Garro Dimensión Erótica

The Erotic Dimension of Elena Garro's "La Culpa Es de Los Tlaxcaltecas"
Author(s): Lee H. Dowling

Source: Chasqui , Nov., 1999, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Nov., 1999), pp. 31-59
Published by: Chasqui: revista de literatura latinoamericana
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/29741522
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

Chasqui
This content downloaded from

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
THE EROTIC DIMENSION OF ELENA GA
RRO'S "LA CULPA ES DE LOS TLAXCAL?
TECAS"
Lee H. Dowling
University of Houston
The late Mexican writer Elena Garro's (1920-1998) exquisite and much anthologized magical
realist short story "La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas" (1964), called a masterpiece of the genre, has
by now generated a sizable corpus of critical essays, most of these coming out in the 1980s and
90s. The application to this work of poststructural, mythological, feminist cultural critical, and
other models has yielded a wealth of analytical commentary serving to bring into relief much of
the remarkable semiotic richness of what Sandra Messenger Cypess aptly characterizes as a a
story where "multiple possibilities are presented to preclude any one-dimensional reality" (165).
One of its aspects not so far singled out, though meriting passing commentary in a few instances,
is that of the surprising sensuality that marks those passages dramatizing the axial reencounter
between Laura, an upper middle class suburban wife in the modern Mexico of President Adolfo
L?pez Mateos (1958-64), and a wounded Indian warrior whom Laura somehow recognizes
instantly as her other husband (and also cousin), her primo marido from the sixteenth century.
In the series of tryst-like meetings that follows in the course of the story, even though battle
against the invading Spanish to save Tenochtitl?n literally rages around them during these times,
it is the romantic and sexual draw between the two principals that becomes the motivating force
in Laura's final, significant choice, recorded at the story's end.
Previous to the publication of Laura Esquivel's Como agua para chocolate in 1989, few
Mexican women writers seemed drawn to the foregrounding of eroticism in their works, as noted
by David William Foster in his Alternate Voices in the Contemporary Latin American Narrative
(1985). While from among Argentine literati Foster is rather surprisingly able to list the names
of more women than men "who write unabashedly about erotic themes," from among those of
Mexico he succeeds in identifying only Mar?a Luisa Mendoza, for her novel De Ausencia, pub?
lished ten full years after "Tlaxcaltecas" in 1974 (129-36). Yet, notably, Garro's story is included
in at least one anthology devoted exclusively to erotic literature, that compiled by the Mexican
novelist Gustavo Sainz and published in 1981.
I find notable, as well, the fact that in "Tlaxcaltecas" Garro elects to portray physical attrac?
tion and passion as an essential aspect of the love relationship between a husband and wife?a
theme seemingly so rare as to be virtually nonexistent in Latin American writing. Before drawing
any firm conclusions from this, however, it is important to bear in mind that in Hispanic literature
in general novels and stories with erotic themes have traditionally been discouraged and some?
times even prohibited from publication. Because works of this kind constitute a subject that has
only recently begun to be explored in any systematic way, one wonders if additional examples
31

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
32 The Erotic Dimension of Elena Garro 's "La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas"
will not eventually come to light. Be that as it may, the publication during the 1990s of several
volumes of criticism dedicated to examining the topic of erotic love in Hispanic letters, a project
that many readers and critics may regard as long overdue, has encouraged me to proceed with
the essay to follow (see L?pez Baralt and M?rquez Villanueva; see Kenwood; see Treviz?n; and
see Hispanic Marginal Literatures: The Erotic, The Comics, novela rosa).
Interestingly, the subject of passionate love is examined by Anthony Giddens, in The Trans?
formation of Intimacy. Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Giddens finds that the
term expresses a generic connection between love and sexual attachment. Passionate love is
marked by an urgency setting it apart from the routines of everyday life, with which it tends to
come into conflict. Under its sway, emotional involvement with the other is so strong that it may
lead one or both individuals to ignore their ordinary obligations, projecting a quality of enchant?
ment which resembles religious passion in its fervor (38-39). Giddens adds that "... passionate
love has nowhere been recognized as either a necessary or sufficient basis for marriage, and in
most cultures has been seen as refractory to it" (38). It is for this reason, according to Pat
they-Ch?vez, Clare, and Youmans, that in many cultures passionate love is actually viewed as
antithetical to marriage ("Watery Passions" 101).
The purpose motivating my pursuit of such eroticism in "La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas,"
nevertheless, is not simply its presence in the text, though perhaps there is a sense in which this
may legitimately be viewed as significant in itself. Rather, I will argue that in fact the story's
consistent emphasis on the erotic nature of Laura's relationship with the Indian warrior is insepa?
rably bound up with the strong ideological message such emphasis is meant to convey, to the ex?
tent that the force of the message is diminished if the relationship as it appears is not taken fully
into account. In order to argue in favor of the point, I will focus first in some detail upon the
major relevant criticism thus far produced on "Tlaxcaltecas," a work where "there are no fixed
signs, just as there is no fixed chronology" (Cypess 163). In order to substantiate the argument
I will also refer briefly to Garro's prize-winning novel Los recuerdos del porvenir (1963), pub?
lished just one year before her first collection of short stories, La semana de colores, in which
"Tlaxcaltecas" figures as the first story.
Bringing together for discussion some of the signficant conclusions thus far drawn by critics
concerning "Tlaxcaltecas," as will be seen, functions to corroborate the intriguing insight con?
veyed through another famous story, Jorge Luis Borges's "Pierre Menard, Autor del Quixote "
(1944). Here, as we know, Borges's scholar-narrator drolly examines Menard's theory of what
today probably amounts to a truism for most students of literature?that within the discourse(s)
they themselves inspire, literary works grow immeasurably richer over time. Beyond its immedi?
ate task, this paper also aims at helping to ensure that in the new century, at least, Elena Garro's
name comes to receive more consistently the prominence it deserves among Mexico's (and Latin
America's) most innovative and skillful twentieth century writers.1
^lena Garro's name is omitted, for example from the three-volume Latin American Writers,
edited by Carlos A. Sol? and Maria Isabel Abreu and published in 1989. For information con?
cerning Garro's difficulties in publishing her works during her lifetime, which have caused her
to be overlooked by other critics as well, see her moving letters to Emmanuel Carballo. Mich?le
Muncy's 1986 interview with the writer, which is translated and included in Stoll, is also richly
informative; and see the interview conducted with her in 1991 by Patricia Rosas Lop?tegui and
Rhina Toruno. Martha Robles describes in some detail the daunting difficulties experienced by
Garro and other Mexican women in gaining national recognition for their literary efforts.

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
Lee H. Dowling 33
In the article "Estrategias discursivas y relato fant?stico. Sobre 'La culpa es de los tlaxcalte?
cas' de Elena Garro" (1991), Jos? Ram?n Gonz?lez focuses in detail upon the structural mechan?
ics of Garro's supreme mastery of magical realist techniques, submitting to analysis one of the
story's most important elements, its discursive structure. This configuration is established within
the work's first several paragraphs as the Se?ora Laura Aldama, following an unexplained ab?
sence of several weeks from her home, is seen to return to it and enter cautiously through the
back door. She is immediately welcomed by her distressed Indian servant Nacha, who like
Laura's Hispanic husband Pablo, and Margarita, her mother-in-law, had been unable to discover
Laura's whereabouts. Sitting down at once at the kitchen table and pulling her knees up under
her chin, Laura wastes no time in pouring out to Nacha over several cups of coffee her remark?
able tale of three vertiginous transitions into the past, though the past here is conceived as ever
parallel to the present, and characterized by Laura herself as "como cuando ves una tarjeta postal
y luego la vuelves para ver lo que hay escrito atr?s" (12; all page numbers refer to the 1987
edition).
During the absorbing revelation of these and other logically impossible experiences, which
continues throughout the story, Nacha's clear affection for the "se?ora Laurita" in combination
with her non-Western concept of time make her the ideal audience or narratee, not only because
she never questions the truth of Laura's account but also because she responds to each part of it
with the sincere empathy the other woman is obviously in need of. Nacha's unhesitating faith in
Laura's integrity, as Gonz?lez shows, becomes a model that inspires the reader to trust her as
well. In addition, Nacha is able to vouch repeatedly for the truth of Laura's statements regarding
events that have occurred at home in the interims between each of her mysterious absences. In
Gonzalez's words,
Nachita que adolece de credulidad excesiva pero cuyas categor?as de pensamiento
aparecen en todo momento dotadas de l?gica racionalidad, confirma la presencia
y la existencia (en el plano temporal contempor?neo) de las intromisiones prove?
nientes de la otra realidad: el hombre que vigila a trav?s de la ventana del dormi?
torio de la se?ora [i.e., el indio] y las manchas de sangre fresca en el alf?izar.
Nacha testifica, corrobora, corifirma ante el lector la realidad de los hechos confi?
ri?ndoles el valor de prueba... El personaje de la cocinera viene a modelar la
recepci?n del mensaje seleccionando como preferente la explicaci?n "real". Los
sucesos, por inquietantes que sean, parecen ciertos... (485; italics mine)
Garro thus lays the groundwork for her reader's willing suspension of disbelief before the
series of fantastic occurrences that constitutes the core of Laura's tale. Another of Nacha's
functions in the story has been pointed out by Carmen Salazar Parr: through the narrator's
allusions to Nacha's acceptance of all that Laura describes, whether she refers to the sixteenth
century or to the twentieth, Garro creates a merging of the two time frames (54).
In an as yet unpublished dissertation entitled "El protagonista femenino y el uso del espacio
en la cuent?stica de Rosario Castellanos, Elena Garro e In?s Arredondo" (1997), Mara L. Garc?a
makes use of ideas presented by Debra Castillo in Talking Back. Toward a Latin American
Feminist Literary Criticism to focus on the particular importance of the kitchen as setting?here
with an emphasis on theme rather than structure. Women depicted in literature, according to
Garcia, are often shown as is Laura to feel themselves entrapped under a husband's control, with
the result that their houses come to seem prison-like (a situation at times creating something of
an overlap with the conventions of the popular gothic novel). It is therefore common for these
female characters to search for a spot inside the domus where they may feel understood and

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
accepted, often taking refuge, as Laura does, in the kichen (126). Within its nonthreatening
atmosphere, the woman in question may proceed to share her secrets with some chosen confidante
and even to discover her true psychological identity by inventing "nonphysical spaces" into which
to escape (122). Garcia maintains that for Laura the kitchen is just such a place of refuge. At the
same time it serves as "[un] puente para comunicar no s?lo al exterior sino tambi?n al pasado"
(126). The kitchen window through which the two women gaze at certain moments becomes the
symbol of divided time, and it is here that the Indian enters at the end in order to spirit Laura
away for good.
In "'La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas': A R??valuation of Mexico's Past Through Myth"
(1985), Cynthia Duncan, in what is still probably the most frequently cited essay on the work,
emphasizes Garro's concern with the unremitting guilt modern Mexicans may tend to suffer when
identifying with their conquering Spanish ancestors on the one hand and, on the other, the feel?
ings of inferiority and defeat they experience when identifying with the indigenous side. She
points to one important function of myth as being that of assuaging the guilt feelings of mankind,
which have their roots in aggression and violence and can lead to further such acts if not dealt
with (105). Duncan sees the central effect of "Tlaxcaltecas" as that of permitting the reader to
witness "a process of mythopoeisis, the creation of myth, which allows [the story] to function as
a myth in its own right" (118). Emphasizing that "[a]lmost all the narrative elements in 'La culpa
es de los tlaxcaltecas' work toward elevating the story to a mythic level" (118), Duncan scrutiniz?
es the techniques through which this process is accomplished.
She points particularly to the distortion of chronological time permitting subtle shifts between
the twentieth century and the sixteenth, with the result that "past, present, and future begin to
resemble one another" (115). The story's narration, moreover, is transmitted largely through
recollections?that is, what can be remembered of recent events?by Laura, Nacha, and a third
person narrator who focalizes primarily through Nacha. Time and memory thus become essential.
At certain moments the story's language takes on the ritual tone common to myths of all kinds.
It is heard, for example, in some of the passages in which Laura and her primo marido express
their passionate love for one another, and in others where the two together allude to the imminent
end of the world they know, reflecting also on the future. As in successive episodes Laura
gradually becomes reacquainted with her attentive Indian husband, her yearning intensifies to
return to the past permanently. At the same time she finds herself increasingly dissatisfied in her
present life at the side of the boring, jealous, and sometimes abusive Pablo. Her final disappear?
ance is the result of her r??valuation of the past.
In the last pages of her article, Duncan switches the focus to Laura's repeated references to
her own guilt, foregrounded throughout the work starting almost with the first, seemingly unrelat?
ed words uttered to Nacha as she begins to recount her story: "??Sabes, Nacha? La culpa es de
los tlaxcaltecas" (11). Explaining that many Mexicans today see the Tlaxcaltecans as traitors and
cowards for having allied themselves with the Spanish rather than the Mexicas during the
1519-1521 struggle for Tenochtitl?n, Duncan observes that
Laura identifies with them because she feels that she has turned her back on her
own people and escaped her fate as an Indian. In her former existence, Laura was
a native American, but she could not stoically accept defeat and destruction at the
hands of the whites as her first husband did. She [flees] into another time, another
existence, wherein she herself has become a white woman rather than a member
of the 'defeated' race. She belongs now to a cultural group that deprecates Indians;
she hears other whites [i.e., Pablo and Margarita] expressing attitudes such as

