La malinche story
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La Malinche, Hernán Cortés’s Translator and So Much More
“She had no people,” Victoria I. Lyall and Jesse Laird Ortega write in the exhibition catalog. Lyall, who co-curated the show with Terezita Romo and Matthew H. Robb, stresses that Malinche was, from the first, alone in the world.
Born in 1501 in Paynala on the Gulf of Mexico, Malinche lost her father while still a child. Her mother remarried and, eager to secure an inheritance for her new son, sold Malinche into slavery. That is one version of the story. More likely, Malinche was taken from her family as a girl, then sold to the Mayas, who gave her and 19 other women to the Spanish.
Laura Esquivel, in her novel Malinche, imagined the moment when the girl of five was separated from her mother: “[Malinche], with her things on her back, clung to her mother’s hand as if she wanted to become one with it.” Then the inevitable occurred: “Her mother let go of her tiny grasping fingers, gave her away to her new masters, and turned away.”
In a photograph small enough to escape one’s notice, artist Delilah Montoya presents Mali
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Dona Marina
(La Malinche, Malintzin)
1496–1529Dona Marina was an American Indian of Aztec/Nahua ancestory who played a critically important role in the Spanish conquest of Mexico. She was thought to be a princess of a Nahuatl (the Aztec language) speaking tribe who was sold to coastal slave-traders in her youth, due to family politics. In 1519 she was presented to Cortez along with 20 other female slaves, as a peace offering. As soon as Cortez determined that she spoke the Aztec language he took a great interest in her. He had among his crew a Spaniard who had been shipwrecked and lived among the Mayans for eight years. Since Marina spoke Mayan as well as Aztec, he now had a way of communicating with most of the tribes within the Aztec empire.
Marina proved to be very intelligent and quickly made herself indispensible to Cortez. She learned the Spanish language very quickly so an intermediary was no longer needed. She earned the respect of all of Cortez's troops and was held in high regard by his captains. In addition
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La Malinche
Nahua aide to Hernán Cortés
For the volcano in Tlaxcala, see Malinche (volcano).
Marina[maˈɾina] or Malintzin[maˈlintsin] (c. 1500 – c. 1529), more popularly known as La Malinche[lamaˈlintʃe], a Nahua woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast, became known for contributing to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519–1521), by acting as an interpreter, advisor, and intermediary for the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés.[1] She was one of 20 enslaved women given to the Spaniards in 1519 by the natives of Tabasco. Cortés chose her as a consort, and she later gave birth to their first son, Martín – one of the first Mestizos (people of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry) in New Spain.
La Malinche's reputation has shifted over the centuries, as various peoples evaluate her role against their own societies' changing social and political perspectives. Especially after the Mexican War of Independence, which led to Mexico's independence from Spain in 1821, dramas, novels, and paintings portrayed her as an evil or schemi
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