To Be a Woman, To Be a Traitor

The last time I gave my warmth away, it was to a white man. We laid staring at the ceiling in his king-sized bed with our limbs kept to each other as if we were strangers. But we weren’t exactly strangers, we weren't lovers, and we weren't friends. Our lips and fingertips were the only sources that kept us connected. Intimacy is an exchange of warmths. You are given the option to accept the other individual’s warmth and let it ease the coldest parts that ache inside of you. But he was too cold, I was a burning fire that he could not handle. My warmth was too much for him. It made him realize there are wounds living inside of him that he didn’t want to acknowledge.

As the blazing sunlight crept in through his bedroom window, I had an epiphany of what I was ultimately letting myself accept. I was accepting someone to use my warmth for their satisfaction and all I would get back was coldness and emptiness. But my heart had not comprehend what I had put myself, my body through. I couldn't unmerge the touch of our fingerprints. The grazes of pale white skin against my golden arms and thighs. The willingness of letting him use my warmth for a momentary release of brain chemicals that he used as a distraction from the damage his father had caused him. That Sunday morning, as I stared at his spotless walls, I made up my mind that it would be our last secret rendezvous.

On the neverending drive home, I thought about the pattern of men I’d dated, how they'd been incapable of reciprocating my warmth. Besides that, they were all white. This realization came after I had undergone a period of retro-acculturation, where I began to rediscover my identity and reclaim my Mexican culture. I slowly began to realize that most of my attraction to white men was derived from the fact that I had watched too many women in my Mexican culture suffer from endless pain those same men in my culture had caused. I’d been only dating white men because they didn’t understand my culture, they didn’t see me as inferior. I wanted freedom. I wanted to be seen as a human being. There was a deep sorrow within myself that was suddenly brought to light while the radio in my car went static and the overcrowded roads of my hometown began to antagonize me. I realized my aggravating guilt.

I began to suspect that all the women in my family have a sorrow buried within them. From my grandmothers to my aunts, to my mother, to my sisters, to me. I suspect that there is a hurt embedded deep in our hearts. It is a hurt as a result of all the machismo, the toxic masculinity, that has been in my Mexican culture for years and years. Mexico as a country has progressed with electing its first female president this year, Claudia Sheinbaum, but does that erase the prevalent misogynistic sentiments against women in my culture?

For centuries, women have been seen as inferior, as second to men. I was raised with being told to get down on my knees and pray to a god that was not a “She” but a “He.” He would solve all of my problems if I begged enough. I was raised to believe that the first woman, Eve, was created from a man’s rib. I was raised to believe that because of Eve, my human nature is to be weak because she fell into the serpent’s temptation. The idea that women are the antagonists since the beginning of time has constructed the patriarchal society we live in today. It has been passed from generation to generation and culture to culture. It has become the disease of human nature to see our grandmothers, our mothers, our sisters as slaves to men.

Once a Mexican girl becomes a woman at the age of fifteen, a man can own her. Wherever he goes, she follows. Whatever he says, she does. The man becomes her provider while he leaves home every sunrise to fulfill his purpose of being the one who produces the income. The woman stays home and is expected to wash the man’s clothes, the messes he makes. She must raise their children to be well-mannered. She must have the boiling pots of arroz con frijoles prepared to feed the man after he returns from his long laborious day. She sets the spoons and plates on the table and serves him first then the children. She eats the food that took her hours to make last, however, it has become cold since her attention has been placed on him all evening. By night, all she wants to do is sleep after hours of washing and cleaning, and the soles of her feet have become rough and achy. But her concluding duty as a wife has yet to be fulfilled. So the man affirms his power as he gets on top of her and he penetrates her only thinking of his pleasure. After all, he is the man, the provider, he maintains her and he has the right to her tender body. She doesn’t feel pleasure, she has no right to, she is just a woman. To go against the role that has been given to Mexican women, is to be seen as a traitor.

When the Spanish conquistadores stole the lands of the indigenous people, a story surfaced of a famous woman referred to as La Malinche. She was an indigenous woman who is perceived to be the ultimate traitor of the indigenous people. The tale of La Malinche is that she seduced the Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortés, becoming his lover and interpreter. La Malinche was fluent in the languages, Nahuatl and Spanish, which was a valuable skill that Cortés used to his advantage while he ended and killed the ruler of the Aztec empire. La Malinche’s name became synonymous with the words “traitor” and“betrayal” because of her alleged alliance that she formed with Cortés. However, over the years, scholars have given La Malinche a voice since her side of the story has never been told. We only know what happened through Cortés' accounts and the small recordings of the indigenous encyclopedia. Many scholars argue that La Malinche was a slave to Cortés. She had no choice but to translate to Cortes all those years. There is nothing romantic about a Spanish-entitled man forcing a young indigenous girl to turn against her own people. It was no betrayal, but enslavement.