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
Lee H. Dowling 35
"?Estos indios salvajes! . . . ?No se puede dejar sola a una se?ora!" . . . and "?El
indio asqueroso? . .. Nunca pens? que fueras tan baja." Nevertheless, Laura is an
anomaly, a being suspended between two worlds. She is expected to behave like
a white, but she continues to conceive of the world in accordance with her buried
Indian past. (117)
Duncan concludes by noting that as soon as Laura r??valu?tes the past and discovers it to be
"as one with the present," she begins to behave in an unconventional manner that effectively
violates her own country's twentieth century norms. This occurs as she voluntarily reestablishes
her contact with a long abandoned and forgotten heritage, her experience meant to serve as a
lesson to other Mexicans?all those who may have "taken a wrong turn and identified with the
wrong side of [their] dual heritage" (120), and for whom a mythic r??valuation of the past may
be urgent.
Writing before Duncan, in 1978, Carmen Salazar Parr, one of the story's earliest critics,
presents a similar reading. Salazar Parr notes that through Laura's two husbands, Pablo and the
Indian,
Garro makes reference to the two cultures that live side by side in Mexico: one
represented by the urban Mexican and Western philosophy, the other represented
by the Indian culture and its mythomagical beliefs. Laura is the link between these
two, but maintains fidelity to the latter . . . Laura returns to "la otra ni?a que fui"
and it is in that state that she transcends the boundaries of concrete reality to join
her Indian husband. (160)
In this dimension the two become one in an act of reciprocal love, as Laura explains: "'?...cuan?
do se gaste el tiempo los dos hemos de quedarnos el uno en el otro, para entrar en el tiempo
verdadero convertidos en uno solo'" (15).
In "Historia narrativa de la conquista de los ind?genas mexicanos: Elena Garro" (1992), Lady
Rojas-Trempe pursues the themes of magic and sacrifice as she finds them to be suggested in
"Tlaxcaltecas." She begins by reminding us that the collision in Mexico of two cultures, the
indigenous and the Western, has as its immediate fruit the Mestizos, who, feeling pressure in the
modern state to disavow their pre-Columbian indigenous roots, end up losing their identity. In
addressing this question, according to Rojas-Trempe, Garro's story deals with "la metaforizaci?n
mediante la cual los contenidos sem?nticos del aparejamiento amoroso triangular entre Laura, su
primo esposo ind?gena y el mestizo Pablo se transparentan en la yuxtaposici?n, tambi?n tripartita,
entre las cosmolog?as azteca, hispana y mexicana actual" (157).
In another pellucid statement of what most readers will probably regard as the dominant
intention and message of the story, Rojas-Trempe reminds us that the word "Tlaxcaltecas" is
polyvalent, and that it here points both to the tribe's original betrayal of the Aztecs in order to
aid the Spanish, and to the Mestizos of today who have betrayed their cultural roots by attempting
to adopt a cultural pattern imposed by foreigners. They may also be guilty, as Pablo and his
mother are shown to be, of despising and distrusting Indians.
Rojas-Trempe, though affirming that the story breaks with "los estereotipos que designan a
Espa?a como el macho conquistador y a Am?rica como la traidora Malinche" (160)?a statement
open to question if Laura's nonindigenous husband Pablo is seen, as he is by almost all other
critics of the story, to represent the Spanish or Hispanic side of Mexico's cultural heritage?here?
after chooses to focus on traditional myths of sacrifice and expiation in "Tlaxcaltecas" rather than
on the fact that the character Laura, referring to herself repeatedly as a coward and a traitor, is
at the story's beginning wholly entrapped within the self-defeating Malinche archetype (I return

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
to Rojas-Trempe's argument below). Duncan also fails to consider this seemingly pivotal point,
even though Carmen Salazar Parr (1978) had previously discussed the identification at some
length (161-67).
Two critics who do focus in detail upon the semiotic significance of the Malinche myth in
Elena Garro's early writings are Jean Franco and Sandra Messenger Cypess. Both begin by
analyzing its resonance in her first novel Los recuerdos del porvenir, and while Franco chooses
not to discuss "Tlaxcaltecas" explicitly, her perceptions, along with Cypess's, serve to contextual
ize the work in a way almost no other critics' have done. Since an adequate analysis of the story
must not fail to provide a satisfactory answer to the question of what Garro is saying to and about
Mexican women, it is vital here to review the most relevant of their highly suggestive readings.
For Garro's story not only addresses cogently several pressing problems of modern Mexican
culture, but also the question of women's ideal place within it.
In Plotting Women, Gender and Repesentation in Mexico (1989), Jean Franco brilliantly
traces the evolution of the "logic" denying Mexican women "the space in which to record their
story," a condition which invariably forces them into writing "at the margins of canonical gen?
res." Franco, summarizing her conclusions in the book's introduction, sees religion, nationalism,
and finally modernization as constituting "the broad master narratives and symbolic systems that
not only cemented [Mexican] society but plotted women differentially into the social text," with
violence involved in every shift. Within colonial society women were barred from the two most
privileged locations, the pulpit and the confessional, subordinated on grounds of "lesser rationali?
ty," and allowed to produce only "a singular kind of fantasy literature" gathering into itself the
otherwise excluded material of dream, vision, and fantasy. Within the later hegemonic discourse
of nationalism, uneducated blacks, the indigenous, and women were soon conveniently assigned
the role of "rearguard" to the ascendancy of criollo men, with La Malinche, the mistress and
interpreter of Cort?s, unfortunately (and unfairly) becoming the mythic scapegoat for Mexico's
position of dependency in the modern world. Octavio Paz, she notes, writing, interestingly
enough, during the years of his marriage to Elena Garro (1937-53), produced regarding this
question a stunning psychological profile of his countrymen that identifies La Malinche with "La
Chingada," the much maligned symbol of "the schizophrenic split between the European and the
indigenous"2 (xix).
In the twentieth century, despite the active role of women in the social revolution (1910-17),
it has been the idealized patriarchal family, according to Franco, which the mass media and the
cinema are virtually always constrained to represent, leaving gifted intellectual rebels like Rosario
Castellanos, Elena Garro, and other Mexican women to discover painfully that "national identity
was essentially masculine identity," and that as such it left almost no space for women to write
2Paz's conclusions have been questioned by more recent critics, notably Stephen Greenblatt
(145), whose view is much more favorable to La Malinche and to women in general. Garro
herself clearly did not agree with Paz's conclusions on the clever Indian woman and her role.
Commenting on La Malinche in her interview with Rosas Lop?tegui and Toruno (1991), Garro's
questioner remarked, "...en 'La culpa es de los Tlaxcaltecas [sic]" hay toda una recuperaci?n del
pasado prehisp?nico...?no?" Garro responded, "S?...es el cuento que m?s me gusta. Amo a la
Malinche. Me parece una mujer muy inteligente..." The questioner replied, "Realmente usted la
presenta as?, como una mujer inteligente, no una traidora a su raza y que se va del lado del
enemigo." Garro answered, "S?, tan inteligente, qu? m?s quieren. Una mujer que sabe dominar
no s?lo dos lenguas, sino tambi?n dos grupos en tensi?n" (67).

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
Lee H. Dowling 37
in {Plotting Women xi-xiv). The question facing these authors, therefore, inevitably became that
of "how to plot themselves into a narrative without becoming masculine or attempting to speak
from the devalued position, the space of the marginalized and the ethnic, which was not the space
of writing at all" (32). How then, to break the impasse?
Clearly grappling with this question in Los recuerdos del porvenir, Garro acts to subvert the
official version of the government's 1926-29 struggle to undermine the power of the church
(known as the Cristero War) by framing the novel as an orally transmitted collective memory,
with the small southern town of Ixtepec functioning as the novel's narrator. By choosing this
perspective, and by positing the coexistence of different temporalities, Garro invokes the "ancient
loyalties to family, religion, and 'imagined communities' which do not coincide with the nation,"
(134) thus managing provocatively to contest the state's appropriation of meaning. Perhaps be?
cause romance and fairy tale have been "the most persistent mode of representing female desire"
(135), Franco observes, Garro incorporates elements of both of these genres in the first part of
the novel. Here Julia, a stoic "public woman" and the admired mistress of the town's enemy
General Rosas, is ultimately permitted to ride away to freedom on a white horse, miraculously
rescued from bondage by her lover, the mysterious magician Felipe Hurtado. In the novel's
second half, however, another protagonist, the well born Isabel Moneada, apparently acts shame?
fully to betray family and community, give her body to the enemy leader, and die in disgrace.
But this is not all. Isabel is even reported at the end to have turned into a stone, on which an old
servant proceeds to scrawl her damning epitaph. Franco concludes by affirming provocatively:
Garro's novel thus represents an impasse. Women do not enter history?only
romance. Either they are legends like Julia, the elusive phantom of male desire,
or like Isabel they are the undesired surrogates who are not objects of desire but
who allow themselves to be seduced by power. Such women do not wrest interpre?
tive power from the masters and are not commemorated by posterity, except as
traitors to the community that has been forever bonded by memory and speech.
The fact that Isabel's treachery becomes inscribed in stone while Julia's legend re?
mains a legend only underlines the fact that they are both outside history. (138)
In her own chapter on Garro, "The Malinche Paradigm as Subtext" (1991), Sandra Cypess
independently reaches a conclusion very similar to Franco's, observing in addition that the novel's
two protagonists Julia and Isabel function "as the embodiment of an impossible duality, as both
savior and whore, just as La Malinche is both mother of the Mexican people and traitor to the
patria" (158). But Cypess affirms at the same time that Isabel Moneada actually differs in an
important way from Julia because even though she does give herself Rosas, it is she who makes
the choice to do so rather than being forced by someone else, with the later hope of saving the
life of her brother. Although her effort proves futile Isabel may be seen to have become, at least
in this one act, an agent in her own right. In deciding for herself as she does, according to Cy?
pess, Isabel also "places herself outside the institution of marriage, which controls female sexuali?
ty in patriarchal societies" (161). Even though Isabel remains a Malinche figure, she is at least
significant in her refusal to accept the traditional passive role of the female. Significantly as well,
she opposes the Good Mother archetype overwhelmingly ascribed to by the patriarchy for the
purpose of maintaining control over women and their bodies. Nevertheless, it is difficult to deny
that Isabel's fate is a tragic one, as ultimately she turns out to be just one more embodiment of
La Malinche's disgrace, representing "in a narrow vein a stereotyped belief in female treachery"
(161) that, like the stone she becomes, has proven maddeningly resistant to change.

