Princesa Eréndira, A Purépecha Symbol of Resistance

If you are Mexican, you have most likely heard of La Malinche. You know that being called a Malinche means being called a traitor to your own people. What we don’t learn right away is why Malinche betrayed her own. Nothing is black and white in this life and it is easy to cast a bad light on women. From the beginning of time, as evident with the story of Adam and Eve, women are blamed for the downfall of men. What you do not hear quite as often is what precedes the so called betrayal. You do not learn that Malinche was sold, along with other native women, as gifts for the Spanish to be used and raped as they wished. This detail is left out of the insult as her name became synonymous with treachery. I learned about Malinche from an early age. I learned about the Aztec empire and their brutal conquest by the savage Spanish conquistadores. What I am barely learning now is the history of my own ancestors. It is easy to act like people are a monolith, to believe we are all the same and although stereotypes do have truth to them, the fact is our culture is so rich that it varies from state to state.

Lately, as people are looking into their roots more so than before, I have been receiving compliments on what people consider my “Aztec” features and I decided to write this to correct people and educate them at the same time that I myself am learning. I am not a descendant of Aztecs. I was born in a small town in the western state of Michoacán, the state that was home to the mighty Purépecha Empire during the Pre-Columbian era. As I learn more and more about the Purépecha, I am developing a stronger sense of pride. Although I have always been proud of being Mexican, learning about the Purépecha is taking that sense of pride to new levels. And since I was brought to Los Angeles as a baby, you do not learn about your history unless you actively go out and look for it. Two years ago my younger brother took one of those ancestry tests in a quest to find out if we did have traces of other ethnicities. We often get comments that we do not look Mexican so we wanted to see exactly what our roots are. We discovered our blood is pretty much down the middle, indigenous Mexican and Spaniard. With that information, we wanted to learn more about our indigenous roots and this led me to learn more about the Purépecha and to discover the story of Princess Eréndira, a badass Purépecha warrior. Contrary to the infamous story of Malinche, Eréndira is a symbol of feminine resistance against colonial rule.

Let us first start with some history for context. The Purépecha “established themselves in present-day Michoacán by the Eleventh Century A.D.” They became dominant in western Mexico by 1324 A.D. Their fist capital city was in the area of Lake Patzcuaro but the capital was then moved to Tzintzuntzan, “Place of the Hummingbirds,” about 15 kilometers north of Patzcuaro, where it remained until the arrival of the Spaniards in 1522. They grew both economically and militarily during the Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries ruling a multiethnic empire of at least 45,000 square miles. Notably, the empire was composed of different ethnic groups, some of which were conquered and others who volunteered to be under Purépecha rule. Setting them apart from the Aztec way, the Purépecha respected some customs of the groups they conquered. They allowed them to “maintain their own language and the right to elect their own local authorities, but all of them were compelled to pay a tribute to the cazonci (king) and , most importantly, to fight in the wars organized by the central goverment.” One can argue that it was this benevolence that helped them grow an empire of loyal peoples. As we know, when the Spaniards arrived they were able to enlist thousands of indigenous warriors to fight against the Aztecs. Because of the way the Aztecs treated those they conquered, the smaller tribes were willing to join ranks with the Spanish and fight against them.

During this time the Aztec Empire was also expanding and inevitably came into direct conflict with the Purépecha. And here is a fact I was excited to read about: the Aztecs attempted to defeat and conquer the Purépecha multiple times and they NEVER could. The Aztecs launched attacks that kept them in brutal conflict with the Purépecha from 1469 to 1478. They finally gave up in 1478 after the Battle of Taximaroa where Aztec leader, “Tlatoani Axayacatl, led a force of 32,000 Aztec warriors against an army of almost 50,000 Purépecha.” With their knowledge of metallurgy, their use of metal in their weapons, and their larger numbers, the Purépecha had an undeniable advantage over the Aztecs. It is also believed that they outsmarted the Aztecs on multiple occasions setting traps like small numbers of soldiers pretending to be ill or wounded who would lead their enemies to strategic areas where they would be met with the rest of the Purépecha army to be killed.

When the Spaniards arrived in 1519, they annihilated the Aztec Empire using their own people, smallpox, and brutal methods to wipe them out. Hernán Cortés discovered that the Aztecs would take men and women from their subject tribes to use in their sacrifices. Cortes used this to his advantage and formed alliances with those tribes, creating an army that he took with him to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. Upon hearing of this alliance, Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II “dispatched ten emissaries to meet with Purépecha King Zuangua and ask them for their help in fighting against the Spanish, the Totonacs, the Tlaxcalans, the Otomi, and the Cholulans.” Zuangua decided not to help after being advised by his sages and gods for they warned that the Aztec would be defeated regardless. Unfortunately, Moctezuma’s emissaries brought with them smallpox and King Zuangua was exposed and subsequently died. His eldest son Tangoxoan II was chosen as the new King and it is here that we are introduced to the legend of Princess Eréndira.

