SOURCE: Hardin, Michael. “Coatlicue on the Loose: Encompassing the Dualities in Anzaldúa, Portillo Trambley, and Cisneros.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 26, no. 1 (1999): 83-96.

In the following essay, Hardin explores the use of the archetype of the Aztec “creator goddess” Coatlicue in the work of Portillo Trambley, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Sandra Cisneros.

In Mexican and Mexican-American traditions, women are provided with very narrow and limited cultural models and patterns. For the most part, these roles are defined by the woman's relationship to an other: as mother, her identity is based on her relationship to her child(ren); as whore, her identity is based upon her having sexual relationships with men. The paradigms in the culture are more complex than merely mother and whore, but these serve as the bases for most of the female models. Gloria Anzaldúa writes that there are three archetypal mothers in the...