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
38 The Erotic Dimension of Elena Garro's "La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas"
Having reached these conclusions regarding Recuerdos, Cypess immediately turns to the story
"Tlaxcaltecas," characterizing it intriguingly as a suggestion (or proposition) put forth by the
author to the effect that change is indeed possible and that Mexico can create a new cultural
paradigm with respect to its women. Through the story, in other words, Elena Garro appears to
reexamine the question she had left answered unsatisfactorily in the novel, in order to come up
with a significantly more hopeful reply.
Cypess's overall concern with the historical and mythic figure of La Malinche as manifested
in Mexican literature prompts her to hone in closely upon the leitmotif of "Tlaxcaltecas," Laura's
repeated acknowledgment of a sense of constant, overwhelming guilt at "having betrayed her
people " From the first, the young woman's anguished references to herself as a betrayer in both
of the worlds she has known make it clear as she reflects on her condition that the Malinche
archetype thrust upon her by the surrounding culture is effectively the only one by which she is
able to identify herself. She is unaware, moreover, that the Mexican concept of changeless time
relentlessly demands "the application of the Malinche paradigm to the identity of every Mexican
woman" (163), regardless of her class, beliefs, or acts, because it dictates that past and present
remain eternally one.
Cypess notes that in Paz's construal of this question, "When he repudiates La Malinche . .
the Mexican breaks his ties with the past, renounces his origins, and lives in isolation and
solitude" (167). Following the nineteenth-century tradition, Paz symbolizes the Mexican repudia?
tion of the indigenous past in terms of the male's rejection of La Malinche. But in "Tlaxcaltecas,"
the critic observes, it is no longer the male's rejection of La Malinche that counts. Instead, Garro
in the story withdraws the decision-making prerogative from the male in order to place it square?
ly in the hands of the female?synecdochically those of the story's protagonist. After carefully
measuring the virtues of the culture's indigenous side as embodied by her primo marido against
those of the Hispanic (and Christian) side represented by Pablo, Laura ironically opts to reconcile
with the first (to which she is by nature more closely bound, since the Indian is both cousin and
husband to her), while projecting repudiation upon the second, because she now recognizes that
as a viable alliance it is failing.
Silvia Spitta, a comparatist, agrees with Cypess that the feminist Garro acts through Laura
to turn around the cultural construct based on the story of Malinche ("That Fast Receding To?
wards the Past That Is Woman's Future: 'La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas,'" 1995). Laura comes
to understand the "miscegenation of modern Mexico as the 'traici?n permanente' . .. of Mexico's
Indian past by its present." Spitta observes that the male tradition overturned by Laura
incorporates not only a betrayal of the racial duality of the past?evidenced in the
bodies of all mestizos?but also men's permanent betrayal of women in terms of
their machismo as well as in the history and tradition that they write. That is,
machismo is understood as both epistemic and physical violence against women.
To Paz's cry "jMalinchismo!," Garro responds "jmachismo!" (182).
Thus the small amount of agency claimed for Isabel in Los recuerdos del porvenir, which
really changes nothing in the end, becomes greatly enhanced in "Tlaxcaltecas" when Laura,
though still within a fantasy plot, changes the equation by changing her mind.
We can see that the historical perspective offered by Franco, together with Cypess's signifi?
cant feminist reading of "Tlaxcaltecas" and Spitta's cogent observations, afford us invaluable
insights into Elena Garro's political and social concerns, as well as her highly original manner
of addressing in writing some of the challenges facing Mexican women, and Mexican culture as
a whole, in the 1960s. Yet my own reading of the story has convinced me that Garro here cannily

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
Lee H. Dowling 39
seizes the opportunity to go a considerable distance beyond what these critics have adduced by
offering readers a tantalizing sketch of what an acceptable male-female relationship might be like
in a setting arguably moving toward the postpatriarchal, and in particular what advantages such
a relationship could and should hold for women; for I see Garro's writing here as far more con?
cerned with the future than with the past. In order to bring this new dimension into clearer focus,
it is necessary to scrutinize in some detail the parameters within which Garro elects to inscribe
the story in order to direct it first to women readers, and through them to society at large. In
doing this we will be primarily concerned with her appeal to the erotic in order to produce a
significant "clash of discourses."
To return for a moment to a narratological question, a particularly tangible element of this
work?one no reader is likely to miss?is the essential dramatic tension produced by Garro's deft
handling in "Tlaxcaltecas" of the discourse (as opposed to the story, as discussed by Culler and
others). The discourse is seen to commence in medias res when Laura returns home after yet
another unexplained absence that has caused Pablo and his mother virtually to give her up for
dead. On the first page Nacha informs Laura that if these two should now come upon the missing
woman chatting amiably over coffee in the kitchen, Pablo (who has already been to the police)
can be expected to resort to new violence ("el se?or Pablo la va a matar" 11). When the two
women enter into their protracted, intimate conversation, however, which they do at once, the
reader is effectively left suspended as to the resolution of this crisis until the story's final page,
as Laura proceeds unhurriedly to narrate each of her three encounters (and we are also filled in
on experiences occurring between them). What causes the dramatic tension to escalate as evidence
of her disaffection from Pablo mounts, are the signs of Laura's steadily deepening involvement
with the mysterious and exotic intruder. While the focus of the narration is the rapid intensifica?
tion of Laura's emotional and physical response to him, the catalyst for change is undeniably the
Indian himself. It is to this remarkable character, in other words, that Laura as well all the rest
of the characters in the story consistently react.
Let us consider the way in which Garro conceives and presents this key figure. At first,
seeing the man from the past walk towards her in Cuitzeo in the midst of a lightstorm, the
chronically mortified Laura assumes that his motive can only be that of vengeance, inspired by
her seemingly heartless abandonment of him centuries earlier in his darkest hour. So frightened
of him is she that her words to Nacha effectively disclose an expectation of imminent violence
at his hands: "'No me dijo nada. Quiso decirme que yo merec?a la muerte, y al mismo tiempo
me dijo que mi muerte ocasionar?a la suya.'" Hearing him greet her instead in a tone that is
actually solicitous rather than bitter so stuns Laura that she can only blurt out to him what she
will repeat later to Nacha in the kitchen, "'?La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas'" (13).
In truth, however, the words spoken by Laura just previous to this first exchange convey her
initial impression of her Indian husband and function to betray her awareness of him at an
intensely physical level (it must be remembered that by the time this first meeting is recounted
to Nacha, Laura and her primo marido have already experienced three encounters with one
another, each longer and more intense than the one before). Here are the words Laura has spoken:
All? ven?a ?l, avanzando por la orilla del puente, con la piel ardida por el sol y el
peso de la derrota sobre los hombros desnudos. Sus pasos sonaban como hojas
secas. Tra?a los ojos brillantes. Desde lejos me llegaron sus chispas negras y vi
ondear sus cabellos negros en medio de la luz blanqu?sima del encuentro . . .
Ten?a una cortada en la mano izquierda, los cabellos llenos de polvo, y por la
herida del hombro le escurr?a una sangre tan roja que parec?a negra. (13)

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
In Laura's accounts of this and the remaining interactions, in which the two are repeatedly
recalled as being in the closest physical proximity to one another, Garro continues to foreground
the young woman's keen awareness of the Indian's body and movements in a manner meant to
leave not the slightest doubt of her strong sexual attraction to him: "...agach? la cabeza", "me
cogi? la mano y me mir?", "baj? los ojos y me dej? caer la mano", "me agarr? con su cuerpo
caliente", "[s]e puso en cuclillas junto a m?", '[su] pelo negro me hac?a sombra", "su voz profun?
da", "se qued? quieto como las panteras. Le vi el pelo negro y la herida roja en el hombro", "?l
estaba con la rodilla hincada en tierra apagando mi vestido", "se fue corriendo sobre sus piernas
desnudas", "[s]u respiraci?n se acerc? a mis espaldas, luego se puso frente a m?, vi sus pies
desnudos delante de los m?os. Ten?a un ara?azo en la rodilla. Levant? los ojos y me hall? bajo
los suyos...", "...saqu? un pa?uelito para limpiarle el pecho", "[m]e agarr? de la mano y nos
fuimos caminando. El marido me sent? debajo de un ?rbol roto. Puso una rodilla en tierra y mir?
alerta lo que suced?a a nuestro alrededor", "[?l] me puso las manos sobre los o?dos y luego me
guard? contra su pecho" (passim). Among these phrases the first nine or ten serve to prepare the
reader for the highly erotic moment of the couple's cohabitation, occurring near the end of the
second encounter. Laura frames her memory of it with the heat imagery traditionally associated
with sexual passion:
?Duerme conmigo...?me dijo en voz muy baja...
Nos dormimos en la luz de la ma?ana en el calor del incendio. (21-22)
Rounding out the hero's obvious physical appeal to Laura is his gratifying failure to put on
the expected display of wounded male ego or machismo whose purpose would have been his
wife's "deserved" humiliation, though Laura's own constant, abject insistence on her unworthi
ness provides openings aplenty for its manifestation. In truth, the opposite occurs. Her even-hand?
ed spouse again and again responds with sensitive magnanimity to Laura's expressed terror of
mistreatment and death at the hands of the Spaniards, though he himself is said to be unafraid
(26). In addition, he shows himself willing to verbalize clearly his own devotion to Laura,
speaking forgiveness of her repeated desertions (in her words "mi traici?n permanente" 25) with
gentle humor: "'?Ya s? que eres traidora y me tienes buena voluntad. Lo bueno crece junto con
lo malo.'" And finally, at the end of the third encounter, his full "absolution" of her: '"?Trai?
dora te conoc? y as? te quise'" (26). Garro's consummate profiling of the male protagonist paves
the way for the reader to go along with the story's (in a sense) unconventional ending?the
juncture at which Laura, responding to him with love but exercising her own agency, elects to
join until "el final del hombre," the primo marido and lover who, as Nacha breathlessly informs
her, "'[y]a lleg? por usted'" (28).
One reader's reaction to this compelling male figure, voiced by a Mexican woman academic
and recorded during a 1990 interview with Elena Garro, is worth quoting:
"La culpa es de los Tlaxcaltecas [sic]" pienso que es un cuento muy revoluciona?
rio, porque ?c?mo puede ser que nosotros creamos, y lo creemos verdaderamente,
que una mujer de clase media que est? aburrida de su matrimonio t?pico, se ena?
more de un indio que est? en la batalla, que est? en la lucha, que est? en la con?
quista, (italics mine)
Garro's enthusiastic response is also illuminating: "A m? ese cuento me gusta ... Yo creo que
es el ?nico cuento m?o que me gusta... Porque el indio es muy guapo, ?verdad?" (Rosas Lop?te?
gui and Toruno 62).
A key sign conveyed by the passages of "Tlaxcaltecas" cited above is that while the Indian
is unquestionably intended to symbolize the ancient indigenous side of Mexico's culture, his

