La Malinche (c. 1500-c. 1529): Interpreter of the Conquest

La Malinche, known in Nahuatl as Malintzin and in Spanish as Doña Marina, was a Nahua woman who served as interpreter, negotiator and adviser to Hernán Cortés during the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire between 1519 and 1521. Because she spoke both Nahuatl and a Maya language, and soon learned Spanish, she became the voice through which the Spaniards communicated with Moctezuma II and the peoples of central Mexico. Her brief life, and her later image as either traitor or survivor, make her one of the most discussed figures in Mexican history.

Early life and enslavement

Very little is known for certain about Malintzin’s early life, and almost all of it comes from Spanish accounts written after the conquest. She was probably born around 1500, in the Nahuatl-speaking region near Coatzacoalcos on the southern Gulf coast of Mexico. The soldier-chronicler Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who knew her, wrote that she came from a noble family.

According to Díaz, after her father died her mother remarried and gave the girl away, so that the inheritance would pass to a son of the new marriage. Whatever the exact circumstances, she was sold or traded as a slave and ended up among the Chontal Maya of Tabasco, around Xicalango and Potonchán. There she learned a Maya language while keeping her native Nahuatl, a combination that would later make her extremely valuable.

Given to the Spaniards

In March 1519 Cortés’s expedition fought and defeated the people of Potonchán in Tabasco. As part of the peace, the local lords presented the Spaniards with food, gold and 20 women. One of them was the young woman the Spaniards baptised as Marina. She was first given to Alonso Hernández Portocarrero, one of Cortés’s captains.

When the fleet reached the coast near today’s Veracruz in April 1519, the Spaniards met envoys of Moctezuma who spoke Nahuatl. The expedition already had an interpreter for Maya, Gerónimo de Aguilar, a Spaniard who had lived for years among the Maya of Yucatán after a shipwreck. Marina realised she could understand the envoys, and a chain of translation began: she turned Nahuatl into Maya, and Aguilar turned Maya into Spanish. When Portocarrero sailed to Spain in July 1519 carrying letters to the king, Cortés kept Marina with him.

The interpreter of the conquest

Malintzin was probably still in her late teens or around twenty at this time. She had grown up between two language worlds, and she understood not only the words of the Nahuatl-speaking lords but also the formal, respectful style in which they expected to be addressed.

Within months Marina learned enough Spanish to translate directly, and Aguilar’s role faded. She was present at almost every important meeting of the campaign: the alliance with the Totonacs, the negotiations with Tlaxcala, the events at Cholula and the meeting with Moctezuma at Tenochtitlan on 8 November 1519.

The Spaniards called interpreters “lenguas” (tongues), and Malintzin became known as Cortés’s tongue. Interpreting in such a setting was dangerous work. Every message passed through her, so she was exposed to suspicion from both sides, and a mistake or a misunderstanding could cost lives, including her own. She also had to translate between very different ideas of authority, gift-giving and alliance.

Her role went beyond word-for-word translation. To speak to a Mexica lord required knowledge of courtly forms of address, which differed greatly from Spanish manners. Malintzin explained customs, framed messages and, according to Spanish accounts, gathered information. Bernal Díaz praised her courage and wrote that the Spaniards could not have understood the language of New Spain and Mexico without her.

The best-known episode is at Cholula in October 1519. According to Díaz, a Cholulan noblewoman warned Marina that the city planned to destroy the Spaniards and offered to shelter her. Marina reported this to Cortés, who then launched the Cholula massacre. Historians debate how much of this story is true, since it served to justify the killing.

Name and status

Malintzin was not a passive figure in Indigenous eyes. Nahua sources such as the Lienzo de Tlaxcala and the Florentine Codex show her prominently, often standing beside or in front of Cortés and speaking for him. The name Malintzin combines Malina, the Nahuatl pronunciation of Marina, with -tzin, a respectful ending. The Spaniards heard it as “Malinche”, and Díaz reported that the Mexica called Cortés himself “Malinche”, meaning the master of Marina.

The Spaniards addressed her as Doña Marina, a title of respect usually reserved for women of rank. This reflected both her claimed noble birth and her importance to the expedition. At the same time, she had been given to the Spaniards as a slave, and she had no real freedom to refuse her role.

