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LA MALINCHE.
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Life & career of 16th Cent. Mexican translater/cultural interpreter/mistress of Spanish conqueror Cortes, in context of nation's cultural history.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Life & career of 16th Cent. Mexican translater/cultural interpreter/mistress of Spanish conqueror Cortes, in context of nation's cultural history.
Paper Introduction:
La Malinche (circa 1502-153?) is one of the two central female figures in Mexico's historical iconography - the other woman is Our Lady of Guadalupe, a somewhat more-than-human competitor for the honor (Gonzales 229). La Malinche holds her own against the Blessed Virgin as a mythic figure in Mexican history, however. She was, factually, the translator/cultural interpreter who crucially aided Hernán Cortés in his conquest of the Aztec Empire. As his mistress during that time, bearing him a son, La Malinche was also one of the most visible progenitors of the Mestizo - the race of mixed-blood Spanish-Indians who represent the core of Mexican society. Since the wars for independence from Spain and, later, France, La Malinche has been vilified by the epithet "malinchist," a derogatory term used to signify one contaminated by foreign influences - for she is
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Their supply of fresh water wascut off. This does not undermine the myth of La Malinche - herlegends are part of Mexico's historical iconography. Indeed,official Spanish policy for the first several decades of the 16th centurywas set by Queen Isabella in 15 3 in coordination with her Roman CatholicChurch advisors: this policy held that Amerindians were "children of God"worthy of redemption and a place of equality in the Christian world(Benitez 87-1 8; Fehrenbach 112-114). In the ensuring months, while theAztecs lost one ruler and tens of thousands of warriors to the smallpoxepidemic, he and Malinche persuaded all of the city-states surrounding LakeTenochtitlan to either ally themselves under Spanish leadership or remainneutral (Fehrenbach 149). The lake that had been Tenochtitlan's main defense now preventedthem from mounting a full-scale attack. On the road to Tenochtitlan a year before, Montezuma had arranged forCholulan allies to ambush the approaching Spaniards after an apparentlyfriendly greeting. Of Gods and Men: The Heritage of Ancient Mexico. New York: Ace/Berkley, 1994.Gonzales, Sylvia A. Translated by Joan MacLean. n.c.: John Howell, n.d.Paz Octavio. In the paradox of his career, Cortés was very sincere in his respectfor the civilization he was destroying. The fate of New Spain-become-independent Mexico was out oftheir hands almost from the moment of their greatest triumph. His second successor, Cuauhtémoc, was ayoung man of honor and inexperience - a sharp contrast to the battle-hardened, politically-savvy, middle-aged Cortés (Fehrenbach 14 -148).Cuauhtémoc relied upon religion-guided oracles for advice; Cortés turned toLa Malinche. It was the siege of Tenochtitlan that destroyed the Aztec Empire.Abandoned by their allies, the defenders of the Aztec capital saw theirranks ravaged by disease and starvation. Had the Aztecs a dynamic leader inEmperor Montezuma II, who lacked the foresight and fierce ambition ofCortés, the Spanish invasion of this particular army would have beencrushed at once - before it could pry at the cracks in the empire'salliances of resentful city-states. But she was not alone: as the speech attributed to La Malinche onpage 12 points out, the Aztec Empire was defeated by all other Amerindiancity-states allied against it, not just the foreign invaders. What some see as Cortés abandonment of La Malinche to hislieutenant Juan Jamarillo may have simply been a real-world solution to apractical dilemma. She was, factually, thetranslator/cultural interpreter who crucially aided Hernán Cortés in hisconquest of the Aztec Empire. Although she had never been to Tenochtitlan herself, nor even to themeseta region, La Malinche quickly understood - and conveyed to Cortés -the complex political moods weaving throughout the empire. 