Semantic Echoes of a Name

Background. This article examines Laura Esquivel’s novel Malinche (2006) as a literary reconfiguration of the legendary figure of Malinche – Hernán Cortés’s translator and intermediary – within feminist and decolonial frameworks. The topic remains relevant due to Malinche’s profoundly ambivalent status in Mexican cultural memory: she has been persistently reduced to an emblem of betrayal (most notably through Octavio Paz’s "La Chingada"), while alternative readings foreground her as a mediator of languages, cultures, and historical ruptures. The aim of the study is to demonstrate how the heroine’s shifting names operate as a semantic and ideological mechanism through which the novel stages power relations, trauma, and resistance, and how the narrative restores the colonized woman’s right to self-naming as a form of agency. Methods. The research employs an interpretive textual analysis, combined with postcolonial and decolonial approaches (particularly W. Mignolo’s and T. Todorov’s conceptualizations of coloniality, translation, and the "other"). Principles of feminist criticism are applied to trace the transformation of the patriarchal myth of the "traitor" into a narrative that restores a voice to a colonized woman. Results. The analysis shows that the three key names – Malinalli, Doña Marina, and Malinche – generate a polyphonic field of meanings and correspond to distinct regimes of symbolic control. Malinalli evokes autochthonous spirituality, embodied memory, and ancestral continuity; Marina signifies colonial appropriation, institutional recognition, and linguistic power; Malinche reveals the paradox of historical remembrance, shifting from the conquistador’s nickname to a stigma imposed on the woman. The variability of naming functions as a decolonial strategy: reclaiming the original name, re-establishing genealogical ties, and articulating collective trauma as something that can be narrated rather than silenced. Conclusions. Esquivel’s novel dismantles the reductive stereotype of Malinche as a "traitor" and reframes her as a carrier of intercultural memory and a foundational figure in the emergence of a new Mexican subjectivity. The semantic "echoes" of Malinche’s name thus become a metaphor of restoration: memory contests violence, language becomes a site of ethical reparation, and self-naming opens a space for dialogue, historical accountability, and hope

Early Modern Women Writers · Latin American and Latino Studies · Latin American history and culture

• Feminismo, traducción cultural y traición en Malinche de Laura Esquivel

  Ricardo F Vivancos Pérez•Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos•2010

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