La Malinche

La Malinche (c.1505 – c.1529, some sources give 1551), known also as Malintzin and Doña Marina, was an Indigenous woman (almost certainly Nahua) from the Mexican Gulf Coast, who accompanied Hernán Cortés and played an active and powerful role in the Spanish conquest of Mexico, acting as interpreter, advisor and intermediary. She was mistress to Cortés, and bore him a son, who is considered one of the first Mestizos, the Indian/European mixed-race people who make up the majority of Mexico's population. In Mexico today, Malinche remains iconically potent, seen in various often conflicting aspects, including the embodiment of treachery, the quintessential victim ("La Chingada"), or simply as symbolic mother of the new Mexican people.

Life

Origins

There is little sure information regarding Malinche's background. Most of what is reported about her early life comes through the reports of Cortés' "official" biographer (Francisco López de Gómara), and some of Cortés' contemporary conquistadores, such as Andrés de Tapia and (most importantly) Bernal Díaz del Castillo, whose vibrant chronicles Verdadera Historia de la Conquista de Nueva España relate much of what is known. His version of her origin is a colorful story that seems far too romantic to be entirely credible, yet there is no evidence to the contrary.

According to Díaz, Malinche was the noble first-born child of the lord of Paynala (near present-day Coatzacoalcos, then a "frontier" region between the Aztec Empire and the Maya states of the Yucatán Peninsula). In her youth, her father died and her mother remarried and bore a son. Now an inconvenient stepchild, the girl was sold or given to Maya slave-traders from Xicalango, an important commercial town further south and east along the coast. Díaz claims Malinche's family faked her death by telling the townspeople that a recently deceased child of a slave was Malinche. At some point, she was given or sold again, and was taken to Potonchan, where she was ultimately given to the Spaniards.

The Conquest of Mexico

Malinche was introduced to the Spanish in April 1519, when she was among twenty slave women given by the Chontal Maya of Potonchan (in the present-day state of Tabasco) to the triumphant Spaniards. Her age at the time is unknown, however assumptions have been made of her being in her twenties, as well as of the likelihood that she was striking in appearance. It is suggestive of her appeal that Cortés singled her out as a gift for Alonzo Hernando Puertocarrero, perhaps the most well-born member of the expedition. Soon, however, Puertocarrero was on his way to Spain as Cortés' emissary to Charles V, and Cortés decided she was too valuable or attractive to be left in the care of anyone but himself.

Within several weeks, according to surviving indigenous and Spanish sources, the young woman had begun acting as interpreter, translating between the Nahuatl language (the lingua franca of central Mexico) and the Yucatec Maya language, a language understood by Spanish priest Gerónimo de Aguilar, who had spent several years in captivity among the Maya peoples in Yucatán following a shipwreck. By the end of the year, when the Spaniards had installed themselves in the Mexican capital Tenochtitlan, it is apparent that the woman, now called "Malintzin" by the Indians, had learned enough Spanish to translate directly between Cortés and the Aztecs. The Indians, significantly, also call Cortés "Malintzin," an indication, perhaps, of how closely connected they had become.

Following the fall of Tenochtitlan in late 1521 and the birth of her son Don Martín Cortés, Malinche disappears from the record until Cortés' nearly disastrous Honduran expedition of 1524–26 when she is seen serving again as interpreter (suggestive of a knowledge of Maya dialects beyond Chontal and Yucatecan.) While in the forests of central Yucatán, she married Juan Jaramillo, a Nahuatl gentleman, with whom she had a daughter (also named Marina) in 1527. Little or nothing more is known about her after this, even the year of her death, 1529, being somewhat in dispute. Some sources give the date 1551.

Role of La Malinche in the Conquest of Mexico

For the conquistadors, having a reliable translator was important enough, but there is evidence that Malinche's role and influence were larger still. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a soldier who as an old man produced the most comprehensive of the eye-witness accounts, the Verdadera Historia de la Conquista de Nueva España ("True History of the Conquest of New Spain"), speaks repeatedly and reverentially of the "great lady" Doña Marina (always using the honorific, "Doña"). "Without the help of Doña Marina," he writes, "we would not have understood the language of New Spain and Mexico." Rodríguez de Ocana, another conquistador, relates Cortés' assertion that after God, Marina was the main reason for his success.