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
Lee H. Dowling 41
portrayal by Garro in the story decidedly renders him a far cry from sixteenth-century chroni?
clers' reports concerning the fierce, flesh-eating partisans of the god Huitzilopochtli, eager above
all to distinguish themselves in the ritual confrontations of the Guerra Florida. In fact, Garro
makes virtually no attempt at ethnographic authenticity in her portrayal of Laura's ever gentle
and nurturing primo marido, preferring instead to draw upon elements of several well known
literary archetypes. The protagonist thus produced might be characterized as integrating features
of a yearned for Prince Charming (the one in Cinderella, for example, known for spiriting his
lady away from a manifestly unpleasant domestic situation) as well as of the traditional "parfit,
gentle knight" of the medieval romances de caballer?a, where seeing to a lady's needs typically
ranked just below fighting on a gentleman's roster of duties.
Any number of today's women readers, however, despite numerous differences between the
texts in question, seem virtually certain to associate elements of Garro's hero portrayal with those
conventionally employed to present a majority of the male protagonists in today's phenomenally
popular erotic romance novel (as opposed to the romance novel, which is of course traditional).
At first a type of paperback-only fiction originating in the US in the early 1970s, this is a genre
that with the enthusiastic collusion of large armies of women readers has continued to evolve
rapidly throughout the 80s and 90s. Though Garro's primary intention is not in all probability to
titillate female readers, it is undeniable that the male protagonists as typically presented in these
novels (which do aim, among other purposes, at titillation) may be seen to bear more than a
passing resemblance to Laura's Indian lover as he is presented in "Tlaxcaltecas."
The failure of any critic until now to point out the surprising parallel between certain aspects
of Garro's story and the erotic romance may be attributed to several factors. One is that until
quite recently a more or less clear line of demarcation was perceived by critics as existing be?
tween "high" and "low" art, including literature. While Garro's story was undeniably designed
to occupy a slot within the first category, the erotic romance was roundly excluded from it (see
Young for a review of scholarly criticism). Even as ideological revisions now associated with
postmodernism began to discredit, one after another, the principal conceits underlying the centu?
ry-old distinction between literature and nonliterature, the romance genre, with its limited vocabu?
lary, stock plot, and typed characters redundantly deployed (it was said) in literally thousands of
works intended for mass circulation?and which enjoyed, in most cases, a shelf-life of no more
than one month?proved of null interest to academic critics except to serve them as an essential
b?te noire with which to intimidate students (and indeed the academic woman who stooped to
indulge herself in the reading of these books commonly took great pains to conceal the fact).
Second, the earlier militant feminist political stance dictated uncompromisingly that "romances
were patriarchal structures that encouraged women to become reconciled to their social condi?
tions" (Mussell, "Love" 9). As Lynn Coddington has observed:
Romance represents a genre of popular fiction that is often viewed as "the smutty
joke of the publishing industry...." [Books of this sort] carry a certain disreputa?
ble cachet that both fascinates and disgusts those outside the romance fold. In the
eyes of many who have studied romances, the novels constitute a direct opposition
to feminism and any sense of women as independent subjects. Reading and writing
them have been viewed as acts that limit women's public voices by reinforcing
values that keep women in restricted roles within patriarchal cultures . . . Some
academic feminists have viewed romances and the reading and writing communi?
ties that sustain the genre as a sort of dysfunctional literacy, a term . . . given to

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
literacy behaviors that "negate personal control and critical, informed, rational
engagement with one's world." (58-59)
Beginning perhaps in 1987 with Carol Thurston's important study The Romance Revolution:
Erotic Novels for Women and the Quest for a New Sexual Identity, however, this perception has
been subjected to a widespread process of revision that seems likely to continue (a point to be
pursued later).
With this in mind, and in the light of the existing criticism of "Tlaxcaltecas" already re?
viewed, several new questions now present themselves for consideration if the claim of a signifi?
cant intertextuality between Garro's short story and the erotic romance gerne is to be examined.
Before presenting these, however, let me make clear that my intention is emphatically not that
of attempting to claim that the story is an erotic romance, thereby denying the complex ambiguity
that continues to be singled out for exploration, as we have already seen, by its critics. My
purpose is, rather, as formulated at the beginning, to examine in some detail a particular dimen?
sion of the text that has thus far been overlooked, making use as I do so of some of the research,
including much insightful commentary, that has only recently begun to emerge on the erotic
romance phenomenon. Let me also acknowledge my awareness that "Tlaxcaltecas" is not a novel.
Interestingly, however, it has been likened to one by at least two critics. Salazar Parr comments
on the structural complexity of the story, mentioning its two narrative levels, shifts between past
and present, handling of point of view, and intricate arrangement of dialogues within dialogues
(152). Noting that there is heavy emphasis on the plot, "an element usually insignificant in short
stories," she quotes Ren? Rebetz's observation that '"la lectura de este cuento deja la sensaci?n
de una novela"' (156).
With these qualifications in mind, I now propose to address the following questions. First,
how and why did the erotic romance novel come to be, and what are the characteristics distin?
guishing it? Second, does this genre present additional significant similarities and differences
when compared to Elena Garro's story, and if so, what are they? Third, what common vision may
have been shared by Garro, a Mexican feminist far ahead of her time, and the legions of US
romance writers and readers of the early 1980s who demanded and got, for the most part, sub?
stantive changes in the romance's traditional portrayal of both male and female protagonists, as
well as their pattern of interaction with one another? Finally, what is the significance of the line
of inquiry opened here, and what does it add to our understanding of Garro's vision in crafting
the story? All of what follows below represents an effort to provide substantial answers and
insight into each of these concerns.3
First, the recent phenomenon of the bestselling erotic romance novel has been been well re?
searched and presented in Thurston's The Romance Revolution (1987). Of its genesis she writes:
3I have not attempted here to deal with homosexually oriented romances. Grescoe asserts that
they exist but does not identify them. I assume he refers to the Masquerade, Blue Moon, and
"Black Lace" lines, all of which publish books offering erotica largely for women, in which both
male and female homosexuality is featured along with heterosexuality. However, these books do
not fit within the definition offered here of the erotic romance novel (and I know of no research
on them). According to Mussell ("Where's Love Gone?"), both romances with historical and
those with contemporary settings feature gay men and, more rarely, lesbians as secondary charac?
ters (4). As for romance readers, most are heterosexual; some who are not stress their ability to
visualize a homosexual rather than a heterosexual couple.

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
Lee H. Dowling 43
During the late 1960s [the US publishing house] Avon, [financially] unable to
compete with wealthier paperback houses for reprint rights to hardcover bestsell?
ers, began publishing paperback originals in an attempt to create its own bestsell?
ers. ... As a result, the house was actively searching for original fiction when
editor Nancy Coffey pulled Kathleen Woodiwiss's The Flame and the Flower
from a pile of unsolicited manuscripts. Launched in 1972 as an Avon Spectacular,
with all the promotion and advertising support usually given to bestseller reprints,
The Flame and the Flower was distributed through drugstores and other mass
merchandising outlets as well as bookstores. Avon's ploy not only proved the
commercial viability of paperback originals but also opened the door to a new
American publishing enterprise after Woodiwiss's erotic tale of love and adven?
ture?"the bold, tempestuous romance of a kidnapped and ravished aristocratic
girl"?caught the imagination of hundreds of thousands of women and launched
the erotic historical romance as a mass entertainment phenomenon.4 (47-48)
The remarkable popularity over the decades of the thousands of new books following in
general the lines of Woodiwiss's has been such that by 1998 the number of romance novels
published by one house alone, Harlequin Enterprises (the largest), had exceeded four billion.
Harlequin, owned by Torstar (Toronto Star), claims to sell 160 million books each year, or 5.5
books per second!5 These are merchandised around the world in 24 languages and more than 100
4A previous chapter of this story focuses on the British publishing house of Mills and Boon,
which for many years had been bringing out each month a small number of paperback romance
novels written for women in conformation with strict ethical guidelines producing "exceedingly
chaste" stories. The sexuality of the heroines in these works was "covert and repressed," as they
attempted to deal with problematic heroes who were almost always "dark, brooding, masterful
and wealthy." In 1957 Harlequin, a Canadian reprint house, began distributing Mills and Boon
romances there under its own imprint, with Pocket Books becoming its American distributor. In
1972 Harlequin purchased the controlling interest in Mills and Boon. As a response to spiraling
demand, from 1973 to 1980 Harlequin increased the number of romances published each month
to 12 (now divided into several different types or categories), with numerous other American
publishing firms joining in as competitors as soon as the novels' overwhelming popularity became
obvious (notably Silhouette, later bought out by Harlequin). In 1976 Janet Dailey became the first
American writer published by Harlequin, soon to be followed by hundreds more if not thousands.
Within this newer format the chaste and modest heroine was rapidly replaced by one eager to
experience sexuality at first hand, though usually only within a monogamous relationship, and
who was seen to do so in erotically explicit detail in each novel (see Paul Grescoe, Merchants
of Venus: Inside Harlequin and the Empire of Romance).
5These statistics were provided to me by Harlequin in the form of a Business Fact Sheet and
another headed "Harlequin Fun Facts." While it does not affect my thesis in this article, I also
attempted to attain information on erotic romance novels published in Spanish and, in particular,
in Mexico. These data are difficult to obtain. A PR employee in Harlequin's main offices in
Toronto informed me in a telephone interview after doing some checking that they are "simply
not given out" (April 1999). Grescoe includes the following information:
Harlequin first published in the language in Mexico on Valentine's Day 1979, in
a joint venture with the Dearmas Group, a leading publisher and magazine distrib?
utor in Central and South America . . . and in less than a year?when the enter?
prise was already declared profitable?the series was introduced in Venezuela,

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
international markets, including Japan and China, according to Grescoe (242). Some 50 million
women in North America alone read romances.
As its readers are aware, the current version of the romance novel may have either a contem?
porary setting or a historical one. Whatever the period in which a work in this mode is set, and
whatever the class or occupation of the characters, the defining characteristic, according to John
Cawelti, "is not that it stars a female, but that its organizing action is the development of a love
relationship, usually between a man and a woman. . . . The moral fantasy of the romance is that
of love triumphant and permanent, overcoming all obstacles and difficulties" (quoted by Thurston
33).
According to most critics, the traditional romance dates back in the Anglo tradition to Samuel
Richarson's Pamela and Clarissa, published in the 1740, while most see the Bront? sisters' Jane
Eyre (1847) and Wuthering Heights (1847) as more immediately relevant. Daphne Clair, herself
both a reader and writier of romance, mentions especially Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
(1813) among precursors (80) as do others as well. A few recent examples of successful tradition?
al romances are the 20th century writings of Georgette Heyer and her disciple Dame Barbara
Cartland, Kathleen Winsor's Forever Amber (1944), and Anya Seton's Katherine (1954). Edith
Maude Hull's The Sheik (1921) is particularly signficiant, according to Thurston, because it
"broke the pattern of the traditional seduction novel... in allowing Lady Diana Mayo to be both
seduced and virtuous .. ." (38). Another novel not quite within the same mold but acknowledged
as influential is Ang?lique (1960) by Sergeanne Golon (French husband-and-wife team Serge and
Anne Golon).
The erotic romance differs from these older, traditional romance novels chiefly in what its
name suggests; it features, again in Thurston's words, "a veritable pall of sensuality that is both
pervasive and constant" (48). Rapidly abandoning many of the conservative values and behavior
standards informing the older romances, today's erotic ones include in almost all cases at least
one lengthy and explicit love scene. In addition, the subject of the heroine's increasing sexual
self-awareness always takes up a significant proportion of the content. Works of this kind consti?
tute the first large and autonomous body of sexual writing by women to be addressed to the
feminine experience?in other words, they are the first mass-produced erotica specifically for
women (Thurston 6ff). In their article "Watery Passion: The Struggle Between Hegemony and
Sexual Liberation in Erotic Fiction for Women," Patthey-Ch?vez, Clare, and Youmans determine
with respect to this that the erotic romance texts include a distinct dispreference for the episodic
sexuality celebrated by men-oriented erotica . . . and substitute for it a powerful yearning for a
sexual self that integrates emotional with physical intimacy (see also their "The Social Construc?
tion of Sexual Realities" for a discussion of the main differences between male and female
erotica).
By the 1990s a host of subgenres had been created to lend variety to the erotic romance
settings. According to Grescoe,
Colombia, and Costa Rica. . . . But allegiances in these countries ebbed and flow?
ed?Mexico devolved to a licensing arrangement?and Alan Boon [a top Harle?
quin executive] said not long ago that "the whole relationship with Spanish is
difficult." His brother says the lesson they have learned is that "where there are
difficult currency problems?with inflation and currency control?he licensing ap?
proach is the best" (114).
Research in this area is obviously waiting to be carried out.

