One of the most controversial figures of the Spanish Conquest, the woman known as La Malinche or Doña Marina (ca. 1500-1527?) exemplifies the importance of the interpreter in the course of history. She was born to a noble family, was enslaved, became an interpreter and confidante to the Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés, and bore him a son. Some view her as the betrayer of the Aztecs, while others consider her to be a scapegoat for Moctezuma’s failure to defend his kingdom successfully.
Bernal Díaz, who witnessed and recorded events of this era in The Conquest of New Spain, refers to her as Doña Marina. The homonym of the Spanish name, Malina, became Malintzin (the Nahuatl suffix “-tzin” denotes respect). Cortés was known as Malintzin-é, because the indigenous peoples had trouble pronouncing the Spanish r, so Cortés and Malintzin were know by almost the same name. Then, attempting to pronounce this Nahuatl name, Spanish-speakers rendered the soft Nahuatl tzin-é sound as ch; the result was Malinche.
Interestingly, Díaz also reports that, because of his close association with Marina, Cortés was also called Malinche, which, according to Díaz, translates as “Marina’s captain.” Prescott in Conquest of Mexico also says that Cortés was called Malinche, but he translates it as “Captain” and says that La Malinche means “Captain’s woman.”
Today Mexican Spanish-speakers use the word “malinchista” to mean “one who prefers foreign things,” and for many Malinche is synonymous with “traitor.”
Marina was born into a noble family in the Paynalla province of Coatzacoalcos, in the Veracruz region of southern Mexico. When her father died, her mother remarried and gave birth to a son. Although Marina was her father’s firstborn and rightful heir, her mother and step-father favored the new baby. So that the new baby would inherit, Marina’s mother gave her away or sold her into slavery and declared that she was dead.
Before she became the property of the Cacique (ruler or chief) of Tabasco, Marina traveled in captivity from her native Nahuatl-speaking region to the Maya-speaking areas of Yucatán, where she learned that language. During this period, Hernán Cortés had come to the Tabasco coast from Cuba with his interpreter, Jerónimo de Aguilar, who had learned Maya after being shipwrecked, enslaved by the Yucatecan Maya, and later rescued by the Spaniards.
Having decided to curry favor with the Spaniards rather than fight them, the Maya gave them food, cloth, gold, and slaves, including 20 women. Besides acting as interpreter, Aguilar, who had himself taken holy orders, helped in the conversion of the Maya. The women, Marina among them, were baptized in March 1519. Her age at baptism is not known.
Cortés gave the baptized women to his military staff. Marina first went to Alonso Hernández de Puertocarrero, then back to Cortés a month later. She soon began to work as an interpreter with Aguilar. When Cortés reached the Nahuatl-speaking areas farther west along the Gulf coast, she would interpret between Nahuatl and Maya for Aguilar, who could interpret between Maya and Spanish.
Marina quickly extended her linguistic skills by learning Spanish. She earned Cortés’s confidence, became his secretary, and then his mistress, bearing him a son. Cortés was often offered other women, but he always refused them, demonstrating his respect and affection for Marina. He wrote in a letter, “After God we owe this conquest of New Spain to Doña Marina.”
Historians do not consider Marina responsible for the success of the Spanish Conquest. The Spanish appetite for gold, the smallpox epidemic and, of course, the military superiority of the Spanish were major factors. However, her interpreting skills played an enormous role. She certainly facilitated communication between Cortés and various native American leaders, key among them the Tlaxcalans, who were seeking allies against the Aztecs with their brutal demands for human sacrifice and tribute.
The high point of her interpreting career was undoubtedly the initial face-to-face meeting between Cortés and Moctezuma, but she was directly involved in numerous exchanges between the Spanish and the many people he encountered and dealt with. She is said to have actively encouraged negotiations over bloodshed.
Although some have considered her a traitor, many Chicana women consider La Malinche an outstanding historical figure, one whose denigration and defamation of character parallel their own. She was outcast from her own people, and she owed no allegiance to the other Mesoamerican powers. She did take advantage of her linguistic skills to secure her own position. But there is every evidence that once she was enlisted in the Spanish cause, she was totally loyal to Cortés, despite many opportunities to betray him as the convoluted history of the conquest unfolded.
The Mexican author Gómez de Orozco states that Malinche “was an instrumental part of [the Spanish] strategy, interpreting in three languages and providing essential information about economic organization, knowledge of native customs, the order and succession of kingdoms, forms of tribute, rules governing family relations, and so on.”