I imagine that La Malinche lives inside all Mexican women. Women whose lives, whose perspectives do not get told. I believe that I hold all the hatred and pain La Malinche went through while enslaved by Cortés. The pain tosses and turns inside my heart when my own people keep regurgitating ideas that women are inferior to future generations. When in anger we turn to one another and yell to each other “¡hijo de tu chingada madre!”. The phrase in Spanish, hijo de tu chingada madre, translates to “son of the fucked one,” which is used to insult one another. It is a slap in the face. The word chingada or “fucked” derives from La Malinche bearing Cortés’ son, ultimately making the first line of mestizos, a person of mixed European and American indigenous ancestry. It insinuates that all Mexicans are bastards because our mother, La Malinche, had a sexual union with a Spanish colonizer. Isn’t it sad that my own culture turned against La Malinche without ever giving her a chance? Isn’t it heartbreaking to realize how women’s narratives get twisted and erased by others? How did my culture—my people—let our ancestors' pain, their suffering, become the punchlines and insults we now casually throw around?

My perception of men has been constructed from my own observance of how my mother has been treated by my father. I assume that my mother’s perception of men was constructed from her observance of how my grandfather treated my grandmother. I am expected to learn from my mother’s constant cleaning up of my drunken father’s vomit at three in the morning. I am expected to learn from my mother to bear five children even if that means having a doctor cut open three layers of stomach skin. I am expected to be like my mother and never talk to my daughters of the sorrow I hold within because to speak of the pain is to become a traitor.

I have oppressed myself by withholding all of this hatred that has existed since La Malinche. By keeping our silence buried beneath we are allowing other forms of sexism to be normalized in our culture. Such as benevolent sexism, the belief that women are sensitive and precious creatures that should be kept guarded and protected from the outside world. The man values the woman, but the idea that she is unequal persists like a stubborn illness that never heals.

I have seen this with my own eyes, with my own body, how women in my culture have been kept like precious birds in a cage, not letting them be free. Making her a virginal creature that needs to remain untouched. The women in my family, especially my mother, never dare to complain or talk about the role they were given. It is an unspoken rule. It is an endless cycle of watching women make themselves small to live their lives to accommodate not only a man, but my hard headed culture. The whispering of women's experiences we dare not speak about. Such as the impermissible act of having financial independence as a woman and having to depend on a man for any financial need. Or for some women, the reliance on a man for transportation because it is believed a woman is not capable of being able to understand the mechanics of an automobile. Or the constant need for women to be kind and not think twice of an inappropriate touch or glance from a male relative. Or the constant need for women to be glammed up like a polished Barbie doll because it is believed women were made to only be looked at for pleasure. Or simply the act of men opening doors for a woman because once the woman shows she is capable of such an effortless act, the man will think he is being challenged. Or worse, the woman is made to believe that she is only a “real” woman until she bears children and gives up her ambitions for an education because she was raised to believe that women were only made to nurture a home and a man. It is to be a trapped bird in a cage.

I’m guilty and a hypocrite. I criticized my mother and all the women in my culture for putting up with machista men while I was permitting a white man to put his hands around my throat to assert his power over me. I was letting a white man see me as his exotic fantasy because I wasn’t like his blonde and blue-eyed past lovers who were too soft, too “vanilla.” I thought I was challenging my own culture and the things I have witnessed by going against my culture’s wishes. I realized that the sentiment of viewing women as inferior is existent in the little cracks of our world. I just wanted to feel free. But how could I feel free with all the endless patriarchal patterns that have been unnoticeably interwoven in every facet of our world?

There is a warmth within my heart that I’ve had to learn to guard. It is a cluster made up of open wounds that I have been carrying with me. I discovered seeping and burning blood coming out of these wounds. The blood burns at the surface of my skin and in my soul. It reveals the sorrows that my ancestors have passed down to me. Sorrows of being dehumanized and taken from their female gods that once made them whole. Now their silenced pain of anger, torment, and injustice overflows into my reality and makes me whole. I feel the anger every time a man questions my ability to achieve my ambitions and dreams. I feel the torment when I feel the danger of saying “no” to a lover who doesn’t believe in personal boundaries. I feel injustice when I hear whispers of men call women “bitches”, “sluts”, “whores”, “puta”, when women show their autonomy and are in leadership positions, have financial independence, and have the ability to stand up for themselves.