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
Lee H. Dowling 45
[There exist within the historical romance type] westerns [with] Native Americans
(or cowboys and Indians) . . . those with pirates, medieval, and Viking heroes,
fantasies featuring Druids, g?nies, and legendary places such as Camelot and
Atlantis; supernaturals with ghosts and vampires; and gothics with suspenseful
stories, moody heroes, and moldering mansions and castles. Contemporary novels
have their own distinctions: humor . . . mystery and suspense; fantasies with
mermaids and Loch Ness monsters; supernaturals with angels, New Age, and rein?
carnation themes; and (a popular new category) time travels. Other categories are
futuristic and science fiction; New Reality novels that deal with unsettling subjects
such as sexual abuse and alcoholism; multicultural stories with black and Latino
characters, and overtly gay and erotic novels, many with sadomasochistic over?
tones. (8)
In the popular "Indian romance" format, a white woman, usually during the 18th or 19th
century, finds herself to be the captive of some tribe of Indians?and in particular of one brave
(the hero), who soon proceeds to initiate her into romantic love and sex. Most often, before or
after falling in love with her captor, the woman comes to perceive unexpected merit in the Indian
way of life, ultimately electing to remain with the mate, who always comes to reciprocate her
feelings and marries her sometime before the book's end (see, for example, Janelle Taylor's
Ecstasy series published by Zebra during the 1980s). She may thus be seen as "crossing cultural
borders with branches of peace," as someone has noted. According to Kate McCafferty, the
Indian romance represents the pulp-romance reemergence of the "American Captivity Narrative,"
though presenting significant innovations. Both the Indian romance?despite the fact that Laura
is not precisely a captive in Garro's story?and the "time travel" subgenre mentioned above by
Grescoe, boast obvious superficial similarities with elements of "Tlaxcaltecas." Other elements
common to both include heightened sensuality throughout and a central love scene (explicit in
the story but left undetailed) .
One of the most common conventions in the writing of erotic romances is a pronounced
emphasis upon the hero's physical characteristics and appearance, as well as his spatial position?
ing in each successive scene in relation to the heroine, who is the stories' focalizer most of the
time. As already well illustrated above, these elements are also highly conspicuous in "Tlaxcalte?
cas." Semantically, the convention involved here converts two paralinguistic systems into linguis?
tic ones; these are kinesics, the signaling systems making use of gestures and other body move?
ments, and proxemics, the system by way of which the participants in social interaction adjust
their posture and relative distance from one another according to the degree of intimacy that
obtains between them by virtue of their sex, the social roles they are performing, and so on (Lyon
67). The almost constant scrutiny directed upon the hero in romance novels, according to one
author, has resulted in the coining of the inelegant phrase "man-watching-from-the-closet" in
order to describe it (Kinsale 40). In the erotic Indian romance subgenre such watching presum?
ably gains in erotic intensity, for many readers as well as for the heroine, from the fact that the
protagonist, as is the case in "Tlaxcaltecas," is most often presented as arrayed in little more than
a loin cloth (though clothing constitutes an important subtheme in other types of romance and
is often described in considerable detail).
Another stylistic characteristic creating a degree of intertextuality between 'Tlaxcaltecas" and
the erotic romance is the frequency in both cases with which the text focuses upon the heroine's
retrospective musings over her encounters with the male protagonist and the feelings these have
generated (and continue to evoke) in her. Laura's allusions to her own meetings with the Indian

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
marido, most of them sensually oriented, are seen on almost every page of the story. It is appar?
ent that such passages serve to highlight Laura's growing awareness of her own physical desires
and emotional needs. According to Thurston, the erotic romance novel as well, "by its very
classification as erotic, deal[s] with the heroine's sexual self-awareness" (10), though most now
offer glimpses as well into the hero's awareness. Other key elements present in both "Tlaxcalte?
cas" and the erotic romance are almost too obvious to mention; these include the development
of a love story, the eventual overcoming by the two lovers of all obstacles, and the ultimate
triumph of love. Another is the characteristic effectuation at the end of a "quintessentially female
kind of victory," defined as one in which "neither side loses" (Krentz and Barlow 24). In "Tlax?
caltecas" Laura obviously wins by gaining a caring husband who not only refuses to blame her
for past errors but also recognizes and respects her needs as a woman. Her Indian mate wins too
by regaining Laura's intimate companionship during his lifetime as well as her recommitment to
his concerns.
In order to complete our response to the second of the questions posed above (what are other
major similarities and differences, if any, between Garro's taut and complexly woven piece and
the erotic romance story?), it is instructive to refer first to norms existing in the 1970s when the
erotic romance first appeared, and in particular to those dictating the predominant characteristics
of most male protagonists. As already noted, not only were the majority of romance heroes
evoked as dark, brooding, and masterful men, they tended as well to be domineering and often
brutal into the bargain, to the extent that not a few of them actually started out by raping the
(usually virgin) female protagonists?in some of the books doing so more than once (thus the
term "bodice rippers" to refer to the genre). Ludicrously (as it now seems), the women thus
maltreated were subsequently seen to fall senselessly in love with the hero anyway, and finally
to marry him, though this staple was rendered slightly more feasible by the fact that the heroines,
though traditionally spunky?as was Jane Eyre, for example?were depicted almost de rigeur as
both economically dependent and deprived of nurturing relationships with family and friends; and
they were thus at the mercy of the heroes who, though emotionally unhealthy and therefore
unable to love, were wealthy, often titled members of society's upper crust. Between the novel's
beginning and its end, therefore, the hero's emotional volatility and propensity toward aggression
were seen to diminish markedly as he evolved into a man "fully loving and tender towards the
female character . . . healed and redeemed through the love of the heroine" (Patthey-Ch?vez,
"Watery Passion" 100).
In the 1980s, however, following a decade in which the Supreme Court ruled abortion legal,
woman began to pressure state legislatures to ratify the ERA, and both divorce and the living
together of unwed couples became more common than ever, substantial changes appeared in the
erotic romance thanks largely to demands made by the romance readers themselves. In addition
to a weakening of the traditional sine qua non that the heroine be initially a virgin, scenes in
which the hero inflicted violence on women were to a large extent eliminated, though such critics
as Teresa L. Ebert cautions against the adoption of an overly optimistic "progressivist view based
on chronological change" (51). Writers also responded to readers' wishes, most often expressed
through reader surveys circulated by competing publishers and others, to see men portrayed more
fully as compassionate and sensitive human beings displaying nurturing characteristics (Crane
264). According to Thurston, the New Hero of the 1980s possessed "an ego and masculinity
secure enough to seek a relationship based on equality and sharing . . ." (56). The path now
charted in detail during the course of each novel was that trodden by each featured couple in
order to achieve the desired degree of emotional intimacy.

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
Lee H. Dowling 47
It is plain that the male protagonist in "Tlaxcaltecas" fully shares the traits of the reformed
romance hero?an interesting point given the fact that Garro created him years before his appear?
ance in the novels. Specifically, Laura's Indian lover shows himself to be unfailingly compassion?
ate, sensitive, and nurturing, and thus unreluctant to expose what might be termed the feminine
side of his nature, a vulnerability now deemed necessary if emotional intimacy is to be achieved.
At the same time, Garro's hero continues to be physically strong and sexually attractive. A more
accurate description than this of the erotic romance's "New Hero" would be difficult to imagine.
Changes in the erotic romance heroine since the 1980s are as striking as those in her counter?
part, numerous pages having by now been written to extol the much greater degree of indepen?
dence bestowed upon female characters, who begin to be portrayed with infinitely greater oppor?
tunities than before for growth, development, and fulfillment. The majority of them came to be
presented, as they continue to be in current novels, working successfully at a variety of interesting
jobs and professions (and thus no longer limited, as previously, to laboring as underpaid teachers,
nurses, and nurserymaids), and economically self-sufficient. To lend them emotional support,
friends and an extended family are often written into the story's plot. An important point relative
to Garro's story is the fact that the guilt-ridden Laura's resemblance to these newly independent
romance heroines is at first considerably less obvious than her Indian husband's congruity with
their men. However, close attention to what the text reveals about her proves that in the course
of the story Laura does undergo a significant process of emotional and intellectual growth (evolu?
tion toward what might be termed cultural "deregulation"). Let us look at the process of Laura's
self-development.
First, as noted above, while occupying not a public pulpit but merely a modest chair in own
kitchen, Laura succeeds in becoming in the story?as Isabel in Recuerdos was not permitted to
do?the primary speaker within the discourse, thereby gaining the privilege of telling her own
story in her own way. In fact, according to romance writer and feminist Jennifer Crusie Smith,
"women tell stories primarily to get our own reality on the page for a change" (89). The person
to whom the female narrator addresses herself is, moreover, as we have seen, a sympathetic
constituent (very much like a female reader) who at least in part shares Laura's dilemma of being
perennially subject to men's dictates (though a class difference obviously implies the existence
of other problems as well for Nacha). With a confidante to validate the conclusions gradually
emerging within the coherence of Laura's narrative, she may be seen to embark upon what
amounts to a critical examination of her own vital realities and possibilities, one in which she
compares and contrasts her treatment at the hands of each of her two husbands in order to discov?
er and give voice to her own preferences. As her critique continues, Laura effectively begins to
deconstruct the stubborn cultural paradigm that invariably renders females the guilty party, eternal
Eves despite their effective exclusion from virtually all historical decisions leading up to the
present moment (such exclusion constituted one of the complaints voiced in 1691 by Sor Juana
to her pseudo-confidante Sor Filotea de la Cruz). Though this deconstructive operation is not
accomplished easily or completely in Laura's case, there is evidence of substantial progress when
she announces solemnly to Nacha, without apparent motivation, that "the Tlaxcaltecans are to
blame" (11). By immediately proceeding to elicit Nacha's admission that she too is a traitor
(because a woman), Laura shows herself already aware of the fact that at least she cannot be
alone in her "guilt," which she now recognizes as logically mitigated by the fact that so many
others?men as well as women?must share it.
Next, commenting to Nacha on the clutch of shame she experienced in Cuitzeo at the first
glimpse of her primo marido, Laura makes specific reference to the discourse into which, from

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
her earliest years as an Indian child, she was conscripted by her parents. Looking back, she
recalls the daunting solemnity with which elders were wont to admonish her, "'Alguna vez te
encontrar?s frente a tus acciones convertidas en piedras irrevocables como ?sa,'" while forcing
her to gaze upon the image "cde un dios, que ahora no recuerdo cu?l era'" (13). Never allowed
to contest these inauspicious prophecies, Laura has subsequently found them to be self-fulfilling,
with the intended effect of paralyzing her even before she tried to act. But, as Laura calls the
practice to Nacha's attention years later, she seemingly does so with a dawning awareness that
such admonitions are a common parental strategy (analogous to those practiced by institutional?
ized religions of all sorts) that function in large part to co-opt children?and female children in
particular?into dumb conformity with patriarchy's expectations.
The rational appraisal of her own situation that is initiated by Laura also enables her to
perceive more clearly the dimensions of the callej?n sin salida or trap ritually laid for Mexican
women by the hegemony controlling the culture into which they are born. In the first meeting
with her primo marido, who has greeted her with a mildly toned "'??Qu? te haces?'" she finds
herself explaining to Nacha, "'?...No pude decirle que me hab?a casado, porque estoy casada con
?l'" (13). Later, over the furious demands of Pablo and his mother that she reveal the identity of
the Indian they have glimpsed waiting outside of the house, she realizes that exactly the same
constriction now prevents her from disclosing the truth to them?which is of course that the other
man, too, is her husband: "?Verdad, Nachita que no pod?a decirles que era mi marido?" (23).
Although the double bind acknowledged here by Laura is clearly analogous to that constraining
all Mestizos (regardless of gender) as they attempt to sort out the respective loyalties exerted
upon them by their dual heritage, Garro emphasizes that women in particular are jeopardized by
dint of their greater vulnerability (physical, social, legal, etc.) Yet here, too, if the reader infers
that as a result of the series of anguished deliberations over the question of guilt (to which her
discourse attests again and again, almost to the point of becoming ironic), Laura has come to see
that her plight is structurally imposed rather than deriving from personal transgression, she may
be seen to have taken another small step toward liberation from its clutches (though she is still
placed in jeopardy by dint of her sexual vulnerability) .
Laura's last move is to initiate zealous pursuit of the historical origins of her condition. Kept
in this phase of the story a virtual prisoner in her home by Pablo, who is ostensibly protecting
her from the Indian and helping her to regain her "sanity," she begins to pour over one of the
old chronicles of Indies. Later Nacha confirms that once her patrona is again permitted super?
vised outings with Pablo's mother in Chapultepec Park, "apenas volv?a a su casa, la se?ora Laura
se encerraba en su cuarto para leer la conquista de M?xico de Bernai D?az" (25). Evidence that
Laura has begun to comprehend history's relevance to her life is heard in her several surprised
allusions to the fact that places visited or seen during her transitions into the sixteenth century
are identical with places forming part of the Mexico City in which she has presumably lived all
of her life. Thus Laura's progress in the story toward significant enlightenment is far from
negligible. Taken together, the various initiatives just traced do not appear to differ substantially
from many of those advocated in feminist consciouness-raising programs of the 1960s and 70s,
whose results in the US today are patent.
The preceding passages demonstrate additional correspondences between "Tlaxcaltecas" and
the reformed erotic romance that relate to the value-laden question of just exactly how?that is,
with which kinds of character traits?both hero and heroine are to be presented. If we reflect on
those relating just to the female protagonist for a moment, it becomes clear that in both story and
reformed erotic romance novels the traditional dichotomy between "angels and monsters" or

