ABSTRACT
Cortés y la Malinche: los argonautas is a dramatic work by the Mexican author Sergio Magaña that rewrites Jason and Medea’s history in a colonial American context and presents a revision of the myth of La Malinche, known as the great traitor of the Mexican people. This chapter explores how the strategies of victimization or demonization of La Malinche are abandoned through an exercise of comparative analysis with the classical Medea that emphasizes them as products of their time and circumstances, instead of insisting on using them as scapegoats of cultures or nations. It tracks in detail the irregular and highly politicized evolution of both characters between the barbarian and civilized worlds, both in Greco-Roman literature and in colonial and post-colonial discourses in Mexico, to further explore the presence of Medea and La Malinche in the interstices of legend and history, and between what these figures represent individually and collectively. It shows how in Magaña’s work Medea-Malinche plays a supporting role in the enterprise of Jason-Cortés, while identifying anomie and hypocrisy as characteristics of the times of the Expansion, bringing together the private ties of the family and the public matters of states.
