Polycentricity

Abstract

In Part 4 of the prose section of Borderlands/La Frontera, the Aztec goddess Coatlicue is an archetype in the Jungian sense, a “presence” in the narrator’s psyche: “For me, la Coatlicue is the consuming internal whirlwind, the symbol of the underground aspects of the psyche” (Borderlands 68). Coatlicue “lives” inside the narrative persona’s inner self together with other myths of Chicanas’ particular pantheon of diosas: I’ve always been aware that there is a greater power than the conscious I. That power is my inner self, the entity that is the sum total of all my reincarnations, the godwoman in me I call Antigua, mi diosa, the divine within, Coatlicue-Cihuacoatl-Tlazoleotl-Tonantzin-Coatlalopeuh-Guadalupe — they are one. (Borderlands 72)