The Marina Poems

Corpi's poems on Marina tell the story of the young Indian woman who served Hernán Cortés as guide, interpreter, comrade-in-arms, mistress, and mother of his son. Three different forms of her name—Marina, Malintzin, and Malinche—are referred to in the analysis of "Tres Mujeres." Malintzin Tenépal, so named by her parents, was the daughter of a cacique or chief of the province of Coatzacoalcos, where Marina was born. Doña Marina is her Spanish name, the title of respect having been conferred on her by Cortés and other Spaniards who knew her. Marina is the symbolic mother of the Mexican people. Malinche is the name given to Marina by some modern Mexicans and understood by all in Mexico and the Southwest to mean the traitress who knowingly and willingly betrayed her Indian civilization by allying herself with Cortés and the Spaniards. The term is still used in those areas to designate anybody corrupted by foreign influences.^[23] To this legacy of names may now be added a fourth, Chingada, the central figure in the writings of Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes in the modern period.^[24] Octavio Paz describes the Chingada as the violated native woman and mother, a symbol of the violation of "the very flesh of Indian women."^[25] According to Paz, Marina, fascinated by Cortés and, by extension, by the Spanish male, allowed herself to be seduced, giving herself voluntarily. Even so, Paz sees her as a figure representing all Indian women who were not only fascinated or seduced, but also violated

or raped, by the Spaniards. For Paz, "every woman—even when she gives herself willingly—is torn open by the man, is the Chingada."^[26] Marina is the symbol of betrayal because she allowed herself to be "opened," or "penetrated," by the Spanish male.

In her four poems about Marina, Corpi attempts to reverse the image given to Marina by modern Mexican writers such as Paz.^[27] She presents Marina not as a woman who betrayed (se vendió ), but as a woman who was betrayed (fué vendida ) by husband, lover, and son. Implicitly, she was also betrayed by family, culture, and country. As in Paz's cultural discourse, the focal point of Corpi's poetic discourse is sexual. But unlike Paz, who portrays a Marina eager to jump into bed with the Spaniards, Corpi, in "Marina Madre," the first of the four poems, shows Marina as an unwilling participant. Yet Corpi's Marina does not actively resist the rape. Rather, the reader must presuppose a reluctant Marina who felt she had no other choice but to submit, as men would force sex upon her in spite of her objections.

I. MARINA MADRE

Del barro más húmedo la hicieron,
al rayo del sol tropical la secaron,
con la sangre de un cordero tierno
su nombre escribieron los viejos
en la corteza de ese árbol
tan viejo como ellos.

Húmeda de tradición, mística
y muda fué vendida . . .                                                              8
de mano en mano, noche a noche,
negada y desecrada, esperando el alba
y el canto de la lechuza
que nunca llegaban.
Su vientre robado de su fruto;
hecha un puño de polvo seco su alma.

Tú no la querías ya y él la negaba                                               15
y aquel que cuando niño ¡mamá! le gritaba
cuando creció le puso por nombre "la chingada."

I. MARINA MOTHER

They made her of the softest clay
and dried her under the rays of the tropical sun.
With the blood of a tender lamb
her name was written by the elders

on the bark of that tree
as old as they.

Steeped in tradition, mystic
and mute she was sold—                                                          8
from hand to hand, night to night,
denied and desecrated, waiting for the dawn
and for the owl's song
that would never come;
her womb sacked of its fruit,
her soul thinned to a handful of dust.

You no longer loved her, the elders denied her,                      15
and the child who cried out to her "mamá!"
grew up and called her "whore."

II. MARINA VIRGEN

De su propio pie, junto al altar
del dios crucificado se hincó.
Como ella te amó, veía solamente
al ser sangrante. Y amaba en él
tu recuerdo secreto y enlutado.

Había querido lavar su pecado                                                 6
con agua bendita. Y arropaba
su cuerpo con una manta gruesa y nítida
para que no supieras que su piel
morena estaba maldita.

Alguna vez te detuviste a pensar
en dónde estaba su alma escondida.
No sabías que la había sembrado
en las entrañas de la tierra
que sus manos cultivaban—                                                    15
la tierra negra y húmeda de tu vida.