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
Lee H. Dowling 49
"virgin-mother types and whores" no longer obtains. In Laura's case, specifically, the matter of
her previous or current sexual relationships with other men remains irrelevant within the quality
of love maintained by hero for heroine. Vis-?-vis his wife, in other words, Laura's Indian hus?
band remains strictly nonjudgmental. According to Sandra Booth's analysis of the same phenome?
non in the erotic romance, the old, narrowly conceived categories bisecting the female gender
"partly breaks down in the 1980s" with the hero subsequently shown in most works to be validat?
ing the heroine by viewing her consistently in a positive light. Because her sexual conduct is no
longer at issue the hero will not potentially be called upon to defend her from rape or insult. For
this reason he himself may now be portrayed as compassionate, more moral, and less prone to
violence?in fact, more like the heroine (96). Booth's explanation is clearly applicable to what
we have just observed concerning "Tlaxcaltecas," in which the agreeable hero is portrayed as a
nurturing, thoroughly nonchauvinistic individual.
According to Crane, who bases her comments on a survey she herself made and tabulated,
romance readers prefer their heroines to be caring, understanding, showing warmth and good
humor?all traditional feminine traits. The characteristics they most desire to find in heroes are
not really very different from these, with "nurturing characteristics" being especially important
(259). Crane concludes from this that "many readers may actually be unknowing advocates of
the feminization of culture" (266). While such a modification in the age-old conventions circum?
scribing women's sexuality and exalting male domination of them is of enormous significance
in the English-speaking world, Garro's clear incorporation years before of the new dynamic
within a Mexican context must be seen as both visionary and extremely daring, in view of the
greater restrictions historically endured by Mexican women (see Franco; see Treviz?n, and also
Paz).
The reading of "Tlaxcaltecas" just proposed leads me to take issue with the interpretation
offered by Lady Rojas-Trempe using a myth approach. Rojas-Trempe bases her own understand?
ing on the assumption that Laura's primo marido is in fact, as Nacha suggests at one point, a
sorcerer or shaman ("un brujo" 23). The young woman's reunion with this figure serves to open
the way for a return to magical, animistic thought ("el pensamiento m?gico animista" Rojas
Trempe 161) wherein a crucial balance, or original harmony, can be restored through the enact?
ment of "una serie de gestos m?micos y verbales" (Rojas-Trempe 161), or rites. Rojas-Trempe's
analysis, inspired by the wondrously polysemous character of Garro's text, is impressively rich
and complex. By virtue of her decipherment of mythological fragments or mythemes found in
the story that are presumably identical to those discussed in the work of such scholars as Kurt
Seligman, Marcel Mauss, James Frazier, Sigmund Freud, and Bronislaw Malinowski, among
others, certain more or less cryptic images and allusions of Garro's story undeniably acquire
compelling clarification. Yet Rojas-Trempe is led by the structural mechanism of her approach
to conclude that it is wholly the magic?the spell cast by the Indian shaman?that manages to
enervate the otherwise lifeless Laura, whose name remits, the critic asserts, to that of nothing
more than a vegetable (Rojas-Trempe 164). As we have seen, this picture is clearly at odds with
the view that emerges from a close scrutiny of the series of self-help steps initiated by Laura
herself in order to redirect her course, though the Indian does indeed serve as the catalyst for
them.
Another of Rojas-Trempe's conclusions with which I am unable to agree asserts that after
Laura's existence and her feminine nature have finally been endowed with meaning through love,
her childlessness is henceforth to be regarded as a misfortune ("vive su destino est?ril como una
fatalidad", [Rojas-Trempe 166]). While a mythological reading may indeed dictate that the

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
restoration to Laura's being of a primeval harmony, once accomplished, calls for the birth of a
child as its natural complement, this is nowhere stated or even implied in the text. Rather than
including any suggestion that her protagonist will henceforth regret her inability to advance to
the putatively ennobling state of motherhood, Garro firmly places emphasis on the feelings
evoked in Laura by her experience of passionate love. This may be seen, I believe, as a very
deliberate gesture on the writer's part intended to contest hegemonic overdefinition of women's
roles.
Though there is a reference during the first encounter to the couple's childlessness ("En ese
momento me acord? de que cuando un hombre y una mujer se aman y no tienen hijos est?n
condenados a convertirse en uno solo. As? me lo dec?a mi otro padre, cuando yo le llevaba el
agua y ?l miraba la puerta detr?s de la que dorm?amos mi primo marido y yo" [20]), it does not
appear to be regarded as a misfortune, but rather as a circumstance held to foster a special kind
of intimacy in the couple consigned to it. Neither is there any overt indication that the two regret
their own barrenness?or even remember it?when they are said to overhear children crying later,
during the third encounter, at the moment when the siege of Tenochtitl?n has reached its final
critical hours (28). The need on the critic's part to assume that sterility is some sort of curse
under which Laura must suffer, presumably as punishment for her earlier misconduct (i.e.,
desertion), seems to me to follow automatically only if a traditional model of Jungian-type
criticism is rigorously applied to the text (see Vincent B. Leitch's chapter on this approach). The
ideology supporting such a conclusion remits to what Jean Franco identifies as the old patriarchal
idea that "whatever her social status, woman's only reason for existing was motherhood, which
united the material and the spiritual" {Plotting Women 103). Instead of this it might be argued
ithat Garro's story actually comes to envision something on the order of a "pure relationship"
between Laura and her lover, according to the terminology preferred by Giddens. Implicit in the
concept are women's escape from role-limitation and their emergence as fully sexual beings apart
from the needs of reproduction. In addition, such a relationship embodies freedom from both the
rule of the phallus and the overweening centrality within Western and most other traditions of
male sexual experience (58ff). Though mythic allusions do indeed inform one of the important
subtexts of "Tlaxcaltecas," the conventional interpretation of these alone will lead to a bracketing
of the many other textual signs that, as we have seen, point toward a newer, more flexible
conception of a couple's possible modes of interaction.
An interesting argument relevant to this precise point is set forth in a recent article by Amy
Kaminsky, who discusses differing interpretations of the works of several Latin American women
writers, including Elena Garro, and then offers some possible reasons for them. Referring to Los
recuerdos del porvenir, Kaminsky proposes that Gregoria, the old servant who inscribes Isabel
Moncada's epitaph on the stone into which she has allegedly been transformed, misinterprets the
events she has witnessed by virtue of having applied to them elements of a "residual authority"
that is the only one she recognizes (104). Kaminsky stipulates that her use of this term refers to
that authority which is still brought to bear on the production and reception of
texts, despite oppositional feminist literary acts such as writing, narrating, and
reading that call into question the authoritative discourses of male domination, as
well as those of, for example, class hierarchy and European rationalism. Residual
authority is not a quality of any particular text, author, or reader but rather is an
effect that floats among them in the literary process. (104).

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
Lee H. Dowling 51
While the subtle ambiguity and irony so characteristic of Garro's writing seem at times to call
for appeal to such traditional authority, readers will find it usually at odds with the writer's
lifelong commitment to controversial social and political causes (see below).
We now proceed to the third of the four questions posed earlier?that of a possible common
vision shared by Garro in her early years, and current enthusiasts (both writers and readers) of
the erotic romance gerne. Two points emerge clearly from the data thus far presented. The first
is the feminist thrust seen in both the reformed erotic romance and, by most critics, in "Tlaxcalte?
cas." The second is their common adherence to the premise that it should be possible for women
to enjoy equal treatment as well as personal validation in society without being required to
relinquish visions of relationships that offer them romantic love and pleasure-filled intimacy,
patriarchy notwithstanding. In order to go beyond this, it is helpful to focus briefly on the wide?
spread revision of earlier critical assessment of the romance gerne now underway.
As mentioned above, in the US adherents of the more militant feminist movement of the late
seventies and early eighties almost routinely denounced the erotic romance genre, viewing it as
a strictly reactionary mode of writing whose real function was to continue foisting patriarchal
norms upon unsuspecting readers, all the while acting dishonestly to conceal its own conservative
ideology. A much quoted remark concluding Jeanne Dubino's article "The Cinderella Complex:
Romance Fiction, Patriarchy and Capitalism" conveys both the tenor and the tone of much of this
commentary. Dubino writes:
The myth of romance is insidious not because it is an illusion?that is, not because
it takes us out of the realm of the real and allows us to experience a seemingly
transcendent, totalizingly pleasurable feeling?but because it "idealizes and eroti?
cizes women's powerlessness and lack of freedom" [a quotation from Leslie Rabi
ne's Reading the Romantic Heroine: Text, History, Ideology ]. Romances help to
condition women for subservience by reproducing, structurally, the real relations
between men and women. Romances combine the desire for a man with the in?
scription of the reader into patriarchal heterosexual ideology. (117)
This stance, though previously supported by most active feminists, has now lost most of its
ground. According to Janice Radway, author of Reading the Romance (1984), earlier arguments
berating the gerne's alleged ideological weaknesses were the "product of a very particular histori?
cal moment" (found only in the 1991 edition, p. 1). Kay Mussell, the author of a 1984 mono?
graph also critical of romance novels, now agrees, explaining and justifying her revised position
in "Where's Love Gone?," the introduction to volume 3.1-2 (1997) of the academic journal
Paradoxa, which is dedicated to reevaluating the genre, and of which she herself served as editor.
Mussell observes that along with numerous other changes affecting the romance during the last
14 years (e.g., reformed male and female characters, a proliferation of subgenres, improvement
in the general quality of the writing, the writers' organization into various support groups) those
authoring today's criticism tend overwhelmingly "to see in romances the potential to offer a
powerful counterweight to patriarchy" (8).
The 28 mostly scholarly articles included in the issue of Paradoxa just mentioned more than
bear out this judgment. One of the contributors, Lynn Coddington, who is a social scientist at UC
Berkeley as well as an author and reader of romance novels, offers the observation that romance
and feminism "continually interrupt one another's seemingly divided conversations" because while
feminism claims intellect and the authority of the Academy, and the romance claims emotion and
the power of mass markets, both "claim women's lives and experiences as their central concern"
(61). Jennifer Crusie Smith, another academic-cum-romance-writer, initially concedes that the