1522), was accepted by the Spanish Court andknighted. La Malinche'scentral role as translator-diplomatic envoy is described in account afteraccount - praise freely given by Bernal Díaz, more grudgingly admitted byCortés in his letters to Spain and by other contemporary biographers(Cypress 1-13 & 26-4 ). After serving with honor in several European campaigns, Don Martinreturned to New Spain with his half-brother, the Marqués Don Martin (Cortéswas not an imaginative name-giver), son of Cortés' Spanish wife. ***"Cacique" - a Latin American term for a prince or head of agovernment or group, possibly with religious prestige as well - aconvenient catch-all phrase for situations where the European concepts ofrank do not fit in neatly with the Mesoamerican social structure. At any rate, La Malinche disappears from historical accounts of NewSpain after her marriage. Description of the Kingdom of New Spain. The Aztec Empire that Hernán Cortés decided to invade was less a"Roman"-type empire than a Renaissance Italy model: a Machiavellianconfiguration of alliances held together tentatively by the giant,organized, Aztec army. New York: Frederick A. From the Indian side of the equation, the myth-making began immediately, as witnessed by this Nahua-language poemcollected by Franciscan missionaries in the Cantares Mexicanos only twoyears later and echoed repeatedly in literature to this day (Fehrenbach157; Fleet 183): Of Tenochtitlan Nothing remains But flowers and sad songs, Where once there were Warriors and wise men. Maudslay. In 1522 this absentee wife was suddenly shipped over toVeracruz from Havana (Kandell 135). In order to better understand the contribution La Malinche made toCortés' efforts, it is necessary to go into the chronology of the Conquestin greater detail. La Malinche was oneof those characters, the Conquest of Mexico one of those events. She was immediately employed as co-interpreter,translating from Nahua to Mayan, which Aguilar then translated intoSpanish. The Conquest of Mexico and The Conquest of Peru. (Benitez 174).**** La Malinche was more than just translator and mistress, however, andCortés was smart enough to utilize her talents. That policy would change drasticallyby mid-century, but such was the belief of the 152 s that Cortés' son by LaMalinche, Don Martin (b. The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517- 1521. Since the wars for independence from Spain and, later,France, La Malinche has been vilified by the epithet "malinchist," aderogatory term used to signify one contaminated by foreign influences -for she is considered the betrayer of the indigenous civilization destroyedby the Conquest (Alba 13, 248-249). That these alliances were advocated by the Church at the time wasa happy circumstance; that the mestizo and Amerindian would shortlythereafter by subjected to the worst examples of Spanish prejudice wasunforeseen. It was only by the late 13 s that the Mexicaconsolidated their power, a mere century-and-a-half before the arrival ofthe Spanish. Thearrival of La Malinche coincided with the conquistadors' first tentativemeetings with Aztec envoys sent to evaluate the newcomers. Leavinghalf his forces in Tenochtitlan, where with the contrivance of La Malinchethey had kidnapped Montezuma in his own palace (Diaz 229-231), Cortés wasforced to return to the coast to deal with Governor Velásquez' sending ofmore soldiers to bring him back. P. Neither, however, could totally control the conquistadors. Edited from the original 1774 MS and translated by Sean Galvin. So many different characterizations serve to underscore thecentrality of La Malinche in Mexican history and culture. The earliest days of arrival in the unknown territory of Mexico wererelatively easy: the Amerindians inhabiting the Gulf shores greeted thefair-skinned arrivals as either demi-gods or, at worst, interestingcuriosities. The Mexicans: The Making of a Nation. Whatever promises Cortéshad held out to his Amerindian allies to be treated as equals were soonnegated by official decrees from Spain that established an elaborate racialhierarchy - with Indians enslaved at the bottom and mestizoes increasinglydisenfranchised (O'Crouley 19-21; Fehrenbach 225-244). It was important for theConqueror's prestige at Court that it be known he faced only the most nobleand mighty of adversaries, that he allied himself with the crême of theIndian elite, that the obstacles overcome were difficult on an epic scale,that the riches of the Aztec Empire were beyond comprehension, and so forthad infinitum (Cypress 26-4 ). For Cortés, then, there was noturning back. However, as theconquistadors travelled inland toward the fabled riches of the AztecEmpire, Nahua dialects became the lingua franca. This racial and