Inspired by La Malinche

Delilah Montoya’s codex creates visual mythology.

LA MALINCHE’S STORY IS COMPLICATED: We know she was Nahua royalty, enslaved to Hernán Cortés, nicknamed “The Tongue” because of her facility with languages, and the mother of Martin, a Mestizo born of that relationship. Perhaps because of its ambiguity and contradictions, La Malinche’s story has long interested artists. The fruits of that fascination can be seen in Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche, curated by the Denver Art Museum.

Albuquerque printmaker, photographer, and mixed-media artist Delilah Montoya’s creative journey with La Malinche began with a request to create a contemporary codex for the 1992 exhibition The Chicano Codices: Encountering the Art of the Americas, at the Mexican Museum in San Francisco. The museum commissioned works from 26 artists to counter the stories of the “discovery” of the Americas (it was the quincentennial of Columbus’ voyage). Montoya’s creation, Codex Delilah: SixDeer, Journey from Mechica to Chicana was a collaboration with poet, playwright, and Chicano activist Cecilio GarcíaCamarillo, who wrote the story that would become the codex.

Codices, the original Mesoamerican books, were often made of amate— fig tree bark—and have a texture similar to animal skin. Their pages folded accordion-style and contained pictographs or glyphs that oral storytellers would interpret for their audiences. Montoya notes that the Nahua people—of which La Malinche was one—had government and monetary systems, and had written language. The Aztecs also had maps that depicted trade routes. However, during the conquest, the Spanish, hoping to supplant the Indigenous culture with their own system of power, destroyed much of this rich written history. Very few codices survived, perhaps saved by a friar or other European who recognized their value and smuggled them to Europe.

Delilah Montoya, Codex #2 Delilah: Six Deer: A Journey from Mechica to Chicana 1995 paint on paper, 18 in. x 60 in., University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, United States

Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche is organized by the Denver Art Museum. This exhibition has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Additional funding is provided by Furthermore: a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund. Special thanks to the National Institute of Anthropology and History and Mexico’s Secretary of Culture. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. LA MALINCHE

ON VIEW

TRAITOR, SURVIVOR, ICON: THE LEGACY OF LA MALINCHE

June 11–September 4, 2022

The codex story the collaborators created contemporizes and combines female characters of folklore. “History is remembered from the vantage point of men,” says Montoya, “and yet women are in the middle of everything, and no one has presented the women’s viewpoint,” she says. The creation of Six Deer and her journey allowed Montoya to create a child-like yet powerful and mythic heroine.

In the story, Six Deer is a young Indigenous girl who travels through time and space (in Nahua mythology, time and space are connected) toward El Norte, almost like Dorothy in a Wizard of Oz-type journey. Moon Goddess tells Six Deer to search for Crow Woman and the mythical city of Aztlan, and along the way she encounters female power figures who guide her. Near Mexico City, Six Deer encounters Llora Llora Malinche—a combined character of the aggrieved La Llorona and La Malinche—who cries out in Spanish, “The conquistadors are killing my children!” She also encounters Guadalupe and finally meets Crow Woman who has been implanted with missiles, so Six Deer must deactivate them. The story moves through time from the 1500s to 2012, the end of the fifth sun in the Aztec calendar. In the end, Six Deer “saves the world,” Montoya says, and creates a vital link between between Chicana and Indigenous peoples, using Albuquerque as a stand-in for Aztlan.

Montoya’s mixed-media codex was printed on amate paper, just as an original would have been. Montoya used a style with no foreground or background, collaging photographs of the places the imaginary main character, Six Deer, visits during her journey, intermixed with prints and hand drawn and painted elements. The character was modeled after Montoya’s niece, a young girl at the time. “It’s fun to think about how women are the heroes and women are telling the story of La Malinche,” Montoya says.