Ivette Alé, senior policy lead at Dignity and Power Now, who identifies as Latinx, said Villanueva’s use of the term La Malinche - about whom Alé wrote her graduate thesis, she said - toward the sole Latina on the board was “incredibly offensive.” “We don’t need that old way of thinking that the sheriff is trying to perpetuate. But she said the context of Villanueva’s remarks perpetuates the notion that one woman - who was oppressed and enslaved - was responsible for a colonization that caused so much trauma for so many Indigenous people. There’s been a movement to reclaim the term and to reexamine how colonialism and patriarchy have intersected, said Maria Brenes, executive director of InnerCity Struggle, who is of Mexican descent. “If she had said, ‘No thanks, I don’t want to do this,’ do you think she would have lived long? She has no agency in this position - as a woman, as an Indigenous person, as a slave,” Cypess said. What’s often missed, she said, is that La Malinche had little choice but to obey. She said that interpretation often misses the complicated history of La Malinche, who was among about 20 Indigenous women given to Cortés to “placate him.”Ĭortés found out that La Malinche spoke Mayan and Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, and he brought her into his entourage - a rare status for a woman, Cypess said. “From her name comes malinchista, which means you’re a sellout.” “It’s usually one of the most derogatory things that one could call a woman,” said Cypess, professor emerita of Latin American literature at the University of Maryland. Villanueva’s remarks about Solis were particularly disturbing to many in L.A.’s Latino community.įor centuries, La Malinche has been portrayed as the “Mexican Eve, a traitorous woman,” said Sandra Messinger Cypess, who has studied the historical figure for about 35 years. “And the people are the ones that will be hurt in the end.” “It’s a governance mess,” said Yaroslavsky, who is director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. City Council member, said Villanueva’s relationship with the board could stifle good policy. Zev Yaroslavsky, who spent years as both a county supervisor and an L.A. “He needs to operate within a balanced budget and be accountable to taxpayers. In a statement, Kuehl responded that Villanueva’s budget has run “unprecedented deficits” in the last two years. “On the topic of ‘racist and sexist’ comments, I would ask Supervisor Kuehl what she meant when she attacked Sheriff Villanueva on the radio and told him, among other things, to ‘put on his big boy pants,’” Lt. A spokesman responded later, referencing a different supervisor. Villanueva did not answer questions about what he meant by his remark, directing queries to the department’s Information Bureau. “We have too much to do as we work to preserve the public’s health at this critical moment.” “We are dealing with an unprecedented global pandemic and a local budget crisis,” she said. Solis urged Villanueva to “stay focused on protecting the public from wayward deputies within his department and keeping his budget tight.” The incident occurred as they grapple with a pandemic-induced economic slowdown that has triggered cuts to the Sheriff’s Department and other county offices, as well as the aftermath of the deputy killing of 18-year-old Andres Guardado, which has drawn national attention as leaders across the country are rethinking the role of police in communities. County’s most powerful leaders that has intensified and become more personal in recent weeks. It is one of the latest flare-ups in a long-running feud between L.A.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |