La Malinche

For the volcano in Tlaxcala, see Matlalcueitl (volcano).

Hernan Cortes and La Malinche meet Moctezuma II in Tenochtitlan, November 8, 1519. Facsimile (c. 1890) of Lienzo de Tlaxcala.

La Malinche and Hernan Cortés in the city of Xaltelolco, in a drawing from the late 16th century codex History of Tlaxcala.

La Malinche (c. 1496 or c. 1505 – c. 1529, some sources give 1550-1551), known also as Malintzin, Malinalli or Doña Marina, was a Nahua woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast, who played a role in the Spanish conquest of Mexico, acting as interpreter, advisor, lover and intermediary for Hernán Cortés. She was one of twenty slaves given to Cortés by the natives of Tabasco in 1519.^[1] Later she became a mistress to Cortés and gave birth to his first son, Martín, who is considered one of the first Mestizos (people of mixed European and indigenous American ancestry).

The historical figure of Marina has been intermixed with Aztec legends (such as La Llorona, a woman who weeps for lost children).^[2] Her reputation has been altered over the years according to changing social and political perspectives, especially after the Mexican Revolution, when she was portrayed in dramas, novels, and paintings as an evil or scheming temptress.^[3] In Mexico today, La Malinche remains iconically potent. She is understood in various and often conflicting aspects, as the embodiment of treachery, the quintessential victim, or simply as symbolic mother of the new Mexican people. Her sexual relationship to Cortés gave birth to Martin - arguably a mestizo and criollo, those who eventually resented Spain for not allowing them any ruling position just because they were born in America.^[4] The term malinchista refers to a disloyal Mexican.

Life

La Malinche was born in 1505, 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 and hard the coast. Díaz claims Malinche's family faked her death by telling the townspeople that a recently deceased child of a slave was Malinche.

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) after the Spaniards defeated them in battle.^[5] Her age at the time is unknown; however, assumptions have been made that she was in her late teens or early twenties. Bernal Díaz del Castillo remarked on her beauty and graciousness; she was the only one of the slaves whose name he remembered. 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 kept her by his side for her value as an interpreter who spoke two native languages—Mayan and Nahuatl.

According to Díaz, she spoke to emissaries from Moctezuma in their native tongue Nahuatl and pointed to Cortés as the chief Spaniard to speak for them. Cortés had located a Spanish priest Gerónimo de Aguilar who had spent several years in captivity among the Maya peoples in Yucatán following a shipwreck. Thus he had learned some Mayan, but he did not speak Nahuatl. Cortés used Marina (her Christian name) for translating between the Nahuatl language (the common language of central Mexico of that time) and the Chontal Maya language. Then Aguilar could interpret from Mayan to Spanish, until Marina learned Spanish and could be the sole interpreter. She accompanied him so closely that Aztec codices always show her picture drawn alongside of Cortés. The natives of Tlaxcala, who formed an alliance with Cortés against Moctezuma, called both Marina and Cortés by the same name: Malintzin.

According to surviving records, Marina learned of a plan by natives of Cholula to cooperate with the Aztecs to destroy the small Spanish army. She alerted Cortés to the danger and even played along with the natives while Cortés foiled their plot to trap his men. Cortés turned the tables on them and instead, slaughtered many Cholulans.^[6]

Following the fall of Tenochtitlán in late 1521 and the birth of her son Don Martín Cortés in 1522, Marina stayed in a house Cortés built for her in the town of Coyoacán, 8 miles south of Tenochtitlán, while it was being rebuilt as Mexico City. Cortés took Marina to quash a rebellion in Honduras in 1524–26 when she is seen serving again as interpreter (suggestive of a knowledge of Maya dialects beyond Chontal and Yucatán.) While in the mountain town of Orizaba in central Mexico, she married Juan Jaramillo, a Spanish hidalgo.^[7] Historians such as Prescott generally lost track of Marina for some time, even the year of her death being in some dispute. However, Sir Hugh Thomas reported that her death occurred in Spain in 1551.^[8]

