He who is without sin

“Maria Candelaria will bring you bad luck. You’ll be very unhappy. Because she’s not a good woman. She’ll be like her mother. Just remember who her mother was.”

                Maria Candelaria, 15:58-16:09, directed by Emilio Fernández, 1944

Maria Candelaria is a Mexican indigenous woman who lived in the town of Xochimilco. She was greatly disliked by the townspeople. They condemned her because her mother was a prostitute and ostracized her. 

As I was thinking about this movie I couldn’t help but also think of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter. Sin, who is to blame for a sin, and who has the authority to judge are themes in both stories. Heste Pryne is condemned because she conceives a child from an adulterous affair and was treated with contempt and spite by the townspeople. Maria is condemned because she was the product of an adulterous affair. Both protagonists are beautiful and gentle women who are accused of sin and excluded from society.

What is interesting is that in Maria Candelaria the people are Catholic, and in The Scarlet Letter they are Puritan, both devout Christian religions, but the townspeople are not very Christ-like. In both it is not the accused sinner who is in need of forgiveness and redemption, but those who profess to be followers of Christ—the townspeople. In the case of the woman taken in adultery Jesus pronounced, “He who is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” Christ made it clear no one is sinless, but this message was lost on the townspeople of Xochimilco who actually end up killing Maria by stoning her, making them prime candidates for redemption. In The Scarlet Letter the townspeople and Hester’s estranged husband Chillingsworth were twisted by hate and revenge. Hester informed Chillingsworth that in order to save his soul he needed to give up his desire for vengeance.