The evidence from indigenous sources is even more interesting, both in the commentaries about her role, and in her prominence in the drawings made of conquest events. In the Lienzo de Tlaxcala (History of Tlaxcala), for example, not only is Cortés rarely portrayed without Malinche poised by his ear, but she is shown at times on her own, seemingly directing events as an independent authority. If she had been trained for court life, as in Díaz's account, her loyalty to Cortés may have been dictated by the familiar pattern of marriage among native elite classes. In the role of primary wife acquired through an alliance, her role would have been to assist her husband achieve his military and diplomatic objectives.

Origin of the name "La Malinche"

The many uncertainties which surround Malinche's role in the Spanish conquest begin with her name itself. We don't know her birth name. Before the twenty slave girls were distributed among the Spanish captains for their pleasure in "grinding corn", Cortés insisted that they be baptized, and it was here that the woman was given the Spanish name "Marina". We know that the Nahuas later call her "Malintzin". We do not know whether "Marina" was chosen because of a phonetic resemblance to her actual name, or chosen randomly from among common Spanish names of the time. "Malinche" is almost certainly a Spanish corruption of "Malintzin," which itself probably results from a Nahua mispronunciation of "Marina" plus the reverential "-tzin" suffix. There is a widely-held but unsubstantiated explanation for her name which starts with the Nahua word "Malinalli", a bad-luck daysign whose root meaning has something to do with a kind of grass (Nahua men—but less so women—were often named for their day-signs). The similarity between "Malinalli" and "Malintzin" has led to the notion that "Malinalli" might have been her original name; there is, however, nothing but the phonetic coincidence to support it.

The word malinchismo is used by modern-day Mexicans to identify countrymen who betray their race and country; those who mix their blood and culture with European or other outside influences. This attitude toward her is arguably short-sighted, though understandable. Many historians believe that La Malinche saved her people: that without someone who was not only a fluent translator but who also advised both sides of the negotiations, the Spanish would have been far more violent and destructive in their conquest. The Aztec empire was destroyed, but the Aztec people, their language, and much of their history and culture still exist, thanks at least in part to La Malinche's diplomatic contributions.

La Malinche's figure in contemporary Mexico

La Malinche's image has become a mythical archetype that Latin American artists have represented in various forms of art. Her figure permeates historical, cultural, and social dimensions of Latin American cultures. In modern times and in several genres, she is compared with the figure of the Virgin Mary, La Llorona (folklore story of the weeping woman) and with the Mexican soldaderas (women who fought beside men during the Mexican Revolution) for her valor.

Finally, one must understand that La Malinche's legacy is one of myth mixed with legend, and finally the feuding opinions of the Mexican people on the woman. Many see her as the founding figure of the Mexican race. Others, however, see her as the traitoress of the race, as this may be seen from her pseudonym La Chingada

In literature

La Malinche is the main protagonist in such works as the novel A Novel of the Mexican Conquest by Colin Falconer. In stark contrast, she is portrayed as a scheming, duplicitous traitor in Garry Jennings' novel Aztec. More recently she has been the focus in Malinche's Conquest by Ana Lanyon, a non-fiction account of the author's research into the historical and mythic woman who was Malinche. A novel published in 2006 by Laura Esquivel casts the Nahua, Malinalli, as one of history's pawns who becomes Malinche (the novel's title) a woman "trapped between the Mexican civilization and the invading Spaniards, and unveils new truths behind a legendary love affair" according to advance publicity for the novel.

In the fictional Star Trek universe, a starship, the USS Malinche was named for La Malinche. This was done by Robert Hewitt Wolfe, who together with friend Hans Beimler later planned a project known as The Serpent and the Eagle, which was to revolve around La Malinche. The Serpent and the Eagle is due in theatres in 2007.

Octavio Paz addresses the issue of La Malinche's role as the mother of Mexican culture in "The Labyrinth of Solitude." He uses her relation to Cortez symbolically to represent Mexican culture as originating from violation. He uses the analogy that she essentially helped Cortez take over and destroy the Aztec culture by submitting herself to him. His claim summarizes a major theme in the book, claiming that Mexican culture is a labyrinth.

External links

Hernando Cortes on the Web : Malinche / Doña Marina (resources)
"Reinterpreting Malinche" by John Taylor, Ex Post Facto (2000)

Indigenous Mexicans | Maya people | Women in war | 1505 births | 1529 deaths

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