TROPES OF THE NATION: TRACING THE COLONIAL ORIGINS OF THE MATRIARCHAL FIGURES OF MEXICAN NATIONALISM

Thesis (Ph.D.), English, Washington State UniversityThis dissertation engages with scholarship on nations and nationalism to argue that some nations, like Mexico, have an origin myth that helps the nation define its ideological identity. The origin myth functions rhetorically by presenting a simplification of a tumultuous history. In Mexico, for example, this simplification is that the nation is born out of a great indigenous legacy and an anticolonial struggle. The problem with this myth is that it hides the coloniality that remained after New Spain became Mexico. The myth of the nation is reproduced within culturally significant stories that function as metonymies of the nation's ideological values. For Mexico, the ideological presents itself in the stories of la Virgen de Guadalupe; Malintzin, the indigenous translator who helped Hernán Cortés; and la Llorona, the crying spirit who drowned her children in a fit of rage. These three are metonymic tropes and they function to craft a narrative about the nation that fits with the origin myth.Washington State University, EnglishBy student request, this dissertation cannot be exposed to search engines and is, therefore, only accessible to Washington State University users