verb is masculine, active, cruel: it stings, wounds, gashes, stains. And it provokes a bitter resentful satisfaction. The person who suffers this action is passive, inert, and open, in contrast to the active, aggressive, and closed person who inflicts it. The chingón is the macho, the male; he rips open the chingada, the female who is pure passivity, defenseless against the exterior world. The relationship between them is violent and it is determined by the cynical power of the first and the impotence of the second.64
On the other hand, la chingada is a complex cultural classification that suggests a woman’s innate culpability, associated with her sexuality, as the base cause of European penetration and domination of precolonial Mexico. La chingada literally translates as “the fucked one” and refers, in Cherríe Moraga’s words, to the “sexual legacy” of betrayal “pivoting around the historical/mythical female figure of Malintzin Tenepal,” the Aztec translator and mistress to Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés.65 Moraga explains, “Upon her shoulders rests the full blame for the ‘bastardization’ of the indigenous people of Mexico. To put it in the most base terms: Malintzin, also called Malinche, fucked the white man who conquered the Indian peoples of México and destroyed their culture.”66 Ironically, as Moraga notes, Malinche “is not … an innocent victim, but the guilty party—ultimately responsible for her own sexual victimization.”67
Although Herrera refers to the woman depicted in Kahlo’s painting as la chingada, she does not discuss the cultural signification of Malinche’s sexuality and its association with deception, which is presumed to be inherent in all women. Analogous to Malinche’s guilt as a traitor to the Mexican people, Herrera implies Kahlo’s guilt in Rivera’s affair with her sister (by supposing that because Kahlo assumed the active role of directing Rivera to return to Mexico, she precipitated the affair). Herrera thereby suggests that A Few Small Nips was produced in response to the affair. Richmond also alleges that the painting refers to the emotional pain Kahlo suffered due to Rivera’s callous infidelity, and she proposes that the painting represents reversed gender roles in its “graphic expression of the anger she wishes to vent on his … body.”68 Richmond’s words exemplify the paucity of available ways to express female aggression and demonstrate the currency of Malinche mythology. In other words, Richmond implies that Kahlo set out to depict her own anger toward Rivera yet reversed the gendered roles so that, in the painting, a man represented Kahlo’s anger and a woman represented the object of her anger. Thus, according to Richmond’s interpretation, Kahlo’s painting abides by the paradigmatic gender characterizations in order to represent forbidden sexual infidelity. It is significant that the painting itself contains absolutely no visual references to Rivera or Kahlo yet is considered to represent Kahlo’s assumed retribution fantasy against Rivera. No interpretation considers the painting’s potential as a visual explication of repressive social mores that delineate the paradigmatic male and female, distinguished not only in terms of sexual activity but also according to active versus passive behavioral roles. Although unacknowledged, Malinche (la chingada) mythology provides the symbolic cultural basis for reading the gender role reversal, and Richmond’s description of A Few Small Nips demonstrates that ideology is inscribed in interpretation particularly when Kahlo was perceived to be resisting or transgressing highly invested social boundaries.
By 1935, when Kahlo produced the painting, a spirit of fervent nationalism imbued the drive to regain political and economic control of Mexican culture and industry that, according to la chingada mythologically, initially had been lost to Europe because of Malinche’s betrayal. Thus there is an implied relationship between women’s sexuality and national betrayal, one that remained significant to postrevolutionary discourses in which a woman’s maternal role was associated with national stability. The obverse female role, the fallen woman who was actively promiscuous, thereby symbolized a traitor to postrevolutionary nationalism and implicitly represented the nation’s vulnerability. Within these powerful cultural codes (largely unarticulated in biographies of the artist), Kahlo and Rivera agreed, after their 1935 reconciliation, that neither necessarily would be monogamous. Beyond their mutual understanding and personal perspectives toward sexual mores, Kahlo’s extramarital relationships had an entirely different cultural connotation than Rivera’s. Therefore, it is not surprising that biographies of Kahlo (and Rivera) consistently remark that she was far more discreet in her intimate affairs. Characterizations of Kahlo’s conduct allude to the fact that while Rivera’s liaisons corresponded to stereotypic masculine virility, there was not an equivalent social category in which it was permissible for a woman to engage actively in extramarital relationships. As María Herrera-Sobek explains, Malinche mythology acts as an albatross, and the sexually active woman is cast alongside “the whore who sells her people to the enemy.”69
The image placed here in the print version has been intentionally omitted
Figure 6. Self-Portrait (Dedicated to Leon Trotsky), 1937. Oil on masonite, 30″ × 24″. © Banco de México, Av. 5 de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, 06059, México, D.F. 1998. Reproduction authorized by the Banco de México and by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura.
Discussions of Kahlo’s 1937 Self-Portrait (Dedicated to Leon Trotsky) (figure 6) invariably include remarks regarding Kahlo’s cautious breach of social/sexual principles. By Kahlo’s own account, she had a brief affair with Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. In January 1937, Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Sedova, arrived in Mexico, their political asylum granted by President Cardenás largely due to Rivera’s persuasion. Trotsky and Sedova lived in Kahlo’s family home in Coyoacán for two years until the friendship and political alliance between Trotsky and Rivera broke down. (Kahlo and Rivera lived in their San Angel home at the time.) During these two years before the rift, and particularly in the months immediately after January 1937, the two couples socialized frequently, often among other artists and political activists. During social gatherings, the politics of revolution and art were debated, though historical accounts include only the male voices, implying, by omission, that Sedova and Kahlo either did not have political opinions or did not engage in political discussions. The women reportedly did not converse with each other because Sedova did not speak Spanish. Sedova and Trotsky separated for a number of weeks in July 1937, by which time, Jean Van Heijenhoort reports, the brief affair between Kahlo and Trotsky had ended.70 Trotsky asked Kahlo to destroy his letters, and they shared a concern that Rivera not learn of the affair. Kahlo’s biographers consequently suggest that the inscription on Self-Portrait (Dedicated to Leon Trotsky), which begins, “Para Leon Trotsky, con todo cariño, dedico ésta pintura” (For Leon Trotsky with love, I dedicate this painting), indicates Kahlo’s unabated affection suppressed by her own pragmatic discretion and fear of Rivera’s temper, which led her to destroy all other evidence of the affair. Thus the painting constitutes the only tangible testimony of the briefly amorous relationship.
Noting that the painting was produced and given to Trotsky after the affair had ended, Herrera submits that Kahlo intended the self-portrait to “tease her ex-lover,” suggesting that in the painting the artist “is dressed ‘fit to kill’ ” with painted lips, cheeks, and fingernails, and a flower and ribbon in her hair, and jewelry pinned to her bodice.71 Her description of Kahlo’s demure, turn-of-the century, western clothing as dressing “fit to kill” clearly is based on the knowledge that Kahlo and Trotsky had an affair rather than on the visual appearance of Kahlo in the self-portrait. Yet other writers share Herrera’s interpretation, suggesting that Kahlo surreptitiously portrayed herself with the intent of captivating Trotsky’s libidinous interest. In a notable exception, Richmond describes Kahlo’s clothing as conservative but maintains that Kahlo consciously selected it because it would appear provocative to Trotsky. Richmond contends that Kahlo “is acting out a masquerade” in which she plays a “docile golden beauty” who is “settled and calm, the perfect dignified companion to a Great Man.”72 Richmond proceeds to suggest that because Kahlo portrayed herself with a “brazen carnality,” this self-portrait “is actually quite terrifying” because it demonstrates both Kahlo’s calculating ability to adopt a persona and the intrepidness with which she is “announcing that she is in control.”73 Thus, basing their opinions