Eréndira on horseback. Bodies and tales articulated in a narrative of
conquest and resistance.
Ana Cristina Ramírez Barreto


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Abstract:

This paper discusses the literary and visual representations of Eréndira, a young P'urhépecha woman who is said to have confronted the Spanish conquerors on horseback when they and their P'urhépecha allies attacked the guerrilla resistance of which she was a member. The visual narrative cannot help displaying the bodies of both female rider and her horse, particularly the "unfeminine" posture Eréndira adopts—an image the literary versions elide. I address the tensions created by the different variations of Eréndira's narrative, in order to find a cultural, historical and political density to an otherwise simplistic interpretation of a female indigenous body coupled with the body of a beast brought to the American continent by the Spaniards she resists.