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Concept
La Malinche
Summary
Marina maˈɾina or Malintzin maˈlintsin ( 1500 – 1529), more popularly known as La Malinche la maˈlintʃe, 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. 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 his 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 scheming temptress. In Mexico today, La Malinche remains a powerful icon - understood in various and often conflicting aspects as the embodiment of treachery, the quintessential victim, or the symbolic mother of the new Mexican people. The term malinchista refers to a disloyal compatriot, especially in Mexico.
Malinche is known by many names, though her birth name is unknown. The Nahua called her Malintzin, derived from Malina, a Nahuatl rendering of her Spanish name, and the honorific suffix -tzin. According to historian Camilla Townsend, the vocative suffix -e is sometimes added at the end of the name, giving the form Malintzine, which would be shortened to Malintze, and heard by the Spaniards as Malinche. Another possibility is that the Spaniards simply did not hear the “whispered” -n of the name Malintzin.
The title Tenepal was often assumed to be part of her name. In the annotation made by Nahua historian Chimalpahin on his copy of Gómara's biography of Cortés, Malintzin Tenepal is used repeatedly about Malinche.
Official source
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