I wish one day that I’ll get to the core of all of the pain women have had to endure all these years. I want to expose the sources that split the inside of my soul open, causing these everlasting clusters of wounds. So I’ll keep questioning why there are an infinite amount of gashes inside of my soul that keep me restrained. I’ll keep questioning why I continue letting white men pick the scabs of my wounds that are begging to finally be healed. I’ll keep questioning why I still take knives to my heart and letting them create more wounds.

There are times where I question what I want to keep and pass down to future generations. I want our future to live without borders of gender binaries that are only creating divisions between our humanity. To exist without the machismo and the limitations imposed onto women. I want my future daughters to have the option to see themselves as more than wives, as more than mothers. But a lingering and pertinent question is held like a knife against my neck.

At twenty-two years old, I risk being seen as a traitor like La Malinche. If I don’t become a housewife and mother by my mid twenties, I become a failure to my culture and the legacy that my culture believes must be continued. But I have dreams to fulfill. I have a hunger and curiosity about every subject of the world. I want to travel to the infinity of the Earth. I want to count each gleaming star in the night sky while backpacking through the highest mountains. I want to taste the world. I want my tongue to discover other flavors besides sweet and sour. I want to fall so deeply in love, get heartbroken, write shitty poetry, and do it again three more times. I want to own a coffee shop in my hometown and serve chocolatey coffee with pan dulce. I want to be so audacious and unapologetic about my education because no woman in my family has had the opportunity to gain all this knowledge. But in the eyes of my culture, my body is not mine. My hips were given to me to stretch so wide and accommodate a smaller version of myself. My breasts were given to me to sag and be bit by the crying little body that has violently degraded mine. My hands were given to me to spend the whole day in front of a burning hot stove and cover my nose from the stinging smell of bleach.

I find myself asking what type of woman I want to be? Should I marry and have children? Should I pursue the long years of my career ambitions? Every day I find myself in this rut where I cannot decide what I want. As much as I blame the patriarchy and Mexican culture, I find my complaining useless. What do I do when I don’t want to be defined and minimized to a woman that solely exists to fulfill the traditional roles of women? What do I do when I’m hungry for ambition?

Perhaps this is one of the wounds I am still attempting to confront. But there's already an infinite amount of wounds that are begging to be healed. I must take my gentle fingertips and stop the seeping blood from filling me with more hatred and disharmony with either culture. I need to nurture the wounds. Take the warmth of the burning blood dripping out of the unhealed edges and make it my own. To have warmth is to have awareness of what is living deep inside of us and empower our knowledge so we can exist in harmony with another.

I don’t want to be perceived as a traitor, but my ambition is the question that keeps me wide awake at three in the morning. I don’t want to become a housewife or mother any time soon. My warmth is being given to my education, my career, my dreams, my passions. Right now, I’m the antagonist in my story. I’m not wasting nights on love and living for the hope of three children and a husband. Perhaps my ambition has the right to be questioned and be denied by my culture. My independence as a Mexican woman is what has caused me to be perceived as an enemy to my culture.

One thing about Mexican culture’s tight grip on gender roles are the binaries that further keeps us as a collective from feeling peace. One of the two components of those binaries will always hold superiority and be deemed as more acceptable. The role of the “virgin” is more socially acceptable because it essentially provides women the roadmap to how to be the perfect wife and mother, which reinforces the traditional gender roles of women. I have found myself struggling with this idea because I feel a stark opposition towards these traditional gender roles of women. I don’t believe women were solely created to reproduce. I don’t believe marriage is an essential part of life. And I absolutely, with all the rage inside of me, hate the toxic masculinity that exists in my culture.

I will never agree with the patriarchal hierarchy in Mexican culture that places men at the top and treats women as an inferior object. I embrace the flexibility of having a choice. However, this characterizes me as the “whore” in this dichotomy because I am going against my culture. But I’ve decided to audaciously take the “whore”, “puta”, and “traitor” titles like badges of honor. I refuse to make myself small and leave my ambitions and dreams to the dumpsters of potentiality. I will no longer silence my need for independence. I will embrace all the sorrows that my female ancestors have passed down to me and let it mold into courage within me. I will no longer belittle myself so a man won't feel threatened.

There are wounds that we don’t talk about. Wounds that not only bleed sexism and misogyny against women in Mexican culture but are seeping with homophobia, colorism, and our own internalized racism. These are other wounds that sit side by side, mixing with and drowning in a fiery hatred and anger within. They are throbbing and waiting for me to have the courage to take my gentle fingertips and soothe and cleanse them with awakenings. But for now, the wound made by the cycles of silencing women in Mexican culture—ends with me.