Purépechan Princess Eréndira was 16 or 17 at the time that the Spaniards arrived in Mexico. When Tangaxoan II saw that the Aztec were defeated by the Spanish he decided to subject to colonial rule. Princess Eréndira however decided that she would rather die fighting than submit to the Spanish. Legend has it that she stole horses from Spanish soldiers, learned to ride them, and then taught her soldiers the same. She led a battle against the Spanish, setting up base on a hill and attacking them as they arrived. According to folklore, the Purépecha began to lose the battle after Eréndira’s father was found by Spanish soldiers and murdered in his sleep. When Eréndira received this news, she left the battle and went to her father. There are no written accounts of what became of Princess Eréndira but her legacy was cemented in Mexican history once Lázaro Cárdenas became President of Mexico after the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920.

Lázaro Cárdenas was born in 1895 in the same small town of Michoacán that I am from. He joined the revolutionary army at 18 and in 1920 was appointed general, the highest rank in the Mexican army. At age 33 he was elected governor of Michoacán and eventually became the President of Mexico from 1934 to 1940. During his presidency he took the legend of Princess Eréndira from local to national pride. Cárdenas built a house in Patzcuaro and named it “La Quinta Eréndira.” He commissioned multiple murals in honor of Purépecha history as it was his goal to take the focus off the Aztec Empire and place it on the indigenous people of Michoacán, whom he considered a purer source of Mexican identity.

You may be wondering, as I was, why the Purépecha Empire does not have the same recognition as the Aztecs do. Seeing as they were never conquered and rivaled the might of the Aztec Empire one would think there would be more focus on them in our history books. According to Dr. Claudia Espejel Carbajal, professor of History at El Colegio de Michoacán, among the many factors that have led to this are the fact that the Spanish where focused on the conquest of the Aztec Empire and therefore recorded more about them than they did other tribes. Additionally, there has “been less institutional interest and financial support to do archeological research in Michoacan….it is profitable to study the more famous Maya or Aztec cultures.” Much of the knowledge of the Purépecha comes from the Relacion de Michoacán, “a document attributed to Jeronimo de Alcala, a Franciscan friar who lived in Michoacán for several years and learned the native language. “ He was asked to write about the “native ancient government and religion” by the first viceroy of New Spain in 1539. This document consists of three parts:

the first, now lost, was devoted to religious matters; the second recorded the official history of the kingdom; and the third dealt with [Purépechan] customs, detailing marriage, war, justice, funerary traditions, and ends with the story of the Spanish conquest. Additionally, the document was illustrated with 44 paintings. The only known manuscript is located in El Escorial Library in Madrid, Spain, and there are several published editions, both in Spain and Mexico, plus translations in English, Japanese, and French, the latter made by Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Jean-Marie Le Clézio.

The Purépecha did not have written language and passed down traditions orally. In order to write this document, the friar questioned old indigenous priests to document information about their past. Present-day Purépecha have a strong ethnic identity and, according to Dr. Carbajal, many have read the Relacion de Michoacán and “consider it to be a legacy of their ancestors.” Presently, the Purépecha language is “spoken by nearly 200,000 people in Michoacán [and] since Mexico’s 2000 indigenous language law” the Purépecha language is among the indigenous languages that were “granted official status equal with Spanish in the areas in which they are spoken.”

With this newfound knowledge I plan to learn more about my ancestors. To read the Relacion de Michoacán and witness first hand the indigenous ceremonies that still take place in my native state. Knowing where we come from, knowing our past, is an important part of our identity. There is violence, rape, and genocide in every peoples’ history but it is equally important to remember and uphold the stories that marked our strength, our values, and the traditions that we kept alive through the horrors of conquest. My aim for this piece, much like Cardenas, is to spread the symbol of native heroines like Princesa Erendira. This is especially important in a time where women are experiencing violence and femicide the world over. To know that I come from a people that were never conquered by their violent neighbors, that when faced with the savage colonial rule of outsiders decided to put up a fight led by a courageous woman, reminds me that I have strength flowing through my veins that no one can take from me. If you are from Michoacán, if you are an immigrant living in these states, I want you to remember the same. If ever you forget who you are and what you are capable of remember you are a descendant of the mighty Purépecha, remember the legend of Princesa Eréndira.

“In the early 1940s, the former St. Augustine temple was turned into a public library. Juan O'Gorman painted a graphic history of Michoacán right where the altar used to be. Princess Eréndira is riding the white horse on the left side of the painting.