II. MARINA VIRGIN

Of her own accord, before the altar
of the crucified god she knelt.
Because she loved you, she only saw
the bleeding man, and loved in him
her secret and mourning memory of you.

She tried to wash away her sin                                                  6
with holy water, then covered her body
with a long, thick cloth

so you would never know
her brown skin had been damned.

Once, you stopped to wonder
where her soul was hidden
not knowing she had planted it
in the entrails of that earth
her hands had cultivated—                                                       15
the moist, black earth of your life.

III. LA HIJA DEL DIABLO

Cuando murió, el trueno se reventó en el norte,
y junto al altar de piedra la noche entera
el copal ardió. Su mística pulsación para
siempre calló. Cayó hecho pedazos el ídolo
de barro sucio y viejo, y su nombre se lo llevó
el viento con un solo murmullo ronco:
su nombre tan parecido a la profundidad
salina del mar. Poco quedó. Sólo una semilla
a medio germinar.

III. THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER

When she died, lightning struck in the north,
and on the new stone altar the incense burned
all night long. Her mystic pulsing
silenced, the ancient idol
shattered, her name
devoured by the wind in one deep growl
(her name so like the salt depths of the sea)—
little remained. Only a half-germinated seed.

IV. ELLA (MARINA AUSENTE)

Ella. Una flor quizá, un remanso fresco . . .
una noche tibia, tropical,
o una criatura triste, en una prisión
encerrada: de barro húmedo y suave:
es la sombra enlutada de un recuerdo                                        5
ancestral que vendrá por la mañana
cruzando el puente con manos llenas—
llenas de sol y de tierra.

IV. SHE (MARINA DISTANT)

She. A flower perhaps, a pool of fresh water . . .
a tropical night,

or a sorrowful child, enclosed
in a prison of the softest clay:
mourning shadow of an ancestral memory,                                 5
crossing the bridge at daybreak,
her hands full of earth and sun.

In her vision of Marina, Corpi draws on images from the four categories of experience: (1) the natural world; (2) the Judeo-Christian world; (3) popular Mexican myths; and (4) the world of artistic expression (writing/poetry). The first three poems in the series depict the central roles usually contained in the symbolic representation of Marina as woman: (1) mother, (2) virgin, and (3) condemned woman, or whore. The fourth poem signals a new "presence" yet to come.

As the poet-narrator refrains from directly assuming the consciousness of Marina throughout the four poems, Marina has no power of speech. In this respect Corpi's characterization goes counter to the historical figure of Marina who, in facilitating communication between Moctezuma and Cortés, served as the linguistic bridge between the two cultures. She knew various dialects and was said to have learned Spanish rapidly. To the Spanish chroniclers she was known as la lengua ("the tongue").^[28] Corpi's narrator is a mediator between a wordless Marina and an audience that listens to the narrator express and interpret Marina's sentiments.

Once again, Corpi's poetic strategy is to shift from a form of address implying a general audience to one that implies a direct interlocutor, as she does in "Pasión sin Nombre" and other poems. In certain places she makes her audience concrete by shifting to a Tú ("you"). For example, in the final stanza of "Marina Madre" the narrator's audience, familiar with the legend of Marina, yields its privileged position to Hernán Cortés, the referent of Tú , and remains outside the discourse to overhear the rest of the sentence. This time the audience links él with Cortés's lieutenant, Juan Jaramillo, whom Marina married, according to Bernal Díaz, an eyewitness and a chronicler of the conquest.^[29] The aquel ("that one") is Martín, Marina's son by Cortés.^[30] In "Marina Virgen," the second poem, the narrator shifts from one audience to the other, the first two lines implying a general audience but the next four lines implying the direct interlocutor Tú . In stanza 2 the first three lines again address the general audience, whereas the final two lines address the Tú . The third stanza maintains the focus on Tú . In "La Hija del Diablo" and "Ella," the third and

fourth poems, the narrator speaks once again to her general audience, which thus functions as her direct interlocutor except in those places where its members overhear the words she ostensibly speaks to Cortés.

