paratext, according to Gérard Genette because it exists outside of the narrative, yet informs the reader of important elements in the story that is about to unfold (Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, 1).
[3] Although the works of Octavio Paz and Lucha Corpi have been translated into other languages, this author has made the conscious decision to cite the works in the language in which they were originally written and published to ensure that nothing is lost in translation.
[4] In El laberinto de la soledad, Octavio Paz describes the deep hatred many Mexicans feel for La Malinche, whom they blame for helping the Spanish conquistadors defeat and conquer the Aztecs. In this book, Paz also connects La Malinche with La Llorona, as they are both long-suffering mothers (83).
[5] Anna Lanyon provides a detailed account of the life of Martín Cortés in her book, The New World of Martín Cortés (2003), where she describes this historical figure as a child who, “…, more than any of the numerous children born to Amerindian mothers and Spanish fathers in the aftermath of the Conquest, could be said to symbolize the agonizing genesis of the new Mexico” (4).
[6] It is pertinent to note that, historical accounts show that, although La Malinche served as translator to Cortés and was his lover, they were never legally married.
[7] In the article, “Engendering Nationalism: Identity, Discourse, and the Mexican Charro,” Olga Nájera-Ramírez presents the charro “as a master symbol of lo mexicano on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border” (1). She analyzes how gender, nation, and class all come together to form the charro identity. According to Nájera-Ramírez, “…the charro must be approached as both a national symbol and a cultural construction of maleness” (2). The charro, then, is a hybrid of Spanish and Mexican traditions that eventually found their way to the United States.
[8] The nomenclature Corpi uses in naming her characters is no accident. They, too, speak to the hybrid identity of the Chicano.
[9] In The New World of Martin Cortes (2003), Anna Lanyon explores the life of the first mestizo. Born in 1522, Martín Cortés is symbolically the first child born in Mexico to an Amerindian mother and a Spanish father. In the chapter “Thou Art an Ocelot,” Lanyon explores the mother/child relationship between Martín Cortés and la Malinche (3-14).