From sex symbol to empowerment : representations of female agency from the mexican revolution to narco-modernity

This study examines the patterns between the artistic reproductions of the Mexican Revolution and narco literature based on the representation of fictional female characters, mainly in the following works: Adelita y las guerrillas (1936) by José G. Cruz and La Reina del Sur (2002) by Arturo Pérez Reverte (including its televisual adaptations: La reina del sur (2011), Telemundo; The Queen of the South (2016), USA Network). In the first chapter, I analyze the mutability of soldaderas by examining and comparing the ways they have been represented. I also show that there is a temporary hiatus between post-revolutionary and narco-literature works because the representation of women in the artistic works of this hiatus was of a more passive subject. Chapter two sustains, through the comparison between Adela Negrete and Teresa Mendoza, that these women have been shaped by civil conflicts (the Mexican Revolution or drug violence) and violence, making them violent. Likewise, they have been constructed through a masculine gaze that eroticizes and sexualizes them. In the third chapter, I study historical and contemporary corridos that sing about adelitas or drug traffickers, to suggest that orality sculpts representations. I examine how the oral representations of the adelitas disfigure the image of the soldadera and prefigure narrative and visual interpretations for the fictional creations of the adelitas, highlighting valor and beauty as some of the main characteristics of these women; elements also found in the narcocorridos.Arts, Faculty ofFrench, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department ofGraduat