moral equanimity is one of the key historical pointsto be made in an examination the Malinche-Cortés story - especially vis-a-vis the Mexican tradition that casts her as "La Chingada," the violatedone. The Legend of La Llorona. It was a not-uncommon practicefor Nahua nobility to sleep with "gifts" and slaves, even while married;there was no shame in the arrangement for either party (Cypress 24-25).Cortés was rapidly adapting himself to the customs of the Amerindians,allowing them to perceive him as the foretold, fair-skinned demi-god fromthe east, Quetzalcóatl, an omen of the decline of the Aztec world order.Although the later history of Mexico would develop a strong, censuringattitude toward the Malinche-Cortés relationship - imposing a RomanCatholic morality on a pre-Christian context and depicting La Malinche as adefiled "whore" in contrast to purity of the Blessed Virgin - at the timeboth participants very easily entered into the relationship (Gonzales 229-249). Mayan civilization as apolitical entity had long since declined by the time the Mexica invaded thehigh plains, or meseta, of central Mexico in the 12th century A.D. In general "yes" - but onlyinsofar as those symbols represent simplifications of complexpersonalities, events and social fabrics. It begins with the fact that Hernán Cortés did not knowvery much about the Aztec Empire when he set sail from Cuba with a fewhundred freebooters nominally under the command of that island's Spanishgovernor, Diego Velásquez - and only a few days' ahead of that samegovernor's writ retracting his command. La Capital: The Biography of Mexico City. The fall of the Aztec Empire was asmuch a result of cultural civil war as it was a foreign conquest. Whatever her origins -there are many different accounts - she appeared first as one of twentyNahua noblewomen presented as gifts to the Spanish by the cacique*** of theTabasco city-state. Berkeley: U of California, 1992.Cypress, Sandra Messinger. "La Chicana: Guadalupe or Malinche." In Comparative Perspectives of Third World Women: The Impact of Race, Sex, and Class. TheMarqués was a dilettante intriguer and, when rebellion-in-planning blew updisastrously, found patrons and sanctuary at Court - leaving the innocentDon Martin behind. As his mistress during that time, bearinghim a son, La Malinche was also one of the most visible progenitors of theMestizo - the race of mixed-blood Spanish-Indians who represent the core ofMexican society. Nor is there indication that she andCortés purposefully set out to create a new race of Spanish-Indian blood.Cortés was not a great idealist - and La Malinche was silent on the issue.Cortés' pressing of his men to marry Amerindian noblewomen was a practicaldecision, necessary to create a stable system of family and politicalalliances at a time when there were 11 million Amerindians to a few hundredSpanish. **Tenochtitlan was located on the site of present-day Mexico City.Lake Tenochtitlan, surrounding the capital, was filled-in over thecenturies as Mexico City sprawled to become one of the largest megacitiesin the world today. Montezuma was killed in June 152 ,before Cortés had effectively organized the Amerindian coalition, but notbefore the damage was done. Works CitedAlba, Victor. Matters were not helped by the Inquisition, which ravaged theSpanish Empire in the mid-15 s: thousands of handwritten books wereburned as "heretical," in the process destroying irreplaceable sources ofinformation on the indigenous civilization painstakingly collected bymissionaries who spoke the now-defunct Nahua language and interviewedIndians of the pre-Conquest era (Gyles & Sayer 19-29). It was not a peaceful empire: fully half of the Mexica's"vassal states" remained semi-independent and resentful of their overlords. Cortés co-opted the new arrivals withpromises of untold wealth and they returned to the capital together. She very stronglyinsinuated that the armored and helmeted Cortés was the "Plumed Serpent"(Quetzalcóatl) foretold in Nahuatl religious legend. rev. ed. The tactic worked,for the Spanish proceeded to the Aztec capital without incident; better forthem, the stories that La Malinche told the caciques of the city-statesthey passed through on their way to Tenochtitlan attracted the favorableattention of those peoples inclined to rebellion. *There is no definitive spelling of Amerindian names and terms. Whether from loyalty to Cortés or antipathy to the Aztecs, LaMalinche from the beginning