May 2025

Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award

Center for Latino and Latin American Studies, University of Oregon

This video research essay examines the racialized and gendered dichotomy of Malinchismo and Marianismo within the Latinx community. These paradigms are represented by two opposing controlling images, the cultural symbols of La Malinche and La Virgen de Guadalupe, that have long defined and restricted narratives of traditional Hispanic femininity. Drawing on foundational scholarship by Gloria Anzaldúa, Patricia Hill-Collins, and Aida Hurtado, this project interrogates how these cultural symbols function as instruments of colonial and patriarchal control. This project was produced as a visual podcast using original narration, archival imagery, and an original infographic illustrating the Malinchismo/Marianismo paradigm which further portray how Latinx women have also reclaimed agency through the concept of aesthetic excess.