The Red Queen of Palenque: Poetry, Memory, and the Restitution of a Forgotten Woman “Memory is a form of justic ✍—Elena Poniatowska

Contemporary poetry has found one of its most fertile territories in memory. In contrast to a history often constructed from a position of power, literature becomes a space capable of recovering voices relegated to silence and restoring their symbolic presence. In this sense, La Reina Roja de Palenque (The Red Queen of Palenque) by Beatriz Saavedra Gastélum is far more than a book of poems inspired by an archaeological discovery; it is a work that interrogates the relationship between identity, memory, and female representation in the history of Mexico.
The figure of Tz’akbu Ajaw—the Mayan sovereign known as the Red Queen—embodies a paradox that runs through the entire work. She was one of the most important women of her time, an active participant in the political and ceremonial life of Palenque, a mother of rulers, and an essential figure in the kingdom’s dynastic continuity. Yet, for centuries, she remained confined to the silence of an unmarked tomb. Her body, coated in red cinnabar and accompanied by the symbols of her rank, survived the passage of time, but her voice remained suspended between stone and oblivion.
Saavedra Gastélum’s poetry acts precisely as an act of restitution. Where history offers fragments, the poetic word reconstructs presences. Where archaeology finds vestiges, the creative imagination restores humanity. The Red Queen ceases to be merely an object of study and becomes a woman once more.
One of the book’s great achievements lies in its ability to incorporate the Mayan worldview without reducing it to something merely exotic or alluring. The waters of Lakamha’, maize, the underworld, funerary masks, and cinnabar are integrated into a vision of the world where life and death are part of the same cycle of transformation. The ancient queen is not presented as a figure extinguished by time, but as a presence that continues to inhabit the Mexican cultural imagination.
Rosario Castellanos wrote:
“Memory is the faculty that rescues what time seeks to destroy.”
That statement seems to run through every page of this book. The author does not attempt merely to reconstruct a historical figure; she seeks to understand what remains of her in our collective memory and what it means today to reclaim the presence of a woman whose existence was buried beneath official narratives.
Particularly revealing is the poem “La extranjera” (The Foreign Woman), in which the author explores one of the most significant aspects of Tz’akbu Ajaw’s biography: her arrival from another region to become queen of Palenque.
From its opening lines, the poem establishes a connection between birth, territory, and destiny:
“Girl born in Ox Te’ Kuh,
a jungle-covered plain opens its expanse
between Chiapas and Tabasco for her.”
The image of the girl is linked to the landscape. There is no separation between the body and the land that gives rise to it. The future queen emerges from the jungle, the humidity, the plains, and the water. More than a historical figure, she is presented as a nascent force, a seed of time.
Foreignness thus becomes an existential category. It is not merely a matter of a woman leaving her place of origin to marry Pakal; it is a matter of a consciousness that must transform itself to inhabit a new world.
Hannah Arendt wrote:
“Every arrival implies a transformation.”
The author seems to develop precisely this idea. Tz’akbu Ajaw’s arrival in Palenque is not merely a geographical relocation; it is a symbolic metamorphosis. The girl from Ox Te’ Kuh must transform into a sovereign, a mother of kings, a dynastic symbol, and, ultimately, a memory.
In the second section of the poem, water takes on a revelatory dimension:
“The river in her eyes
opens the luminous sky.”
The river appears not only as a natural element but as an image of continuity. The Red Queen’s identity flows across territories, generations, and historical eras. Her legacy moves like water, connecting distinct spaces without losing its essence.
Feminist criticism has frequently noted that history has privileged narratives of conquest, power, and war, while women’s experiences have remained invisible. In this context, the quote heading the poem is significant:
“There are women whose presence silently alters history.”
— Rosario Castellanos
The Red Queen embodies precisely that silent presence. Her power is expressed not through military conquest, but through the continuity of the lineage, dynastic legitimation, and the symbolic construction of the kingdom.
The third part of the poem introduces a pivotal image:
“Brought to Pakal,
rain upon the mountain,
long tunnel over the paving stones—
a trial by fire.”
Marriage appears here as an initiatory passage. The woman must undergo a trial that entails leaving behind one identity to assume another. Physical displacement becomes spiritual transformation. The outsider does not cease to be who she was, yet she does not remain the same.
This reading engages with one of the book’s central concerns: the construction of female identity. Who is the Red Queen, really? The girl born in Ox Te’ Kuh? Pakal’s wife? The mother of rulers? The woman covered in cinnabar? The malachite mask? The memory reclaimed by poetry?
The answer seems to lie in the multiplicity of all those images. As Hélène Cixous wrote:
“Woman must write herself because history has written her from the outside for too long.”