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Townsend work on Malinche is an attempt to sympathize with the plight of a woman whose world is forgotten and has become the scorn of many among Mexicans. Towsend wrote that majority of Mexicans look “on Malinche with shame and loathing, seeing her not only as representative of conquest by Spain, but of domination by outsiders in general” (Townsend, 3). The adjective Malinchista (as coined by the Mexicans) which according to Octavia Paz was circulating around 1930’s and 1940’s (Townsend, 4) seems to characterize Malinche as a collaborator with an enemy occupying force. The students’ protest against the erection of a statue “intended to be respectful of her trials and to emphasize the mestizo (or mixed-blood) character of the nation” (Townsend, 4) in 1982 could explain how the negative view on Malinche has gotten deep into the very fabrics of the public institutions. But why is it that a woman who has survived the wounds of colonialism should suffer such a shame and despise among her own people? Townsend’s attempt to reconstruct her identity within “context” and to explore the “indigenous experience in her era” (Townsend, 7, 8) is of most outstanding as seen in the content of her work. Yet, it is not only enough to just mention that she is been hated by her own people if possible specific reasons are not highlighted from the Mexicans point of view.
Malinche was born around 1500 in a place called Coatzacoalcos, near the great sea of the Gulf of Mexico, then located southeast of the Aztec Empire, in the region of the current Veracruz. She was taken into slavery at a very tender age and was sold to Mayan traders, who, in turn, ended up selling her to Mr. Potonchan. It was he who finally delivered her to Hernán Cortés, in March 1519, with nineteen other maidens. Because of her multi-talents in languages, she became “a translator and mediator between Spanish and Native American civilizations during the Spanish conquest of Mexico” (Sanchez, 118). Later on she became the wife of Cortes and a mother of one son called Martin. It is within her new environment that brought her to that political mantle; and again that wrote about her foul image among Mexicans.
What are Mexicans imagining Malinche to be as a traitor and betrayal? Do they see her as Stephen in the movie “Django unchained”? That black old man who turned against his own black race for privileges he enjoyed as a free man in his master and friend Calvin Candie’s house. Or they see her as Nwoye, the eldest son of Okonkwo in the novel of Chenua Achebe “Things Fall Apart”, whose association with the missionaries made him a traitor because the Ibos absolutely hated the white men. Of no doubts, such are some of the images about Malinche that may form the very sentiments of Mexicans against her.
Townsend gives some information about how Malinche was so important to the conquest. She wrote “The picture that comes into focus is one in which the young Malinche is indeed of crucial importance to the conquest… Without her help at certain points, Cortes would almost certainly have died or been forced to turn back” (Towsend, 6). In some other sources and letters from Cortes it is thought that Cortes said of Malinche, “After God we owe this conquest of New Spain to Doña Marina.” Diaz also wrote that “As Doña Marina, in all the wars of New Spain, Tlaxcala, and at the siege of Mexico, had rendered the greatest services in capacity of an interpretress, Cortes carried her everywhere with him. For the rest, Marina had the most extensive influence in New Spain, and did with the Indians what she pleased” (Diaz, 85). Such description about Malinche places the woman at a very crucial place other than just mere slave girl doing interpretation. He perhaps might have taken willful diplomatic talks and further negotiation to aid the Spaniards gain control over the Mexicans. For example, Diaz de Castillo gives some accounts whereby Malinche was involved in some diplomatic peace talk (Diaz: vol. II, 127). He also described the resilient courage of Malinche as:
Neither must I omit to mention the fine manly spirit which Doña Marina, though one of the daughters of the country, showed upon every occasion. We heard nothing the whole day long but of being butchered and devoured by the inhabitants; she had with her own eyes beheld how we had been completely surrounded by our enemies in the recent battles; how we were all wounded and suffering from disease; yet she never appeared disheartened; but, on the contrary, displayed a courage much beyond that of her sex. When the prisoners were about departing, again to make offers of peace to the enemy, she and Aguilar gave them every instruction as to what they were to say; that peace was to be concluded within the space of two days, otherwise we would march forward, lay waste the whole country, force our way into their towns, and put every living being to the sword (Diaz: vol. I, 157)
These accounts are not just flowery words to celebrate the woman but they also express some willful decisions taken by the woman to aid the Spaniards win over Mexico. Did she in fact found herself as a Spaniard or she had mixed feeling about her roots and new identity? Even though Townsend spares her the scorn by asserting that “she hid her emotions very well” (Townsend, 28) in her early years as a slave girl, and also assigned a whole chapter to conceptualize her efforts to exert her will (Townsend, 148-171), her collaboration and political frontline in her peak years with Cortes does not portray much about her nativity. This is a dilemma which historians may find it difficult to resolve, and as Ursule Molinaro asked “Who are your “own” people, Malinche? Dona Marina?” (Molinaro, 70), and to the Mexicans, she is not one of them except she would have been a Kunta Kente, perhaps.
References
- Díaz, del C. B, and John I. Lockhart. The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz Del Castillo. London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1844.
- Molinaro Ursule. Doomed Survivors: A Reconstruction in 2 Voices. BOMB, No. 41 (Fall, 1992), pp. 70-72.
- Sánchez E. Marta. La Malinche at the Intersection: Race and Gender in Down These Mean Streets. PMLA, Vol. 113, No. 1, Special Topic: Ethnicity (Jan., 1998), pp. 117-128.
- Townsend, Camilla. Malintzin's Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006.