In "Marina Madre" Corpi uses natural images of an indigenous world to portray Marina's origins. The first stanza evokes a creation story: the human person, here a woman, is created from mud or clay. The clay is a metaphor for Marina, mother and fertile earth. The description seems to suggest Malintzin Tenépal, as she and not Marina comes first in the historical discourse. The image of moist clay seems especially appropriate for Malintzin as she was born in Coatzacoalcos, a tropical region in the state of Veracruz, on the Bay of Campeche. Nevertheless, the poem's title clearly indicates that the protagonist is Marina. The discontinuity of a description that calls to mind Malintzin but really refers to Marina suggests that Corpi identifies not so much with Malintzin as she does with Marina, the woman who knew Cortés and who straddles both cultures and worlds. Marina's name is written in the corteza de ese árbol .

Unlike the pre-Columbian gods represented by figurines of rock and marble, Corpi's Marina is made of a soft, fragile substance. Clay can be shaped according to the maker's will, but once dried it hardens in the form molded. Features of clay suit the image Corpi wants to convey of Marina, who was formed by others according to their design and, once made, had no choice but to live out the roles they assigned to her. For them, Marina was a pliable, purely physical object.

"Marina Madre" recounts a series of actions of which Marina is the recipient rather than the agent: la hicieron ("they made her"); la secaron ("they dried her"); su nombre escribieron ("they wrote her name"); fué vendida ("she was sold"). Line 4 of stanza 1 identifies the agents as the old men (los viejos ) who fashion her of the "softest" clay and dry her in the tropical sun. The relationship between "clay" and "sun" symbolizes the relationship between female and male. The sun acts on the clay by drying it, completing the process of creation. Likewise, the old men "act" on Marina: they give her a name and they write it with the blood of a tender lamb on the bark of a tree. The image of the innocent lamb killed for its blood foreshadows the events in Marina's life described in the next stanza: she too loses her innocence and virginity. The tree represents tradition and history; hence Ma-

rina's name is fixed in writing. Drawing from images of the natural world, Corpi is depicting the creation of a Mexican woman by men and the beginning of a tradition inscribed by men for all time.

The phrase fué vendida echoes the story of Malintzin Tenépal because she was literally sold by her family to itinerant Mayan merchants from Xicalango, an ancient center of coastal trade. The merchants, in turn, traded her to the Indians of Tabasco, who later made a gift of her to Cortés.^[31] The phrase "de mano en mano, noche a noche" gives an impression of Marina as a sexual object passed from one man to another. The first part of the phrase is used conversationally in Spanish to designate a woman who engages in sexual activity with many men, as in "esta mujer ha pasado de mano en mano" ("This woman has been with many men"). The presentation of a Marina sexually exploited by men indicates that fué vendida is to be interpreted figuratively, but Corpi makes no absolute distinction between a pre-Columbian and a European usage. In fact, because fué vendida refers to the selling of Marina before she knew Cortés, it suggests that the Spaniards continued rather than began Marina's exploitation by men, sexual or otherwise.

The ellipsis (1.8) produces the effect of a pause. It momentarily diverts attention away from the forward movement of the sentence and thus arouses even more interest in what follows. The ellipsis suggests that the ensuing material is especially difficult for the narrator to put into words. She feels Marina's pain. The repetition in "mano en mano, noche a noche" conveys monotony and routine. Marina endures these sexual nights only because she has to. The consequences are devastating, since her personhood is negated (negada ) and desecrated (desecrada ), stripped of its sanctity. The two words negada and desecrada refer implicitly to Marina's rape. Their rhyme links them to the final word of the poem, "chingada." The fact that they are past participles contributes to the impression of a passive Marina, a victim of men's sexual lust. Each night Marina awaits the morning because it may release her from her obligations: "esperando el alba / y el canto de la lechuza / que nunca llegaban." The belief that the song of the lechuza ("owl") presages death originates in Mexican popular sayings and beliefs. The message is clear that under these circumstances death would be a relief for Corpi's Marina—but death never comes.