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
genre sometimes does commit patriarchy-reinforcing "crimes." She finds that more often, howev?
er, it serves to further women's sense of self-worth?an essential step on the road to improved
life conditions. According to Crusie Smith, romance fiction acts to do this in several ways. First,
it reinforces the validity of women's preoccupations. Second, it demonstrates women's abilities
and strengths by featuring heroines who take active, intelligent control of their lives. Finally, it
puts women at the center of their stories, reinforcing their instincts about the meaning of events
in their lives.
In our earlier discussion of the design and structure of "Tlaxcaltecas," we noted that the
intimate kitchen conversation between Laura and Nacha that is at the story's core effectively
frames the series of reflections documenting Laura's process of evolution toward a new way of
thinking. Nevertheless, let us reexamine "Tlaxcaltecas" briefly in the light of Crusie Smith's three
points in order to see if there is now something more to be said. Along with its emphasis on the
need to throw out reactionary ideas relative to La Malinche and Mexico's past, "Tlaxcaltecas"
is a story chronicling Laura's significant discovery and affirmation of her self-worth over and
against patriarchy's denial of it. To use Crusie Smith's terms, the validating of Laura's preoccu?
pations is accomplished in part through the clearly gratifying process of sharing them with Nacha.
She is placed at the center of her story not only because it is about her but because she succeeds
in organizing and telling it in her own way. She takes control of her life (as Cypess also argues)
by making up her mind to abandon the patriarchally imposed constraints she finds to be increas?
ingly oppressive and boring in her marriage to Pablo, and to pursue a path leading to a far
different commitment.
Going beyond this, however, I believe it now becomes possible to determine that Garro has
intentionally presented Laura as actually claiming the sort of agency traditionally viewed, in the
case of women, as the most subversive of all. This is sexual agency, which to quote Giddens,
traditionally "follows power and is an expression of it" (39). Within Garro's continuous fore?
grounding of the strong sexual attraction between hero and heroine, Laura's accession to physical
agency may be seen in her decision to resume intimate relations with her Indian spouse because
she wishes to do so. The terms in which she refers to the incident leave no doubt as to the
pleasure it has afforded her. Within the story, moreover, the young woman's sexual conduct is
treated as materially irrelevant to her continuing status as a decent and worthy individual fully
meriting the reader's sympathy. This is precisely the message being conveyed in virtually all
current erotic romance novels. The underwriting of sexual agency for women may therefore be
seen as another element indicative of a shared vision.
What of persisting claims by feminist critics that the erotic romance novel reinforces hege?
monic ideas? According to the most complete analysis of this question (Patthey-Ch?vez et al.,
"Watery Passion . . ."), though overall female and male characterization in novels of this type
is indeed rooted in hegemonic ideas, during the course of plot's development "the characters
generally transform these roles," with the heroines "claiming their power to love and to heal and
at the same time assume a joyful and lusty sexuality":
This dynamic does reinforce a hegemonic division of labor that charges women
primarily with emotional caretaking and leaves the bulk of sexual labor in the
hands of men. As the characters transform, both find completion in precisely the
domain of the other: the woman becomes sexual, the man learns how to cherish
emotion. . . . Romances ... do offer hope that relationship, marriage and life
itself can transcend the boredom of daily routine. . . . They offer a vision of
female agency .... (100-01, italics mine)

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
Lee H. Dowling 53
As we saw above, Sandra Cypess argues that through Laura, Garro offers a rewriting of the
myth of La Malinche, affirming that "through the experiences of her protagonists [Garro] explores
the standard myth of female behavior and subverts the tradition of the submissive, passive, guilty
female" (Cypess, 166), not only redistributing and reconfiguring La Malinche's burden of guilt,
but also suggesting "a new pattern of behavior for Mexican women that would enable them to
establish an authentic relationship with the indigenous past." I believe it is especially interesting
to note that Garro presents this new relationship primarily as an affective one (i.e., one represent?
ed in terms of the passion shared in the story by the two principals) although, as we have seen,
Laura's transformation involves at the same time a strategic intellectual program of reading and
critical thinking. (Allegorically, of course, the alliance between Laura and her Indian husband
may represent Elena Garro's passionate commitment to furthering a political alliance between
Mexico's two most numerous marginalized groups, women and the indigenous.)
According to Koski, Holyfield, and Thompson ("Romance Novels as Women's Myths"),
"since the Renaissance" the rational/instrumental sphere has been privileged in Western society
over the affective one, with the former commonly identified as "the realm of the male." Marked
emphasis on the rational has created an imbalance in society. Therefore, "an important contempo?
rary project involves a d?mystification of that rational/instrumental dimension and an under?
standing of the affective" (223). Despite this, these critics continue, the Women's movement of
the later 20th century has focused intensively on opening the rational / instrumental sphere to
women, with the result that it has unintentionally compounded the already existing problem by
increasing alienation from the affective pole.
In our approach to "Tlaxcaltecas," we have shown that Elena Garro, unlike other early
feminists, does not fall into this trap. Instead, she chooses to present her criticism of patriarchal
views by way of a myth (and myths are always an appeal to the affective) that reaches across
time and beliefs. Also, as do the romance novelists, Garro envisions and presents a male protago?
nist who, rather than needing to assert his male authority from within the traditional safeguard
of accepted rationality, is not only sensitive in every scene to Laura's feelings, but also admirably
in touch with his own, and clearly willing to express them to her (he is thus manifestly outside
of Paz's labyrinth). On the other hand, the process of Laura's rational reassessment of her own
situation is presented as necessary but not sufficient for producing meaningful change in intimate
relationships, since such change has to do chiefly with emotional commitment.
One further aspect of "Tlaxcaltecas" that proves relevant to the question of "possible common
visions" is touched upon by Silvia Spitta in the essay mentioned above. Spitta's insight involves
the provocative allusion to the presence of coyotes, occurring in the story's final two pages
immediately before Laura's elopement. All of her thoughts and feelings now revealed to Nacha,
and just having been informed that Pablo has left the house after days of fruitless police inquiry
concerning his missing wife, Laura, still uncertain of her future, stares out the window at the
lengthening night shadows as neighbors' lights begin to come on. Suddenly, "out of the blue,"
Nacha remarks to her: "??Cu?nto coyote! ;Anda muy alborotada la coyotada!" The conversation
continues as follows:
Laura se qued? escuchando unos instantes.
?Malditos animales, los hubieras visto hoy en la tarde?dijo.
?Con tal de que no estorben el camino?coment? Nacha con miedo.
?Si nunca los temi?, ?por qu? hab?a de temerlos esta noche? ?pregunt?
Laura molesta.

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
Nacha se aproxim? a su patrona para estrechar la intimidad s?bita que se

hab?a establecido entre ellas.
?Son m?s canijos que los tlaxcaltecas?Le dijo en voz muy baja. (28)
Spitta, acknowledging that the coyote is the pre-Columbian symbol for treachery, asserts that
Nacha and Laura have here entered a new reality, "one in which a pre-Hispanic conception of
the world?coyotes as treacherous beings that lead people astray?is textualized in the presence
of the narration" (190). For Spitta, these allusions manifest the incomprehensibility of a "new
language," the distinctiveness of female discourse, and a tearing away of narrative logic, showing
"a way of writing that evades the rules of male discourse" (190).
I concur that in suddenly introducing the figure of the coyote, the proverbial trickster, into
the text, Garro does indeed allude to a subversion of "rational" discourse (male discourse, accord?
ing to tradition) by choosing instead to privilege (i.e., give the last word to) one that triumphantly
accentuates the affective (and, here, erotic) dimension. During my research it surprised me,
however, to come upon a series of comments by romance writers explicitly relating their own
writing practices to the theme of the trickster as well. For Jayne Ann Krentz, a successful writer
of romances who has edited a collection of essays by others like herself, romance novels are
inherently subversive, as is their language, in that they "invert the power structure of a patriarchal
society [by showing] women exerting enormous power over men" (Introduction 6; Krentz and
Barlow 25). Others agree. Deborah Chappel, author of a Duke University doctoral dissertation
on the genre ("American Romances: Narratives of Culture and Identity"), asserts that reading and
writing romance may be among the most subversive acts a woman can engage in order to chal?
lenge patriarchal culture, and adds that the resistance it affirms to negative definitions of women
is something of a "trickster's stance?a deliberate, systematic challenge to both the limitations
posed by traditional patriarchy and those perceived by academic feminism ..." (mentioned by
Coddington 59). Still another academic and successful romance writer, Lynn Coddington, address?
es the subject of romance writers as tricksters in some detail, observing that the fun of writing
works of this kind (as opposed to academic papers!) "is a trickster's fun, the fun of slipping
through boundaries, trying on identities, transgressing the proper, refiguring old games to meet
new plays" (70). She asks provocatively,
Why would such smart women, such well-educated and strong women [i.e. female
scholars and intellectuals who read and write romance] spend so much time with
these "tragic" little tales? In part, perhaps, because we are using these books to
play with gender relations, to remake them at times, at other times to take pleasure
in a put-on identity, maybe a dated identity construction that allows us certain
games, some of which can be amusing and erotic. We enjoy the play of culture,
language, emotion, difference, and sexuality. Reading and writing romance can't
be reduced to cleanly defined practices; the literacy practices involved are com?
plex, full of contradictions, and delightfully varied. (70, italics mine)
Perhaps the sudden allusion to coyotes on the last page of "Tlaxcaltecas" also constitutes a
metatextual reference to the "trickster's fun" experienced by Garro the writer in concocting a
"ridiculous" and even "scandalous" tale about a respectable Mexican matron becoming emotional?
ly and sexually involved with a charmingly ideal man who clearly supports the aims of 20th
century feminism but remains at the same time a half-naked fairy-tale Indian warrior of the
sixteenth century. But the "coyote" reference also signals the envisioning, through the ancient
mimetic art of story-telling (and Anthony Giddens reminds us that the telling of a story is one
of the meanings of "romance," and that the rise of romantic love from the eighteenth century

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
Lee H. Dowling 55
onwards, which incorporated elements of amour passion, "more or less coincided with the emer?
gence of the novel" [39-40]) of a sort of "trick world" where gender relationships are indeed
re-invented. It is a world where men do not attempt to heap guilt upon women in order to control
their bodies and minds. Here women gain access to the freedom they seek without being forced
to pay some heinous price for it at the end, at the very moment when both the reader and writer
are obliged to return to the real world. Crusie Smith, at the time a Ph.D. candidate in literature
at Ohio State and a rising romance author, writes irreverently of her own discovery of the fun
of reading and writing erotic romance novels:
For the first time I was reading fiction about women who had sex and then didn't
eat arsenic or throw themselves under trains or swim out to the embrace of the
sea, women who won on their own terms (and those terms were pretty varied) and
still got the guy in the end without having to apologize . . . , women who moved
through a world of frustration and detail and small pleasures and large friendships,
a world I had authority in. (82)
I do not find it difficult to imagine Garro as having experienced much the same wry satisfac?
tion as she crafted "Tlaxcaltecas," electing to acknowledge her fun by inserting sly references to
the coyote into the text. Perhaps, as she did so, she mentally reviewed some of the more interest?
ing synonyms for the word trickster: "deceiver," "beguiler," "imposter," "masquerader," "conjur?
er," "sleight-of-hand artist," "houdini."
I would leave the matter at hand incomplete were I to neglect mentioning that for this gifted
writer the happy note sounded in "Tlaxcaltecas" and other luminous stories of La semana de
colores proved impossible to sustain in life. Only a short time after publishing "Tlaxcaltecas,"
Garro found herself obliged to pay dearly for her continued public insistence that things could
and should be made better for Mexico's two most numerous marginalized groups, the country's
Indians and its women (Robles 122). According to Mich?le Muncy, who in 1986 conducted the
first interview with Garro in many years, she was implicated in 1968 by "imprisoned and mis?
treated" student leaders, as having been a principal instigator of the infamous Tlatelolco incident,
in which a number of protesting students died violently at the hands of their own government.
Garro had previously acted to help a group of Indians in Ahuatepec, Morelos, in regaining their
lands, becoming known subsequently as "a violent and extravagant fighter" for those she per?
ceived as victimized (Muncy 35). In 1959 Adolfo L?pez Mateos (whose name is mentioned in
"Tlaxcaltecas" as being the President much fawned over by Laura's Hispanic husband Pablo) had
tried to get her to abandon her commitment to indigenous agrarian reform by sending her away
to New York for a time. She did not abandon it, becoming involved on her return to Mexico in
additional controversial struggles. Although she denied any part in sparking the Tlatelolco student
demonstration, she was incarcerated and attacked viciously by the press. Moreover, she was
reported to have denounced a group of fellow intellectuals whose names were made public shortly
afterward in the country's leading newspapers.
As a result of these events, already divorced from Octavio Paz at his request, Elena Garro
subsequently became in her own words a "No Persona," repeatedly spied upon and denied ordi?
nary services by the Mexican government. "Las No Personas," she wrote Emmanuel Carballo in
1980,
carecen de honor, de talento, de fiabilidad, de sentimientos y de necesidades
f?sicas. A la No Persona se le insulta, se le despoja de manuscritos, que m?s tarde
se publican deformados en otros pa?ses y firmados por alguna Persona. Una No
Persona debe aceptar que firmen y cobren las Personas por las obras que escribi?

