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    The Myth of "La Malinche": Source

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    joanna
    Malinalli, a young Aztec girl, was sold into slavery after her father was killed and mother remarried. As a slave, she became fluent in multiple indigenous languages. In 1519, she was given to Hernan Cortes and proved invaluable as a translator, enabling Cortes to communicate with local populations. Through her intelligence and translation skills, she played a key role in Cortes' conquest of the Aztec empire. Later, she had children with both Cortes and another conquistador, but little is known of her later life. Some argue she should not be seen as a traitor given she was a slave and helped Cortes partly due to her father's death at

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    The Myth of "La Malinche": Source

    Uploaded by

    joanna
    105 views2 pages
    Malinalli, a young Aztec girl, was sold into slavery after her father was killed and mother remarried. As a slave, she became fluent in multiple indigenous languages. In 1519, she was given to Hernan Cortes and proved invaluable as a translator, enabling Cortes to communicate with local populations. Through her intelligence and translation skills, she played a key role in Cortes' conquest of the Aztec empire. Later, she had children with both Cortes and another conquistador, but little is known of her later life. Some argue she should not be seen as a traitor given she was a slave and helped Cortes partly due to her father's death at

    Original Title

    Malinche

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    Malinalli, a young Aztec girl, was sold into slavery after her father was killed and mother remarried. As a slave, she became fluent in multiple indigenous languages. In 1519, she was given to Hernan Cortes and proved invaluable as a translator, enabling Cortes to communicate with local populations. Through her intelligence and translation skills, she played a key role in Cortes' conquest of the Aztec empire. Later, she had children with both Cortes and another conquistador, but little is known of her later life. Some argue she should not be seen as a traitor given she was a slave and helped Cortes partly due to her father's death at

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    105 views2 pages

    The Myth of "La Malinche": Source

    Uploaded by

    joanna
    Malinalli, a young Aztec girl, was sold into slavery after her father was killed and mother remarried. As a slave, she became fluent in multiple indigenous languages. In 1519, she was given to Hernan Cortes and proved invaluable as a translator, enabling Cortes to communicate with local populations. Through her intelligence and translation skills, she played a key role in Cortes' conquest of the Aztec empire. Later, she had children with both Cortes and another conquistador, but little is known of her later life. Some argue she should not be seen as a traitor given she was a slave and helped Cortes partly due to her father's death at

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    The myth of “La Malinche”

    In 1519 Hernan Cortes conquered Mexico, which was ruled by the Aztecs, and at that time had at least a million
    subjects, but Cortes had only 500 men, a few horses and cannon.
    What was his secret weapon? A 17-year-old slave girl named Malinche’s.

    Malinche's story can be interpreted in different ways. She has been known as the mother of Mexico (the son
    she had with Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, was likely the first mestizo person, European and
    indigenous, yet her name is also associated with betrayal).

    A young girl was born in 1502 named Malinalli to an Aztec noble family. In her early life she learned Nahuatl,
    the language of the Aztecs. As a girl, her father was killed by the aztecs, then her mother remarried and had
    another son. Not wishing to jeopardize her new son's inheritance, her mother sold Malinalli into slavery. As a
    slave she learned to speak Mayan, acquiring bilingual skills that would later serve as a crucial link for
    communication between the Hernan Cortes and the Mayans and Aztecs.

    In 1519 Hernan Cortes landed in what is now called Mexico, which was part of the Aztec Empire, and began the
    conquest of the territory for Spain. Malinalli and 19 other slave girls were given as tribute to Cortes by the
    Indians in Tabasco. The Spanish baptized the girls and gave them Christian names. Malinalli was named Marina,
    to which the Spanish soldiers added Doña, so they called her Doña Marina. As time went on, Malinche quickly
    learned Spanish and became Cortés’s exclusive interpreter. The two formed a close relationship. But Doña
    Marina only wanted to help Cortes to kill the Aztecs as a revenge for his father´s death.

    She became Cortes’ key to the conquest of the Aztecs and all of Mexico by her intelligence and charm,
    translating the various dialects into Spanish and making the Aztec Emperor Montezuma believing that Cortes
    was the returning god Quetzalcoatl or Feathered Serpent. Cortés himself stated in a letter that:“After God, we
    owe this conquest of New Spain only to Doña Marina.”

    In 1523, just a year after the Spanish took Tenochtitlan, Malinche gave birth to Cortés’s son. Shortly afterward,
    Cortés’s wife arrived to Mexico from Spain, so he arranged a marriage between Malinche and the conquistador
    Juan Jaramillo. Then, she gave birth to a daughter, child of Jaramillo. Not much is known of her life after this
    time, it is not clear when or how she died.

    Some observers ask if it is fair to remember Malinche as a traitor or to judge her relationship with Cortés and
    the Spanish conquest of Mexico, pointing out that being sold as a slave into that relationship was clearly not a
    personal decision. Also, her father was killed by the Aztecs and she helped Hernan as a revenge. After reading
    her true story, do you still think she was a traitor?

    Source:
    https://malincheinfo.wordpress.com/
    https://www.donquijote.org/mexican-culture/history/la-malinche/

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