adopted a superior attitude in hercommunications with the Aztecs on behalf of the Spanish. La Malinche in Mexican Literature from History to Myth. 4th ed. New York: Random House, 1988.O'Crouley, Pedro Alonso. Years before, Cortés had been forced into marriage withCatalina Suarez as part of a reconciliation with his old antagonist, thegovernor of Cuba. Cortés brought up from the Gulfthe cannons from the ships that had brought conquistadors from Cuba; thosecannon raked the Aztec war canoes with devastating grapeshot before thewarriors could set foot on shore - 1 , killed in a single battle(Fehrenbach 15 -152). It was at this crucial juncture that La Malinche performed her mostimportant deeds for the conquistadors. Edited from the original 1524 MS by Genero Garcia. Translated by A. Theabsence of tabloid press and instant television news to cover their storiesmakes the myth-making much easier: warts and inconsistencies are inventedor erased at will. Hernán Cortés supplied theAztecs' enemies with the one element they had lacked: a unifying figure.The army besieging the empire's lake-surrounded capital, Tenochtitlan**,was composed of thousands: an Amerindian confederation of Nahua-speakingvassal states in rebellion against their Aztec overlords. Must even the old men die? It was the breakdown of those alliances thatdefeated the Aztecs, not 6 Spaniards or Western gunpowder (Prescott 225-226). It was adevastatingly effective move, sending a message to the other city-statesthat the Spanish were as ruthless as the Aztecs overlords, if not more so.After the Noche Triste retreat, when gathering allies for the siege ofTenochtitlan, La Malinche made clear that the meaning of that message wasrepeated again and again. The last major historical account of La Malincheends here, when she addressed Aztec envoys at a meeting arranged by Cortés- with his Amerindian allies watching: Come forward, the captain wants to know what the chief men of Tenochtitlan can be thinking about, to have no mercy on the women and children of the city. Edited by Beverly Lindsay. The Spanish conquistadors alsohonored her - as "Doña Marina," an Indian princess of noble blood fittingto stand by their side in conquest (Cypress 26-4 ; Díaz 66-67). Translated by Lysander Kemp, Yara Milos, & Rachel Phillips Belash. Berkeley: Tonatiuh-Quinto Sol, 1984.Benitez, Fernando. Her actions, however, displayed a willingness tosupport Cortés, playing an active part in the Conquest - she is, then, alsothe betrayer of the Amerindian civilization from which she came. New York: Harper & Row, 198 .Kandell, Jonathan. ModernMexican nationalists call her La Chingada, the violated one, and cry "VivaMexico, hijos de La Chingada" - Long live Mexico, sons of La Chingada (Paz65-88). Certain facts about the conquest of Mexico are legendary inthemselves. With Fra Aguilar's help, the conquistadors learned of thefabled Aztec riches - and the coastal vassal-states certainly did not mindif the foreign warriors wanted to strike inland toward the source. New York: Grove Weidenfield, 1985.Prescott, W. Small wars were frequent. La Malinche (circa 15 2-153?) is one of the two central femalefigures in Mexico's historical iconography - the other woman is Our Lady ofGuadalupe, a somewhat more-than-human competitor for the honor (Gonzales229). Butviolent subordinates soon brought on an Aztec attack and Montezuma waskilled (by the Spanish or a badly-aimed Aztec missile-rock is a matter ofhistoric debate). The facts that emerge paint a complex portrait ofpersonalities, societies and events worthy of a modern, multi-polar,geopolitical analysis. Fire and Blood: A History of Mexico. The bare facts summarizing the Conquest easily led to simplisticmisunderstandings and mythologizing of events by later generations inMexico. More complex still is the alternate good-bad charge that La Malincheis the mother of the true Mexican people, the mestizo, and the conflictingimages of how she attained that honor. She did better: infiltratingthe household of the Cholulan cacique, La Malinche learned the full detailsof the planned betrayal. His letters spoke ofTenochtitlan's grand monuments and the Aztec's accomplishments; heencouraged his conquistadors to marry Indian noblewomen. The epithet"malinchist" took on great meaning in the 18 s, when Mexican independencerequired casting out, first, the Spaniards, then French imperialistoverlords. Having lost thegold of the Aztecs during the Noche Triste retreat, Cortés led a wild goose-chasing expedition into the jungles of Honduras, swiftly losing favor atCourt. La Malinche spoke bothMayan and Nahua. ****As a sad coda to this story of Don Martin's integration intoSpanish society, his death was typical of mid-century official revisionism. The Century After Cortés. There is no indication either waythat La Malinche was whore or victim. As a mestizo - a race now officially out-of-favor - DonMartin was tortured and executed in 1568 (Simpson 12 -129).