Una biografia de malinche biography

Malinali (c. –), also known as Malintzín, "Doña Marina," and, most commonly, "Malinche," was an Indigenous Mexican woman who was given to conquistador Hernan Cortes as an enslaved person in Malinche soon proved herself very useful to Cortes, as she was able to help him interpret Nahuatl, the language of the mighty Aztec Empire.

Malinche was an invaluable asset for Cortes, as she not only translated but also helped him understand local cultures and politics. Many modern Mexicans see Malinche as a great traitor who betrayed her Native cultures to the bloodthirsty Spanish invaders.

Early Life

Malinche's original name was Malinali. She was born sometime around in the town of Painala, close to the larger settlement of Coatzacoalcos. Her father was a local chieftain and her mother was from the ruling family of the nearby village of Xaltipan. Her father died, however, and when Malinche was a young girl, her mother remarried to another local lord and bore him a son.

Apparently wishing the boy to inherit all three villages, Malinche's mother sold her into enslavement in secret, telling the people of the town that she had died. Malinche was sold to traders of enslaved people from Xicallanco. They in turn sold her to the lord of Potonchan. Although she was a captive, she was high-born and never lost her regal bearing. She also had a gift for languages.

Gift to Cortes

In March , Cortes and his expedition landed near Potonchan i

(Image: &#;Cortez & La Malinche meet Moctezuma II; Tenochtitlan, November 8, &#;, from facsimile published ca. of the &#;Lienzo de Tlaxcala&#; ca. AD. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.)

&#;Wow, La Malinche must have had an interesting life.  I wonder what happened to her …&#; Thank you to Cathie @ &#; A Year of Living Sustainably  for her comment on a previous post, which gave the inspiration for this post!

To wrap up my Tabasco state theme, I am following up on the story of La Malinche, born Malinalli (in honour of the Nahuatl goddess of grass) and later called Malintzin (Lady Malin) by the natives and Doña Marina by the Spaniards. This is probably the first documented story of mestizaje (inter-mixing of foreign and indigenous people) in Mexico, told by Bernal Díaz del Castillo in his “True History of the Conquest of the New Spain” (“Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España”). I am translating and paraphrasing, in this shortened version of his recount:

“Doña Marina’s parents were Caciques (chiefs) of a town called Painala, which had other towns subject to it, about eight leagues from the town of Guazacualco. Her father died while she was still a child, and her mother married a young man, and bore him a son; Marina’s mother and step-father decided that the boy should succeed to their offices, and so that there would be no obstacle to this, they gave the little girl to some Indians [the Spaniards called the New World the West Indies, so these were Mexican natives] from Xicalango &#; at night so no one would see them &#; and told their people that she had died. Since a child of one of their slaves died, they announced that she had been their daughter (and no longer heiress.) The people of Xicalango gave the child to the people of Tabasco, and those gave her to Cortés. I myself met her mother, and the widow&#;s son (Marina&#;s half-brother), when he was already grown up and ruled the town jointly with his mother, for t

Nahua aide to Hernán Cortés

For the volcano in Tlaxcala, see Malinche (volcano).

Marina[maˈɾina] or Malintzin[maˈlintsin] (c. – c. ), 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 (–), 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 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 , 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.

Name

Malinche is known by many names, though her birth name is unknown. Malinche was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church and given the Christian name "Marina", often preceded by the honorificdoña. 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