Corpi's portrait of Marina makes clear two things: (1) Marina does not choose to engage in sexual activity with the Spaniards; (2) she passively submits to their lust. In fairness to Corpi's Marina, we might assume that Marina submits for one of two possible reasons: (1) she faces the risk of being killed, or (2) the Spaniards will override her objections and force her to submit. Since Corpi also suggests by her reference to the lechuza 's song that Marina would welcome death in this situation, we wonder why Marina does not refuse, even at the risk of incurring death. If death is not a risk, then with even more reason we wonder why she does not refuse. Corpi's cultural paradigm leaves readers no alternative but to accept a passive Marina who can do nothing about her situation.

In line 15 the narrator changes the focus of her narration from a meditative discourse spoken to a general audience to a direct statement to a specific Tú . By so doing, Corpi attributes ambiguity and richness to the Tú . The Tú is more than just Cortés. Implicit in Tú is the Mexican male. As the referents of Tú , él , and aquel are Cortés, his lieutenant, and Marina's son by Cortés, these men's roles correspond to Marina's tripartite role of mistress, wife, and mother. Since all three men negate her, Marina's personhood is negated on all three levels. The import of the final two lines is that Marina's son, sent by Cortés to be educated in Spain, returns and does not recognize her. Instead of calling her "¡mamá!" as he once did as a child, he now sees her as the Indian woman his father had raped, or the Chingada. In the historical context of the conquest of Mexico, the aquel designates a mestizo population, sprung from sexual encounters between Spanish men and Indian women. When the son, and implicitly a mestizo people, call her Chingada, they humiliate their own mother. Marina is once again named and defamed by a man, and thus another layer of definition is imposed upon her. She has not chosen these names for herself.

Rather than capitalizing the words La Chingada, Corpi lowercases them and uses quotation marks ("la chingada"). By so doing she shifts the expression from its place in popular, oral language into written discourse. Although she does not similarly shift the word "mamá," the context indicates that it is also translation from oral speech. Had Corpi used capital letters instead of quotation marks for Chingada, she would have given more emphasis to the word. Her decision to place it within quotation marks, thus

distancing and containing the expression, may suggest her desire to treat this defamation of woman as something "other," something that is foreign to her language. Although Corpi portrays a Marina who is Chingada, she cannot incorporate the word into her poetic discourse. Corpi's phrasing of the two final lines instructs the reader to shout the word "¡mamá!" but the quotation marks and the initial lowercase letters of the defamation instruct the reader to pronounce it softly.

Corpi begins her series of poems with Marina as madre , not with Marina as virgen . The more logical order, however, would be to speak about Marina as virgin first and as mother second. The general assumption in the cultural discourses concerning the figure of Marina, as in those of Paz and Fuentes, is that Marina was a virgin before the conquest. The conquest is Marina's deflowering, and also the land's and the nation's.^[32] The discontinuity between Marina the traditional cultural symbol and Corpi's Marina hints that Corpi writes to vindicate herself as well as Marina. Corpi's life fits the pattern of becoming first a mother and then a symbolic virgin, since cultural constraints would prevent her from expressing her sexual self after the breakup of her marriage. Temporal and spatial indicators in "Marina Virgen" point to a Marina already abandoned by Cortés.

"Marina Virgen" expands upon the theme of the Chingada but places it within a Judeo-Christian context. The image of the tree in "Marina Madre" is replaced in the second poem by the Christian cross on which Jesus Christ, the divine Redeemer and Savior, suffered and died. Marina willingly kneels before the cross (De su propio pie ). Stanza l suggests the tableaux of the holy women kneeling and gazing up at the cross. The gesture of kneeling implies the subjugation of the one who kneels to the one who remains standing. Marina Virgen is modeled on the image of the mujer sufrida , or the long-suffering Mexican woman.

Corpi's Marina cannot distinguish between the man she loved and the Catholic religion he imposed on the New World. When Corpi says "Como ella te amó, veía solamente / al ser sangrante," she suggests that Marina sees in Christ the Redeemer only a bleeding and humiliated Christ. And in the victimized Christ she sees a transfigured image of her own identity. Because Cortés has abandoned her, she too is a ser sangrante . Marina's love for Christ is a sublimation of her love for Cortés, for in the service of a higher ideal (Christ) she guards her secret and mourn-

ing memory of Cortés. The suffering Christ mirrors an image of herself as a person who suffers, much as Marina mirrors to Corpi an image of herself.

