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The woman was long blamed for her role in the collapse of Aztec The empire is being modernized in 1521.
Spanish She was called Marina, pre-Hispanic people knew her as Malintzin and later the name was changed to Malinche. His work as a translator and interpreter for Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés made him a hero in a violent colonial period, the effects of which are still felt today. Latin AmericaHer story, told only by others, has given rise to myths and legends.
Was she a traitor to her people? Lover of the conqueror? A slave using her language skills to survive? Or someone with agency who influenced Cortes and shaped key events?
Five centuries later, the debate continues and Mexico’s first female leader becomes president claudia sheinbaumIs weighing.
Starting from Sunday, Mexico The anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas will mark the beginning of cultural events dedicated to reliving the story of Malinche.
“We have a working group of anthropologists, historians and philosophers who are studying this important, very maligned individual, and it’s very important to vindicate him,” Sheinbaum said recently.
Malinche’s origin story
Born around 1500, Malinche learned Nahuatl and the now nearly extinct Oluteco while growing up south of the Gulf of Mexico. The Aztecs sold her as slaves to the Maya people, who later gave her and other women to the Spanish after they were defeated in battle. By then, she could speak two more Mayan languages.
The Spaniards baptized women and provided religious cover for them to become victims of rape.
Camilla Townsend, a Rutgers University historian and expert on Malinche, said Malinche “was at his mercy as a victim.” But she learned Spanish easily and “by choosing to translate she actually saved her life.”
Soon she finds herself facing the Aztec leader Moctezuma in the grand capital, Tenochtitlan. As a translator for Cortés, he bridged two fundamentally different worldviews, relayed Cortés’s wishes and possibly tried to influence the conversation.
Some historical documents say that he saved people’s lives but was also kept in difficult conditions.
“She was forced to become an intermediary between the Spaniards and other poor women who were about to be raped,” Townsend said.
Most academics today do not see them as traitors, because the Aztecs were their enemies in a world of constant wars between different peoples, who were lumped together as “indigenous” in a violent colonial system only centuries later.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to view it objectively, because the race and class conflict caused by the conquest continues, according to Federico Navarrete, a historian at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Yet, schools teach only a “nationalist” perspective, downplaying nuances such as some indigenous groups’ support for the Spanish.
powerful and respected
Yasnaya Aguilar, a Mixe linguist who has written about Malinche, described her as “an original woman who moved from being a slave to being respected and respected by the society of her time.” In fact, the name Malinche was also used to refer to Cortés: he was considered one, but he was the voice.
The Spaniards also respected Malinche. Townsend believes that Cortés agreed to marry her to one of his chief commanders – the only way for her to avoid returning to slavery – so that she would agree to remain with him for the conquest of modern-day Honduras.
He died at the age of about 30, apparently in an epidemic. She had a son with Cortés and a daughter with her husband.
becoming a part of history
Malinche was largely forgotten until the early 19th century, when Mexico gained its independence from Spain and Spain’s allies became enemies.
She first appears in a popular, anonymously published novel in 1826 as “a licentious and scheming traitor”, so according to Townsend, she became the ideal villain for the new country. This was followed by Mexican governments who imposed the Spanish language on the indigenous people.
Malinche’s negative image was reinforced by Nobel Prize in Literature winner Octavio Paz. In his symbolic work of Mexican identity “The Labyrinth of Solitude”, Paz described her as “an image representing Indian women who were bewitched, violated or seduced by the Spaniards” and for whom “the Mexican people have not forgiven their betrayal.”
His name became a symbol of sympathy for foreigners and contempt for his own people. It featured an idealized romantic relationship with Cortés that historians consider unnecessary and Aguilar characterized as “patriarchal and chauvinistic.”
It is a caricature that extends far beyond Mexico’s modern borders. Toribia Leroy, an indigenous Bolivian activist of the Sura de los Andes people, said, “They also call me Malinche on the left, for associating myself with the white people… with whom we work against extractivist policies.”
myth busted
However, the natives of Mexico maintained respect for the woman, naming volcanoes, peaks, and ceremonial dances after her. In some rural towns, girls are registered soon after birth to represent Malinche in traditional dances, Aguilar wrote.
Townsend said, by the 1970s, Malinche’s negative image began to be questioned among Chicana feminists in the US because they knew it was very difficult to be a bridge between two peoples and they sympathized with her.
There is now a large body of academic literature attempting to contextualize his life. And the Mexican government is joining the effort.
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