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
la No Persona. A la No Persona se le despoja de familia, animales caseros, amigos

y, sobre todo, se le niega Trabajo. Si se queja, se le considera una Perseguidora
Peligrosa, en el mundo democr?tico. (494)
Her life in turmoil, Garro elected to remain in self-exile with her daughter Helena Paz until
1991 (Rosas Lop?tegui and Toruno 55), when she returned to Mexico to be honored in Aguasca
lientes for her theatre. During the long interim, according to Delia Gal van, "[c]on el partido que
tom? el c?rculo de la cultura en M?xico, a favor de Octavio Paz, se le cerraron puertas editoria?
les" (145). A long hiatus intervened between publication of her acclaimed early writings and that
of the rest of the corpus, most of which remained for years, still in manuscript form, packed in
one or another of Garro's steamer trunks (some of these manuscripts were published in the 80s
and 90s; at this writing "new" works by the author continue to come out rapidly one after anoth?
er). When asked about the differences between the two "halves" of her production, she said
simply, "En la primera parte de mis obras hablo del amor y en la segunda ya no" (Rosas Lop?te?
gui and Toruno 71).
Finally, to conclude, what is the signficance of the line of inquiry begun here, and what does
it add to our comprehension of Garro's vision in crafting the story? First, it permits a more com?
plete understanding of the rich assortment of conventions?both erudite and popular?entering
into the story's composition (romance, history, myth, fairy tale, magical realism, the traditional
poetry of love, and satire, with perhaps a "pinch" of gothic as well), and of the processes by
which it manages to create a resounding "clash of discourses," to use Franco's words (or becomes
a pastiche according to the term preferred by postmodernists). Second, it emphasizes for the first
time that while "Tlaxcaltecas" is an allegorical tale dealing with Mexico's past, and at the same
time a utopie one modeling a brighter future, it is also intentionally an erotic story?one that
deals in an innovative and challenging way with the questions of the emancipation of female
sexuality and the reinvention of gender roles for heterosexual couples. These are elements that
critics should not continue to overlook. Last, this essay prepares the ground for others to explore
the ways in which Elena Garro may be seen as aligned with a tiny but growing sorority of Latin
American women writers who for the first time ever are being said to have formed a united and
coherent discourse increasingly difficult for the hegemony to ignore. In this discourse, as Liliana
Treviz?n illustrates in her important new study Pol?tica/sexualidad, Nudo en la escritura de
mujeres latinoamericanas (1997), women writing in the 1980s and since (such as Luisa Valenzue?
la, Cristina Peri Rossi, Rosario Ferr?, and Angeles Mastretta) singularly conjoin in their writings,
just as Elena Garro does in "La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas," the two concerns they regard as
most pressing?politics and sexuality. It is women's bodies, in Treviz?n's words, that become
the battleground on which the war for change is being waged (28).
Works Cited
Barlow, Linda. "The Androgynous Writer: Another View of Point of View." In Krentz 55-64.
Borges, Jorge Luis. "Pierre Menard, autor del Quixote." 1941. Obras completas. By Borges.
Buenos Aires: Emec?, 1976. 444-55.
Booth, Sandra Marie. "Popular Romance in the 1990s: The Paranormal vs Feminist Humor."
Paradoxa 3.1-2 (1997): 94-106.
Carballo, Emmanuel. "Elena Garro." Protagonistas de la literatura mexicana. By Carballo.
M?xico, D.F.: Ediciones de Hermita?o, 1986. 490-518.

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
Lee H. Dowling 57
Castillo, Debra A. Talking Back. Toward a Latin American Feminist Literary Criticism. Ithaca:
Cornell UP, 1992.
Cawelti, John G. Adventure, Mystery, and Romance. Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture.
Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976.
Chappel, Deborah. "American Romances: Narratives of Culture and Identity." Diss. Duke U,
1991.
Clair, Daphne. "Sweet Subversions." In Krentz 75-89.
Coddington, Lynn. "Wavering Between Worlds: Feminist Influences in the Romance Genre."
Paradoxa 3.1-2 (1997): 58-77.
Crane, Lynda L. "Romance Novel Readers: In Search of Feminist Change?" Women's Studies 23
(1994): 257-69.
Crusie Smith, Jennifer. "Romancing Reality: The Power of Romance to Reinforce and Re-vision
the Real." Paradoxa 3.1-2 (1997): 81-93.
Culler, Jonathan. "Story and Discourse in the Analysis of Narrative." The Pursuit of Signs. By
Culler. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1992. 169-87.
Cypess, Sandra Messenger. "The Malinche Paradigm as Subtext." In La Malinche in Mexican
Literature: From Histoiy to Myth. Austin: U of Texas P, 1991.
Diaz del Castillo, Bernai. Historia verdadera de la conquista de Nueva Espa?a. 1632. Ed. Carme?
lo S?enz de Santa Mar?a. M?xico: Alianza Editorial, 1991.
Dubino, Jeanne. "The Cinderella Complex: Romance Fiction, Patriarchy and Capitalism." Journal
of Popular Culture 27.3 (1993): 103-18.
Duncan, Cynthia. "'La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas': A r??valuation of Mexico's Past through
Myth." Cr?tica Hisp?nica 7.2 (1985): 107-20.
Ebert, Teresa L. "The Romance of Patriarchy: Ideology, Subjectivity, and Postmodern Feminist
Cultural Theory." Cultural Critique 10 (1988): 19-57.
Foster, David William. Alternate Voices in the Contemporary Latin American Narrative. Colum?
bia: U of Missouri P, 1985.
Franco, Jean. Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico. New York: Columbia UP,
1989.
Galv?n, Delia. "Las hero?nas de Elena Garro." La Palabra y el Hombre: Revista de la Universi?
dad Veracruzana 65 (1988): 145-53.
Garc?a, Mara L. "El protagonista femenino y el uso del espacio en la cuent?stica de Rosario
Castellanos, Elena Garro e In?s Arredondo." Diss. U of Kentucky, 1997.
Garro, Elena. Los recuerdos del porvenir. 2nd ed. M?xico: Joaqu?n Mortiz, 1977.
?. "La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas." La semana de colores. By Garro. Xalapa Universidad
Veracruzana, 1964. Also M?xico: Grijalbo, 1987. 11-29.
Giddens, Anthony. The Transformation of Intimacy. Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern
Societies. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1992.
Gonz?lez, Jos? Ram?n. "Estrategias discursivas y relato fant?stico. Sobre Xa culpa es de los
tlaxcaltecas' de Elena Garro." La torre; revista de la Universidad de Puerto Rico 5.2 (1991):
475-88.
Greenblatt, Stephen. Marvelous Possessions. The Wonder of the New World. Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 1991.
Grescoe, Paul. Merchants of Venus: Inside Harlequin and the Empire of Romance. Vancouver,
B.C.: Raincoast Books, 1996.

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
Hispanic Marginal Literatures: The Erotic, The Comics, novela rosa. Ed. Janet P?rez and Genaro
J. P?rez. Monographic Review ?Revista monogr?fica 1 (1991).
Juana In?s de la Cruz. "Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz." Obras completas. M?xico: Porr?a,
1989. 827-48.
Kaminsky, Amy. "Residual Authority and Gendered Resistance." In Cultural Theory, Cultural
Politics, and Latin American Narrative. Eds. Steven M. Bell, Albert H. LeMay, and Leonard
Orr. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1993. 103-21.
Kenwood, Alan, ed. Love, Sex and Eroticism in Contemporary Latin American Literature Mel?
bourne-Madrid: Voz Hisp?nica, 1992.
Kinsale, Laura. "The Androgynous Writer: Point of View in the Romance." In Krentz 37-54.
Koski, Patricia, Lori Holyfield, and Marcella Thompson, "Romance Fiction as Women's Myth."
Paradoxa 3.1-2 (1997): 219-32.
Krentz, Jayne Ann. Introduction. In Krentz 1-11.
Krentz, Jayne Ann, ed. Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women. Romance Writers on the
Appeal of the Romance. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
Krentz, Jayne Ann, and Linda Barlow. "Beneath the Surface: The Hidden Codes of Romance."
In Krentz 17-36.
Leitch, Vincent B. American Literary Criticism from the 30s to the 80s. New York: Columbia
UP, 1988.
L?pez Baralt, Luce, and Francisco M?rquez Villanueva, eds. Erotismo en las letras hisp?nicas.
M?xico: Colegio de M?xico, 1995.
Lyon, John. Semantics. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1977.
McCafferty, Kate. "Palimpsest of Desire: The Re-Emergence of the American Captivity Narrative
as Pulp Romance." Journal of Popular Culture 21.4 (1994): 43-56.
Muncy, Mich?le. "The Author Speaks. Encounter with Elena Garro translated by Anita K. Stoll"
(1986). In Stoll 23-37.
Mussell, Kay. Fantasy and Reconciliation: Contemporary Formulas of Women's Romance Fic?
tion. Westport: Greenwood P, 1984. Revised edition 1991.
?. "Where's Love Gone?" Paradoxa 3.1-2 (1997): 3-14.
Paradoxa 3.1-2 (1997).
Patthey-Ch?vez, G. Genevi?ve, Lindsay Clare, and Madeleine Youmans. "Watery Passion: The
Struggle between Hegemony and Sexual Liberation in Erotic Fiction for Women." Discourse
& Society 1.1 (1996): 77-106.
Patthey-Ch?vez, Genevi?ve, and Madeleine Youmans. "The Social Construction of Sexual Reali?
ties in Heterosexual Women's and Men's Erotic Texts." Locating Power: Proceedings of the
Second Berkeley Women and Language Conference, April 4 and 5, 1992. Ed. Kira Hall, Mary
Bucholtz, and Birch Moonwomon. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group, 1992.
Vol. 2. 501-14.
Paz, Octavio. The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico. Trans. Lysander Kemp.
New York: Grove P, 1961.
Rabine, Leslie. Reading the Romance Heroine: Text, History, Ideology. Ann Arbor: U of Michi?
gan P, 1985.
Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance. Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. 1984.
London: Verso, 1987.
Rojas-Trempe, Lady. "Historia narrativa de la conquista de los ind?genas mexicanos." Literatura
mexicana 3.1 (1992): 157-68.

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC
Lee H. Dowling 59
Robles, Martha. "Elena Garro." Escritoras en la Cultura Nacional. By Robles. Mexico: Editorial
Diana, 1989. 2.122-46.
Rosas Lop?tegui, Patricia, and Rhina Toruno. "Entrevista: Elena Garro." Hispam?rica 20.60
(1991): 55-71.
Sainz, Gustavo. Coraz?n de palabras. Una antolog?a de los mejores cuentos er?ticos. M?xico:
Grijalbo, 1981.
Salazar Parr, Carmen. "Narrative Technique in the Prose Fiction of Elena Garro." Diss. U of
Southern California, 1978.
Sol?, Carlos A., and Maria Isabel Abreu, eds. Latin American Writers. New York: Scribner's,
1989.
Spitta, Silvia. "That Fast Receding Towards the Past that is Women's Future: 'La culpa es de los
Tlaxcaltecas [sic].'" Between Two Waters: Narratives of Transculturation in Latin America.
By Spitta. Houston: Rice UP, 1995. 177-95.
Stoll, Anita K. A Different Reality. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP; London: Associated UPs, 1990.
Thurston, Carol. The Romance Revolution. Erotic Novels for Women and the Quest for a New
Sexual Identity. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1987.
Treviz?n, Liliana. Pol?tica/sexualidad. Nudo en la escritura de mujeres latinoamericanas. Lan
ham, Md.: UP of America, 1997.
Young, Beth Rapp. "Accidental Authors, Random Readers, and the Art of Popular Romance."
Paradoxa 3.1-2 (1997): 29-43.

130.186.99.159 on Sun, 03 Jan 2021 18:05:45 UTC

Garro Dimensión Erótica

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Garro Dimensión Erótica

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Erotic Dimension of Elena Garro's "La Culpa Es de Los Tlaxcaltecas"

Author(s): Lee H. Dowling

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/29741522

is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

Nacha se aproxim? a su patrona para estrechar la intimidad s?bita que se

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

la No Persona. A la No Persona se le despoja de familia, animales caseros, amigos

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

You might also like