Daughter of Coatlicue: An Interview with Gloria Anzaldúa

Abstract

Among the first Chicana writers to recover and rewrite Mexican histories and Mexica goddess figures from a feminist, decolonial perspective, Gloria Anzaldúa is what I call a ``daughter of Coatlicue.'' Coatlicue is the Mexica earth mother goddess of creation and destruction. In patriarchal Mexica mythhistory, Coatlicue's daughter is named Coyolxauhqui, the Mexica warrior goddess dismembered by her brother Huitzilopochtli, the God of War, and banished to the sky as the moon. According to several feminist interpreters, this story marks a shift in Mexica history from a gynecentric to androcentric ordering of life and the simultaneous divestment of female power. Given the additional context of Spanish colonialism that from its inception negatively constructed Mexica culture, Coatlicue, Coyolxauhqui, and other indigenous sacred figures were also demonized and fragmented. Spanish chroniclers, for example, described Coatlicue as an ``old hag'' and a satanic ``idol.'' Engagement with Coatlicue's physically dismembered daughter, therefore, marks the desire to suture the wounds inflicted by patriarchy and eurocentrism. ``My whole struggle in writing,'' says Anzaldúa, ``has been to put us back together again. To connect up the body with the soul and the mind with the spirit'' (Interviews/Entrevistas 220).