ABSTRACT
Several important studies deal with female figures associated with Mexican nationalism, but most of them have centered on the binomial Malinche-Guadalupe, ‘our original besmirched mother’ (Glantz, 1994, p. 16) and the Holy Virgin. Very little is known about Eréndira, a heroine who, in all probability, existed only as one of the fictional characters with which Eduardo Ruiz – a liberal soldier, lawyer and writer from the state of Michoacán (México)2 – adorned his collection of historical tales entitled Michoacán: Paisajes, tradiciones y leyendas (1891-1900) (‘Michoacán: Landscapes, Traditions, and Legends’) that he based on sixteenth-century document entitled Relación de Michoacán or Códice Escorial. It seems like Ruiz conceived Eréndira as the positive image of doña Marina (la Malinche), Hernán Cortés’ famous lengua or translator. Eréndira is a fiercely independent woman, a patriot with her own ideas, a woman chaste and childless who contrasts sharply to la Malinche, whom nineteenth-century liberal historiography vilified as a traitress to her race, as a mother of two mestizo children, and as a whore or la chingada (‘the raped one’, as Octavio Paz wrote in 1950). At the same time, however, conservative historiography depicted her as nothing less than an angel sent by God to protect the Catholic Conquest (Manrique, 1994, p. 248; González Hernández, 2002). In this version, Eréndira appears as an exceptional figure: a heroine beyond reproach, impeccable, perhaps even beyond belief.
