Abstract
Employing hybridity as a tool of postcolonial critique, and gender as an analytical category, the article discusses the hybrid characteristics of three paradigmatic representations of Chicana femininity, i.e. Cortés' interpreter La Malinche, the religious icon La Virgen de Guadalupe, and the mythological child-murderer La Llorona.
Reading against the power structures of androcentrism and colonialism, the text analyses Chicana re-evaluations and reinterpretations of these fi gures so that they no longer function as fundaments of defamation of women and/or their sexuality, but as empowering role-models for contemporary Chicanas. Motherhood and the "loss" of offspring is further analysed in the text as a condition uniting the members of this cultural female trinity.
In conclusion, the strategic methods of re-invention and the ongoing, strategic hybridisation performed by Chicana authors are also touched upon in the article.