In the second stanza, the word pecado must be interpreted according to sexual and racial codes. Marina has assimilated the notion of "sin," a Christian, not an Indian, notion. Marina's sin is that she allowed herself to be violated, an event inextricably tied to the fact that she was Indian. Her gesture of covering herself with a thick, clear cloth, which she does to keep Cortés from seeing her dark and damned skin, suggests grieving and self-effacement. Lines 6 and 7 suggest that, had she been able, she would have washed away her sin with the trappings of Western civilization: the agua bendita ("holy water"). Marina's dark skin, or her body, was damned because she was a victim of a violation. But there are also racial overtones: Marina belonged to a race whose skin color condemned it to an inferior social rank.

Stanza 2 is told from Marina's perspective: she believed her sin was her violation. The narrator, however, interprets Marina's reason for wearing the thick shawl: "so you would never know / her brown skin had been damned." Stanza 3, with its sharp turn to the Tú , reveals more clearly the narrator's sentiments. The sin for the narrator is not Marina's violation, but rather the failure of Cortés to acknowledge that Marina had a soul. What bothers the poet-narrator is not so much that Marina was used as a sexual object as that the man she loved abandoned her, never even aware that she sacrificed her life for him. Implicitly, Marina is abandoned by family, culture, and country.

In the first two lines of stanza 3 the narrator is being mildly charitable to Cortés, for she gives him credit for once stopping to wonder where Marina's soul was hidden. As the translator points out, Alguna may mean "Once." This sentence also may ambiguously imply that Cortés never stopped, even once, to wonder about Marina. The ambiguity lies in the absence of a question mark at the end of the sentence. Whichever way we choose to interpret Alguna —as "once" or "never"—the fact remains that both meanings are a negative reflection on the man.

The final four lines of "Marina Virgen" return to images of nature, but they deviate from the cultural myth of Marina as mother earth which began the poem. Marina "plants" her soul in the earth she cultivates, but the black, moist earth is presented as a metaphor for the life of Cortés: "la tierra negra y húmeda de

tu vida." The narrator reproaches Cortés because he never realized how completely Marina loved him. She "cultivated" a life for him and never one for herself. Cortés's life, then, fertilizes her life. The dash ending line 15 indicates a momentary pause before the final line, which repeats the tierra of line 14 in order to make its identity more precise.

In recounting Marina's death, the third poem, "La Hija del Díablo," continues the parallel with Christ's passion, for the setting is the natural landscape: "el trueno se reventó en el norte." Marina is once again the ancient idol (ídolo ) which now falls and breaks into pieces. The barro is Marina's skin, now dirty and old, the same skin that was maldita in "Marina Virgen." The desire here is to undo the image of Marina as a mala mujer , an evil woman ("Hija del Diablo"), so that a new Marina can arise, as the phoenix does in "Puente de Cristal." The wind erases her name, as if to cancel it forever. The phrase salina del mar recalls the bitterness of the restless seas in "Solario" which pointed to rebellion and emancipation. In "Hija del Diablo," to intensify the finality of the events, Corpi uses the technique of accenting the letter o : murió, reventó, ardió, calló, cayó, llevó . Marina disintegrates into the natural elements originally used to compose her. The only sign of a presence to come is a seed half-alive.

The fourth poem, "Ella (Marina Ausente)," prefigures the birth of a new woman, whom Corpi simply calls Ella ("She"). The title captures the paradox of a Marina who is present, in the sense that her remains are in the earth, yet who is also absent because she is dead. The first four lines suggest the possibilities of what "Ella," the half-alive seed of "La Hija del Diablo," may become: a flower, a pool of fresh water, a tepid, tropical night. These images recall Corpi's Veracruz and point to a desire to return to the past and begin anew. On the other hand, "Ella" may be a sad child enclosed in a prison made of wet, smooth clay (de barro húmedo y suave ), suggesting Corpi's San Luis Potosí, the other option available in a return to the past. Corpi has used this image of a prison made of clay to describe Marina's skin and body; the prison is thus a metaphor for Marina's body, or the body of the criatura triste . As the body is made of the natural elements of the Mexican earth, it also suggests Marina's and Corpi's Indianness, their mexicanidad .

