La Malinche

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La Malinche (c.1505 - c.1529), known also as Malintzin and Doña Marina, was a Native American woman (almost certainly Nahua) from the Mexican Gulf of Mexico, who accompanied Hernán Cortés and played an active and powerful role in the Spain conquest of Mexico, acting as interpreter, advisor and intermediary. She was mistress to Cortés, and bore him a son. In Mexico today, Malinche remains iconically potent, seen in various often conflicting aspects, including: the embodiment of treachery, the quintissential victim (La Chingada), or simply as symbolic mother of the new Mexican race.

Life

Malinche was introduced to the Spanish in April of 1519, when she is among twenty slave women given by the Chontal Maya of Potonchan (in the present-day state of Tabasco) to the triumphant Spaniards. Within several weeks, according to surviving indigenous and Spanish sources, the young woman had begun acting as interpreter, translating between Nahuatl language (the lingua franca of central Mexico) and Yucatec Maya language, a language understood by the Spanish priest, Geronimo de Aguilar, who had spent several years in captivity among the Maya people following a shipwreck. By the end of the year, when the Spaniards had installed themselves at the Mexican capital, Tenochtitlán, it is apparent that the woman, now called Malintzin by the Indians, had learned enough Spanish to be translating directly between Cortés and the Mexica (Aztecs). The Indians, significantly, also call Cortés Malintzin, an indication, perhaps, of how closely connected they had become. Following the fall of Tenochtitlán in late 1521 and the birth of her son, Don Martín Cortés, Malinche disappears from the record until Cortés nearly disastrous Honduras expedition of 1524–1526 when she is seen serving again as interpreter (suggestive of a knowledge of Maya dialects beyond Chontal and Yucatecan.) It is here, in the forests of central Yucatán, that she married Juan Jaramillo, a wealthy conquistador. Little or nothing more is known about her after this, even the year of her death, 1529, being somewhat in dispute.

Sources

For the conquistadors, having a reliable translator was important enough, but there is evidence that Malinches 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 Tlascala, 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.

We have little certain knowledge of Malinches background. Most of what we think we know about her early life comes to us through the accounts of the conquistador Andrés de Tapia, from Cortés official biographer, Gómara, and, most importantly, in Díaz del Castillos vibrant chronicles. His version of her origins is a colorful story that seems far too biblical and 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 of the Yucatán). 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 Mayan slave-traders from Xicalango, an important commercial city further south and east along the coast. At some point, she was given or sold again, and is taken to Potonchan, where she is ultimately given to the Spaniards. We dont know her age, but 20 give or take five years is probably a reasonable assumption, as is 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, Holy Roman Emperor, and Cortés has discovered her to be too valuable or too attractive to be left in the care of anyone but himself.

Significance

The many uncertainties which surround Malinches role in the Spanish conquest begin with her name itself. We dont 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 malinchista is used by Aztec nationalists to identify a person who betrays his race and country, this person mixes his blood and culture with European. 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 Malinches diplomatic contributions. La Malinches 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 Mary, the mother of Jesus, 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.