----------------------- 1 R. New York: Praeger, 198 , 229-249.Gyles, Anna Benson, & Sayer, Chloë. Praeger, 1967.Anaya, Rudolfo A. The name "La Malinche" is the bestexample, since it is a Spanish version of the Nahua "Malinche" - which iseither a corruption or declension of her birth name "Malinal." Anothervariation on her name is the honorific version, "Malintzin." In someletters dating from the Conquest, observers noted that Cortés was addressedby the Aztec emperor as "Malinche" - perhaps a reference to him as"Malinche's man" - and throughout Mexican history there has been a strainof literature that has designated the Indian and the Spaniard "La Malinche"and "El Malinche," respectively (Cypress 2 & 27). La Malinche was baptized and christened "Doña Marina." She remainedCortés' mistress, and in 1522, after the Conquest, bore him a son, Martin.The son was never treated as a bastard; when La Malinche married theconquistador Juan Jamarillo a few years later, Cortés brought Martin toSpain to be reared as a nobleman. New York: MacMillan, 1973.Fleet, Robert. The Labyrinth of Solitude. In letters to the King ofSpain, Charles I - a Belgian-born Hapsburg whose interest in "New" Spainwas primarily financial - Cortés and his contemporaries wrote self-aggrandizing accounts of the Conquest. Berkeley: U of California, 1952. Theconquistadors had landed at what is now Veracruz; Aguilar was theirtranslator among the Mayan-speaking Amerindians there. Many Mexicos. Is Cuauhtémoc a stupid, willful boy? Does, then, the factual history of La Malinche support the varioussymbolic representations attributed to her? In response, Cortés' appeared to accept theCholulans' invitation into their city - then executed their entire rulingelite in a preemptive strike (Cypress 33-35; Fehrenbach 13 -132). La Malinche was by his side all the while. Or, has the impulse for nation-building mythstransformed an obscure personal episode in the life of conquistador HernánCortés into a convenient legend tailored to fit the needs of modern Mexicanculture? Last Mountain. She, of course, did not make Cortés'decisions, but there was an apparent conflux of opinion between them. (Fehrenbach 152-153) After the Conquest came the destruction - some planned, someunintentional. La Malinche holds her own against the Blessed Virgin as a mythicfigure in Mexican history, however. Within a century, disease reduced the Amerindian populationof New Spain by 9 percent (Fehrenbach 221-222). LaMalinche was an important, multi-faceted historical figure and, yes, herstory has been adapted by the myth-makers of Mexican history to fit theneeds of their contemporary ideals. But sometimes, as inthis case, the myths are less than the persons involved. This paper will answer a qualified "Yes" to both questions. The entrance of La Malinche into the chronicle of the Conquest was ahappy circumstance for Cortés in several ways. Cortés and La Malinche shouldbe exempted from that charge, however. H. New York: Noonday, 1965.Fehrenbach, T. Hai, see the lords of Tlaxcala, of Hexotzingo and Colulu, of Chalco, Acolhuacán and Cuauhnhuac; here are the lords of Xochimilco, Mizquic, Cuitláhuac and Culhuacán; all are with us! Some characters and events are larger than life. Cortés was warned of the ruse by the Tlaxcalteca - andsent La Malinche to confirm his suspicions. Cortés led the besieged conquistadors in a strategic,nighttime retreat - the Noche Triste ("sad night") - during which half theSpaniards and almost all of the Aztec treasury was lost as they battledacross Lake Tenochtitlan to the protection of a Tlaxcalteca rearguard army(Fehrenbach 14 -143). TheMexica embarked upon centuries of religion-inspired conquests, along theway adopting the Nahua tongue of their competitors and the civilization oftheir predecessors. Montezuma's first successor died in theSpanish-introduced smallpox epidemic of Autumn 152 , too soon to mount anAztec response to the threat. She was also sleeping with Cortés. Cortés was in a quandary at that moment: he had inhis retinue a priest, Fra Aguilar, who had been shipwrecked on the coast ofMexico years earlier and learned to speak the Mayan language. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1965.Crow, John A. It is the personalities of the Conquest's main protagonists that givethis event its "legendary" character. La Malinche had a facility for languages; by the time the Spanishreached Tenochtitlan and met with Montezuma, she was translating directlyfrom Nahua to Spanish herself (Diaz 67-68). She is honored by Chicana feminists as"La Llorona," the symbolic victim of machismo, the Mexican male's code ofbullying honor (Anaya 81-89; Cypress 141). This "persuasion" was a combination ofdiplomatic resourcefulness and ruthless realpolitik - with the latterproviding another episode in the La Malinche story. The base civilization for theregion was that of the Maya, whose artifacts indicating advanced abilitiesin writing and agriculture have been dated back to the pre-Christian eracontemporary with ancient Greece (Crow 11-12). New York: Modern Library, n.d.Simpson, Leslie Byrd. The latter-day attraction/revulsion to La Malinche reflectsattitudes and politics that have evolved in the nearly five hundred yearssince the Conquest; there is no basis in historical fact for the sexualimagery associated with her legend today. There is little doubt that the initiative of La Malinche's approachto relations with the Aztecs and other city-states was her own: it is bornwitness to by the fact that Montezuma addressed Cortés as "Malinche"(Cypress 27; Diaz 23 ; Prescott 258). Can one personbe all those things? By all accounts, she was aperceptive judge of the vassal-states' resentment against the Aztec Empire. When the Aztecs first retaliated with blistering force against theSpanish attack, Cortés and his men were able to find refuge among theTlaxcalteca, nominal vassals of the empire. Austin: U of Texas, 1991.Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. Better, perhaps, to have Doña Marinamarried to a conquistador with an encomienda land grant, a respected personin "Mexico City" society and cared for. Inaddition to the inherent difficulty translators have had in attempting totranscribe non-English sounds into the Latin alphabet, in many cases theAmerindian term itself is a Spanish corruption of an unrecorded word nolonger in use (Fehrenbach 58-59). By 1528, Cortés was to be stripped of hisposition and returned to Spain, to spend the reminder of his days honoredbut powerless. The Epic of Latin America. As part of the legend-making process, the new Spanish overlords werenot remiss in their mythologizing, either. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, one of the firstautobiographers of the Conquest, set the tone for future considerations ofthe role La Malinche played in Cortés' retinue with this introductorydescription of the Indian woman: "Doña Marina was a person of the greatestimportance and was obeyed without question by the Indians throughout NewSpain" (67). In that La Malinche was a giftto Cortés, a slave for all practical purposes, his making of her a mistressdoes qualify her for the role of "La Chingada," the violated woman - theviolated Indian culture. The Nahua word for the people whoseempire Cortés defeated was Mexica (approximate English pronunciation: "may-SHEE-kah"), and theirs was a relatively new entity in the Meso-Americancultural sphere (Fehrenbach 59; 5 -56). To begin with, the very word "Aztec" is a misnomer: the term did notexist in their dialect of the Nahua (or Nahuatl)* language, it was given bylater historians (Fehrenbach 55). Hernán Cortés did indeed lead a band of 6 some-odd Spaniardsinto the high plains of central Mexico and, between the years 1519-1621,conquered and destroyed the mighty Aztec Empire flourishing there(Fehrenbach 117-156). Details of thehistorical occurrence were not to be pieced together for centuries, apainstaking compilation of modern research by historians, archaeologists,linguists and anthropologists pouring over old records, oral histories andartifacts. The taint of the foreign oppressor has been a sour tastethroughout post-Cortésian Mexican history. Racism wasapparently not one of Cortés' vices, perhaps a result of the Christian-Moor-Jew mixed-blood legacy of Spanish history that had not yet been destroyedby the worst ravages of the Inquisition (Fehrenbach 234-235).
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