Role of La Malinche in the Conquest of Mexico

For the conquistadores, having a reliable interpreter 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 Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva España ("True Story of the Conquest of New Spain"), speaks repeatedly and reverentially of the "great lady" Doña Marina (always using the honorific title, "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.^[9]

Origin of the name "La Malinche"

The many uncertainties which surround Malinche's role in the Spanish conquest begin with her name and its several variants. At birth she was named "Malinalli" or "Malinal" after the Goddess of Grass, on whose name-day she was born. Later her family added the name "Tenepal" which means "one who speaks much and with liveliness."^[10]

Before the twenty slave girls were distributed among the Spanish captains to serve them in "grinding corn", Cortés insisted that they be baptized. Malinalli then took the Christian name of "Marina," to which the soldiers of Cortés added the honorific "Doña," meaning "lady." 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. A Nahuatl mispronunciation of "Marina" as "Malin" plus the reverential "-tzin" suffix, formed the compounded title of "Malintzin," which the natives used for both Marina and Cortes, because he spoke through her.^[11] One possible reading of her name as "Mãlin-tzin" can be translated as "Noble Prisoner/Captive" - or "Marina's Lord" - a reasonable possibility, given her noble birth and her initial relationship to the Cortés expedition. "Malinche" was a Spanish approximation of "Mãlin-tzin." To distinguish the masculine "Malinche" from the feminine, the prefix "La" gives us the name by which the historical and legendary figure is best known: La Malinche. We may assume that her preferred name was "Marina" or "Doña Marina," since she chose it and it has not acquired the negative connotations that engulfed the name "Malinche" after her death.

The word malinchismo is used by some modern-day Mexicans to refer in a pejoratively to those countrymen who prefer a different way of life than that of their local culture, or a life with other outside influences. Some historians believe that La Malinche saved her people from the Aztecs, who held a hegemony throughout the territory and demanded tribute from its inhabitants. Some Mexicans also credit her with bringing Christianity to the "New World" from Europe, and for influencing Cortes to be more humane than he would otherwise have been. It is argued, however, that without her help, Cortes would not have been successful in conquering the Aztecs as quickly, giving the Aztec people enough time to adapt to new technology and methods of warfare. From that viewpoint, she is seen as one who "betrayed" the indigenous people by siding with the Spaniards. Recently a number of feminist Latinas have decried such a categorization as scapegoating, blaming her for forces beyond her control.^[12]

Malinche's figure in contemporary Mexico

La Malinche, as part of the Monumento al Mestizaje in Mexico City

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.^[13] In modern times and in several genres, she is compared with the figure of the Virgin Mary, La Llorona (folklore story of the woman weeping for lost children) and with the Mexican soldaderas (women who fought beside men during the Mexican Revolution)^[14] for their brave actions.

Virginia Zurí as "La Malinche" in a 1933 Mexican motion picture, La Llorona

Finally, one must understand that La Malinche's legacy is one of myth mixed with legend, and the opposing opinions of the Mexican people about the woman. Many see her as the founding figure of the Mexican nation. Still many, however, continue to find the legends more memorable than the history, seeing her as a traitor, as may be assumed from her twin sister that went North and the profane nickname La Chingada associated with her twin.

References in modern culture

La Malinche is the main protagonist in such works as the novel Feathered Serpent: A Novel of the Mexican Conquest by Colin Falconer, and The Golden Princess by Alexander Baron. In stark contrast, she is portrayed as a scheming, duplicitous traitor in Gary 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 a literary view of the legendary love affair".^{[citation needed]} She appears as a true Christian and protector of her fellow native Mexicans in the novel Tlaloc weeps for Mexico by László Passuth.

La Malinche, in the name Marina ("for her Indian name is too long to be written"), also appears in the adventure novel Montezuma's Daughter (1893), by H. Rider Haggard. First appearing in Chapter XIII, she saves the protagonist from torture and sacrifice.

Her story is told in Cortez and Marina (1963), by Edison Marshall.

She is a key character in the opera La conquista (2005) by Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero.

