ABSTRACT
Many very fine pre-Cortesian poems provide explanations of the mother goddess's name, of which the preferred form is Cihuacoatl, Snake-Woman, which shares the element coatl with Coatlicue and thus literally means She-who-wears-the-snake-skirt death's heads and snakes being the attributes of the mother goddess. This ambiguity disappears as soon as people consider the dialectical relationships between the mother and daughter. A detailed study of the symbolic function of the couples portrayed by Asturias would lead us away from their original aim of examining the literary role of the mother goddess. Thus, in Mulata, it is through Catalina Zabala's navel that the devil Tazol is introduced into her belly and impregnates her, as the ball of feathers does Coatlicue. Like that between Coatlicue and her daughter, the relationship between Dona Barbara and Marisela is one of exclusion, but it differs in that it is the mother who hates the daughter and plans to kill her.
