Within the framework of the 500th anniversary of the fall of Tenochtitlan (capital of the Aztec Empire), linguist and writer Yásnaya Elena A. Gil and historian Federico Navarrete will discuss the role of the Indigenous woman in Mexico’s history. Navarrete and Gil will explore the importance of approaching the stereotyped figure of “that extraordinary person that was Malintzin, Malinalli or doña Marina, badly known as La Malinche” from different viewpoints.

Moderated by: Nallely Tello

This program will be in Spanish with simultaneous English translation

Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil is a member of COLMIX, a collective of young Mixes doing research and promotion of the Mixe language, history and culture. She studied Hispanic language and literature and has a Masters in Linguistics from Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM). She has collaborated with various projects about linguistic diversity promotion, grammatical content development for educational materials in Indigenous languages, and documentation and literacy of languages at risk of disappearing. Yásnaya has also been involved in activism for the linguistic rights of Indigenous languages speakers, the use of Indigenous languages in the virtual world, and literary translation. 

Federico Navarrete is a writer, historian and promoter of the history of Indigenous peoples. Among his publications are ¿Quién conquistó México? (Who Conquered Mexico?, 2019); Historias mexicas (Mexica Stories, 2018); Alfabeto del racismo mexicano (The Alphabet of Mexican Racism, 2017); and México racista. Una denuncia (Racist Mexico. A Denunciation, 2016). He currently coordinates the platform Noticonquista, and is a research professor at the Historical Research Institute at Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM) and a tutor at the Mesoamerican Studies Postgraduate Degree.

Nallely Guadalupe Tello Méndez is a collaborator at the Oaxaca Consortium for Parliamentary Dialogue and Equity, and a member of the Mesoamerican Women Initiative of Human Rights Advocacy and the National Network of Human Rights Female Defenders. She has a Masters in Sociology from the Sociological Research Institute at Oaxaca’s Benito Juárez Autonomous University and a Certificate in School Management from FLACSO Argentina. Nallely hosts the radio show Pez en el Surco (Fish in the Groove) on Radio Universidad de Oaxaca and other community radio networks around the state. She is currently an editor at the editorial collective Pez en el Árbol (Fish in the Tree). In 2020 she published La tierra que nos separa (The Land that Separates Us),  her first book of poems.

This program is presented in collaboration with the CUNY Mexican Studies Institute and NYU Latin American and Caribbean Studies