A fictional journal written by La Malinche and discovered in an archeological dig is a central element in a 2008 adventure novel The Treasure of La Malinche by Jeffry S. Hepple.

In the fictional Star Trek universe, a starship, the USS Malinche was named for La Malinche. This was done by Hans Beimler, a native of Mexico City, who together with friend Robert Hewitt Wolfe later wrote a screenplay based on La Malinche called The Serpent and the Eagle. The screenplay was optioned by Ron Howard and Imagine Films and is currently under development at Paramount Pictures.

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 Cortés symbolically to represent Mexican culture as originating from rape and violation. He uses the analogy that she essentially helped Cortés take over and destroy the Aztec state by submitting herself to him. His claim summarizes a major theme in the book, claiming that Mexican culture is a labyrinth.

In the animated television series The Mysterious Cities of Gold, which chronicles the adventures of a Spanish boy and his companions traveling throughout South America in 1532 to seek the lost city of El Dorado, a woman called "Marinche" becomes a dangerous adversary. The series was originally produced in Japan, and when translated into English, the name the Japanese had rendered as "Ma-ri-n-chi-e" was transliterated into "Marinche."

She was also referred to in the song "Cortez the Killer" by Neil Young.

She is a vampiric Prince in Mexico according to setting information given for the popular role-playing game Vampire:the Requiem, as well as having an entire bloodline of vampires named after her and supposedly descended from her.

A reference to La Malinche as "Marina" is made in the early nineteenth century Polish novel "The Manuscript Found at Saragossa," in which she is cursed for yielding her "heart and her country to the hateful Cortez, chief of the sea-brigands."^[15] The reference appears in a story related on the forty-fourth day, in which the effects of the curse fall on the person of an apparently fictional descendant of Montezuma named Tlascala.

See also

	Mexico portal
	Biography portal

• Gerónimo de Aguilar
• Hernan Cortés
• History of Mexico
• Spanish Conquest of Mexico

External links

• Hernando Cortes on the Web : Malinche / Doña Marina (resources)
• Pre-Columbian Women
• Leyenda y nacionalismo: alegorías de la derrota en La Malinche y Florinda "La Cava", Spanish-language article by Juan F. Maura comparing La Cava and Mexican Malinche.

References

1. ^ Thomas, Hugh. Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall of Old Mexico. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993, pp. 171-172
2. ^ Cypess, p. 7
3. ^ Cypess, p. 12-13
4. ^ John Taylor: "Reinterpreting Malinche"
5. ^ Diaz
6. ^ Diaz
7. ^ Gordon, Helen. Voice of the Vanquished: The Story of the Slave Marina and Hernan Cortes. Chicago: University Editions, 1995, page 454.
8. ^ Thomas, Hugh. Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall of Old Mexico New York and London: Simon & Schuster, 1993, p. 769.
9. ^ Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest
10. ^ Cypess, p. 2
11. ^ Díaz 1963, p. 150
12. ^ Cypess, p. 2
13. ^ Cypess, Intro.
14. ^ Salas^{[page needed]}
15. ^ Potocki, Jan; trans. Ian Maclean (1995). The Manuscript Found at Saragossa. Penguin Books. 

Cypess, Sandra Messinger. La Malinche in Mexican Literature: From History to Myth Austin: U. of Texas Press, 1991.

• Díaz del Castillo, Bernal (1963) [1632]. The Conquest of New Spain. J. M. Cohen (trans.). London: The Folio Society.
• Maura, Juan Francisco.Women in the Conquest of the Americas. Translated by John F. Deredita. New York: Peter Lang, 1997.
• (Spanish) Maura, Juan Francisco. Españolas de ultramar. Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, 2005. [1]
• Traditions and Encounters - A Global Perspective on the Past, by Bentley and Ziegler.

Thomas, Hugh. Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall of Old Mexico. New York and London: Simon and Schuster, 1993. Prescott, William H. History of the Conquest of Mexico. 1843. Salas, Elizabeth. Soldadas in the Mexican Revolution.