Decolonizing Democracy in Mexico? Questions of Gender, Violence and Representation in Elena Poniatowska’s Early Testimonio

Abstract

Elena Poniatowska has long been celebrated for her testimonial narratives that construct alternatives to the authoritarian discourses of the Mexican post-Revolutionary state. This article takes as its focus her testimonio that has proven most controversial in critical scholarship – Hasta no verte, Jesús mío (1967) [Here’s to You, Jesusa! 2002] –, celebrated by some for its progressive feminism, dismissed by others as a failure both as a literary narrative and as a political act. My argument is that the narrative weaknesses and ideological contradictions of this testimonio, in fact, reveal deeper faultlines that provide answers to eminently contemporary questions about representation, violence and subjectivity that have been asked by postcolonial scholars since the 1980s; questions about what democracy might mean in a country like Mexico, still marked by the wounds of racism, classism and sexism.