Line 5, beginning with es la sombra enlutada , affirms that "Ella" is a shadow of an ancestral memory enshrouded in mourn-

ing. The significant words in Corpi's formulation are "shadow" and "memory." The "new" Marina is a "shadow," but she is not a reflection of a real person. Rather, she is a "shadow" of a "memory" (un recuerdo ). The abstract definition of Marina is twice removed from a concrete order, evoking Corpi as much as it does Marina. It evokes Marina because she is a cultural ancestor of the Mexican people, the word ancestral suggesting a pre-Columbian past. The definition also suggests Corpi because recuerdo ancestral harks back to the words of her grandmother who urged her, in "Tres Mujeres," to remain in Mexico. The ancestral memory is the cultural taboo Corpi violated. The definition projects the desire to get rid of the taboo and find transformation as a new woman.

Implicit in the statement of what the shadow will become is a reference to La Llorona, also a shadow in mourning. Yet these lines point to a transformation. In contrast with the traditional llorona , who in legends usually appears at night, this llorona crosses the bridge in the morning with her hands full of sun and earth, as if relieved of her burdens. We see a glorified llorona , a glorified Marina, and a glorified Lucha. The verb in que vendrá ("that will come") projects the event into the future, emphasizing the notion that this new woman is yet to be born. Marina/Corpi desires a new beginning with abundance (con manos llenas ): no longer a "shadow" (enlutada ) in mourning but a person who comes by morning (por la mañana ). If Marina is a figure parallel to Corpi, the boundary symbolically crossed is that between Mexico and the United States. The new Marina is not the old Marina. Rather, the new Marina signals what is yet to come in a Chicano community.

The images of sol and tierra include Marina as the earth and also Cortés, since he too is equated with the earth that Marina cultivated with her hands ("Marina Virgen"). In herself—the earth—Marina sees only Cortés, as she has no other identity than the one he reflects back to her. In Marina's and Corpi's hands there is now plenitude, or completeness, a sexual desire consummated. The same images (sol and tierra ) also mark another transformation. "Ella" sees herself as a self-sufficient woman with both the sun, the fertilizing agent, and the earth, the substance fertilized, in her possession. The force of this transformation is mitigated, however, by the reader's awareness of the traditional meanings of these words. These images return to the beginning,

when the sun, by drying the clay, completed the process of Marina's creation. Corpi's transformation is still dependent upon the codes that governed the world responsible for Marina's ruin.

There are objective reasons for identifying Lucha Corpi with Marina. First, as Corpi herself explains, history and popular legend trace Marina's origins to Corpi's hometown: "The town is a few kilometers from Tabasco, and they say Marina was from the tribe of the Tabasqueños. It is possible that the Tabasqueño empire extended to my town, because it is so close. Marina could be from there."^[33] Second, Marina lost her son when he was taken by Cortés to Spain; Corpi feared losing her son through the divorce: "With my divorce there was a question of whether my son would live with my ex-husband or with me. For the first time I was confronted with the possibility of my son growing up away from me." A third reason may be added to the two suggested by Corpi. Marina straddles three cultures: Indian, Spanish, and Mexican. Fully accepted by none, the legendary Marina was an outcast in all three cultures. Corpi herself also straddles three cultures: Mexican, Chicano, and United States. To some extent she must feel herself marginal in all three. Her experience in the United States prevents her from regarding herself as an authentic Mexican. In the past, upon reflecting on the possibility of returning to Mexico, Corpi has said: "Things were no longer the same; I couldn't go back to being una hija de familia ["a family's daughter"]." The constraints of her personal Mexican development keep her from embracing the social values of United States culture regarding feminine behavior. Finally, though Corpi embraces a Chicano identity and is active in the Chicano community, she maintains an emotive identification with traditional Mexican culture.