Rzedowski 26793 (AAU); PUEBLA: E slope of
Ixtaccihuatl above San Juan Tlale and San Juan Tetla, H.
Forster's A Passage to India (1924), and to Popocatepetl and
Ixtaccihuatl, the Mexican volcanoes that symbolically dominate Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano (1947), all of which intimate a remote and inexorable god presiding over an increasingly attenuated creation, either cruelly indifferent or darkly brooding upon a change of dispensation.
In this image, the artist cast Cristina Serna and Mirna Tapia, two young Chicana activists who were romantically involved at the time of the photograph, (11) in the roles of Popocatepetl and
Ixtaccihuatl, the doomed lovers from the Legend of the Volcanoes.
At 4.461 meters above sea level, La Malintzi is not a dwarf compared to Mexico's more famously trekked peaks like
Ixtaccihuatl and Orizaba.
One of the prominent images in Mexican art alludes to the Aztec legend of Popocapetl and the Princess
Ixtaccihuatl. According to one version of the story, the warrior Popocapetl returns home victorious from battle to find that his princess has committed suicide.
It is anchored on the south by two peaks over 17,000 feet tall: the still active volcano Popocatepetl, "Smoking Mountain" in the Nahuatl, and next to it
Ixtaccihuatl, "Sleeping Woman," named for its long snow-covered ridgeline.