During the war and after

Malintzin stayed with Cortés through the most dangerous moments of the conquest. She survived La Noche Triste, the bloody night retreat from Tenochtitlan in 1520, the battle of Otumba and the siege of the city in 1521. After the fall of Tenochtitlan she continued to interpret during the early years of Spanish rule.

Around 1522 she gave birth to a son by Cortés, Martín Cortés, one of the first well-known children of mixed Spanish and Indigenous descent. Cortés later had him legitimised by the pope, and Martín grew up in Spain. Cortés also had a legitimate son from his second marriage who bore the same name.

In 1524 Malintzin joined Cortés on his long and disastrous expedition to Honduras. On the way she married the Spanish captain Juan Jaramillo, and the couple had a daughter, María. Cortés granted her lands and an encomienda (a grant of tribute from Indigenous towns). She appears to have died young: documents suggest she was dead by around 1529, though the cause is unknown.

Key people

• Malintzin (c. 1500-c. 1529): Nahua interpreter and adviser, called Doña Marina by the Spaniards.
• Hernán Cortés (1485-1547): Leader of the Spanish expedition, who relied on her throughout the conquest.
• Gerónimo de Aguilar (c. 1489-c. 1531): Spanish castaway who translated between Maya and Spanish in the first months.
• Martín Cortés (c. 1522-c. 1595): Her son by Cortés, raised in Spain.
• Juan Jaramillo: Spanish conquistador who married her in 1524.

Changing reputations

In the colonial period Malintzin was generally seen in a positive light. Spanish chroniclers presented her as a loyal Christian convert, and Tlaxcalan and other Indigenous artists showed her as a powerful figure. Some Indigenous dance traditions still include a character named Malinche.

After Mexico won independence in 1821, attitudes changed. Nationalist writers looking back at the conquest began to cast her as a traitor who had sided with foreign invaders. In the 20th century the term “malinchismo” came into use for a preference for foreign people, products or ideas over Mexican ones. In his 1950 essay collection The Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz presented her as a symbol of the violated mother of the Mexican nation, a reading that became very influential.

Artists took up the theme as well. In 1926 the muralist José Clemente Orozco painted Cortés and Malinche as a naked couple seated together at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria in Mexico City, an image of the violent and intimate origins of mixed Mexican society. Novels, plays and films have since retold her story in many different ways.

From the 1970s onwards, Chicana and Mexican feminist writers and many historians challenged the traitor image. They pointed out that she had been enslaved as a child, had no loyalty to the Mexica who dominated the region, and made choices under extreme pressure. Historians such as Camilla Townsend have tried to reconstruct her life from her own perspective, as far as the sources allow.

Myths and facts

• Myth: La Malinche betrayed “her people”. In 1519 there was no single Mexican nation. She was a Nahua from the Gulf coast who had been sold into slavery, and many Indigenous peoples, such as the Tlaxcalans, were themselves enemies of the Mexica.
• Myth: She was Cortés’s wife. Cortés was married in Cuba at the time. Malintzin was his interpreter and for a period his partner, and she later married Juan Jaramillo.
• Myth: She is La Llorona. In some popular stories she is linked to the folklore figure of the weeping woman, but there is no historical basis for the connection.

Timeline

• c. 1500: Malintzin is born, probably near Coatzacoalcos.
• 1519, March: She is among 20 women given to the Spaniards after the battle at Potonchán, Tabasco.
• 1519, April: She begins interpreting between Nahuatl and Maya on the Gulf coast.
• 1519, October: She is present at the Cholula massacre.
• 1519, 8 November: She interprets at the meeting between Cortés and Moctezuma II.
• 1520, 30 June - 1 July: She survives La Noche Triste.
• 1521, 13 August: Tenochtitlan falls.
• c. 1522: Her son Martín Cortés is born.
• 1524: She marries Juan Jaramillo during the Honduras expedition.
• c. 1529: She probably dies.

Why it matters

Malintzin’s skills shaped how the conquest unfolded, as described in the article on the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. Her story also shows how Mexicans have argued over their own origins: whether she is seen as traitor, victim or survivor often says as much about later times as about the woman herself.