La Malinche Totally Explained

Everything about Malinche totally explained

La Malinche (c. 1496 or c. 1505 – c. 1529, some sources give 1550), 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 also a mistress to Cortés and bore him a son, who is considered one of the first Mestizos (people of mixed European and indigenous American ancestry). In Mexico today, La Malinche remains iconically potent, seen in various and often conflicting aspects, including the embodiment of treachery, the quintessential victim, or simply as symbolic mother of the new Mexican people. She is often referred to by the pejorative term "La Chingada".

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 Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la 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's 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.
   According to surviving indigenous and Spanish sources, within several weeks, the young woman had begun acting as interpreter - translating between the Nahuatl language (the lingua franca of central Mexico) and the Chontal Maya language. The Spanish priest Gerónimo de Aguilar understood the Mayan language, because he'd spent several years in captivity among the Maya peoples in Yucatán following a shipwreck. Cortés used Malinche and Aguilar to interpret until La Malinche learned Spanish and could be used as the sole interpreter.
   By the end of the year, when the Spaniards had installed themselves in the Mexican capital Tenochtitlan, it's apparent that the woman, now called "Malintzin" by the Indians, had learned enough Spanish to interpret directly between Cortés and the Aztecs. The Indians, significantly, also call Cortés "Malintzin," an indication, perhaps, of how closely connected they'd become.
   According to surviving records, Malinche learned of several plans by natives to destroy the small Spanish army, and she alerted Cortés of the danger and even played along with the natives in order to lead them into traps.
   Following the fall of Tenochtitlan in late 1521 and the birth of her son Don Martín Cortés in 1522, Malinche disappears from the record until Cortés' nearly disastrous Honduran expedition of 1524–26 when she's 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 Spanish gentleman, with whom she'd a daughter (also named Marina) around 1526 or 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 conquistadores, having a reliable translator was important enough, but there's 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, "Doña"). "Without the help of Doña Marina," he writes, "we wouldn't 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's shown at times on her own, seemingly directing events as an independent authority. If she'd 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. Her birth name is Malintzin Tenepal. 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 don't 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. A possible reading of her name as "Mãlin-tzin" can be translated as "Noble Prisoner/Captive" - a reasonable possibility, given her noble birth and her initial relationship to the Cortés expedition. This proposal suggests that the origin language of her name was Nahuatl, and that perhaps "Marina" was a Spanish approximation of "Mãlin-." 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). If true, Mallinalli could be translated as "One Reed", a reference to the coming of Quetzacoatl, the mythical Armageddon when Aztec civilization was supposed to end due to his divine wrath. 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 wasn't 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 weren't completely destroyed.

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's 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 their brave actions.
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 race. Others, however, see her as a traitor to the race, as may be gathered from the nickname La Chingada.

In Modern Culture

La Malinche is the main protagonist in such works as the novel by Colin Falconer. In stark contrast, she's portrayed as a scheming, duplicitous traitor in Gary Jennings' novel Aztec. More recently she's 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". 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, by H. Rider Haggard. First appearing in Chapter XIII, she saves the protagonist from sacrifice and torture.
   In the fictional Star Trek universe, a starship, the 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 culture 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 named Esteban as he and his companions travel throughout South America in 1532 to seek the lost city of El Dorado, a woman called "Marinche," accompanied by a Doctor Fernando LaGuerra, 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."
   This incarnation of La Malinche meets her end, along with the Doctor and their hulking Mayan bodyguard, when the three are caught in a rockslide triggered by the activation of a long-dormant war machine built by the techologically-advanced Olmecs.

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