The day I took the voice of Malinche on Twitter, the Hernán Cortés account, run by an enthusiast of the ultraconservative Spanish political party Vox, began to follow me and fall in love with me in a badly feigned old Castilian, or rather, began to fall in love with the character that on Twitter we led a group of indigenous women as part of a project called Noticonquista.
In 2019, in connection with the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of events whose names are still being debated, this interesting outreach and analysis project, coordinated by Federico Navarrete, Margarita Cossich and Lucía Beraldi, emerged at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Around Noticonquista, an internet page was created in which articles from a great diversity of specialists were concentrated,
in addition to many other resources to make known in a more complex way what has been called the Conquest of Mexico in textbooks.
In addition to the website, conservatories, meetings, cultural events and debates were organized, video games and board games related to the subject were also created, among other resources.
As part of the project, accounts were opened on social networks that were narrating in "real time" the events that occurred 500 years ago, they were narrated as if, in fact, we were in 1519. One of those accounts replied the voice commonly known as Malinche .
From Noticonquista, a group of women from different indigenous peoples were invited to take on the voice of Malintzin, as I prefer to call her, and from there we reflected on her life and the unjust construction of her image in official history,
During the time that I had to tweet like Malintzin, I found myself facing two different phenomena but very similar in intensity.
On the one hand, through the Hernán Cortés account that began by courting Malintzin's character and ended up attacking her, the world of right-wing Spanish accounts that narrate what happened 500 years ago was opened up to me as a civilizing process through which The Spanish crown freed the Mesoamerican peoples from the Tenochca yoke, bringing them the Catholic faith, the printing press and the universities.
From this point of view, Hernán Cortés freed Malintzin from the oppression to which she was subjected and she in response fell madly in love with him.
On the other hand, on this side of the ocean, the accounts that attacked Malintzin narrated her, in accordance with the nationalist history,
as a traitor who preferred to fall in love with a Spaniard rather than defend the interests of Mexico, which, in this narrative, is an entity that has existed ever since.
In both narratives, as contrasting as they may be, the complex relationship between Hernán Cortés and Malintzin is treated wrapped in the anachronistic veil of romantic love.
In general, literary and audiovisual representations do not resist creating a Malinche in love and in the name of that supposed infatuation they justify and explain their actions.
This approach completely contrasts with the sources we have on Malintzin's life and on the current representations that she has of her figure within the indigenous peoples, above all, through the interpretation of the dances in which she appears. .
Far from being a woman in love, Malintzin was a woman of extraordinary intelligence and aptitude who, in complex and violent times, in addition to trying to survive and overcome the multiple forms of violence in which she was involved, was a fundamental political protagonist in the events that ended with the fall of Tenochtitlan, a city to which she owed no loyalty.
Malintzin developed strategies to exercise her autonomy in accordance with the circumstances that her context presented to her, a slave who at the end of her life earned the respect of the most powerful people in her context.
Let us not forget that the native peoples used her name, Malinche, to name Cortés and that in the Lienzos de Tlaxcala the Nahua peoples often represented her with a size much larger than that of a Cortés who could not speak intelligibly with the population. native.
Before the native population, she was the owner of the word, she was the one who spoke to them and transferred meanings through constant interpretation.
Let us not forget that the native peoples used her name, Malinche, to name Cortés and that in the Lienzos de Tlaxcala the Nahua peoples often represented her with a size much larger than that of a Cortés who could not speak intelligibly with the population. native.
Before the native population, she was the owner of the word, she was the one who spoke to them and transferred meanings through constant interpretation.
Let us not forget that the native peoples used her name, Malinche, to name Cortés and that in the Lienzos de Tlaxcala the Nahua peoples often represented her with a size much larger than that of a Cortés who could not speak intelligibly with the population. native.
Before the native population, she was the owner of the word, she was the one who spoke to them and transferred meanings through constant interpretation.
Creating a Malinztin in love with Cortés subordinates her to him and places her as the perfect target for the misogyny and contempt with which her figure has been so unfairly and uninformed.
From both sides of the ocean, whether from the Spanish right or from the most recalcitrant Mexican nationalism, they do not resist always falling into that common place that is the supposed love relationship between Cortes and Malintzin.
As specialists on the subject have said, there is nothing to indicate that the story between Cortés and Malintzin was a love story, continuing to replicate that idea re-victimizes a woman who, based on misogyny and racism, has been narrated in the history of such a distorted way.
It is also interesting, like this mechanism, to narrate them as women in love,
Unfortunately, this terrible tradition in which Spanish men like the one behind the Hernán Cortés account grant themselves the right to narrate a Malintzin in love is still very much alive.
A few days ago, Nacho Cano, a former member of the group Mecano, premiered the musical
Malinche in Madrid
in which, according to this note by Raquel Vidales, “the indigenous Malinche, supposed protagonist of the story, barely has two spoken scenes and one second is enough for her to fall in love with Cortés [...] Everything invites us to celebrate 'the encounter between two peoples and their cultures' and the beautiful love story between Cortés and Malinche”.
Among the enthusiastic attendees at the premiere was José María Aznar, the former president of the Spanish Government, a character quite enthusiastic about the versions of the Conquest as a civilizing process.
Nacho Cano, it seems, once again chooses to silence Malinztin and tell the same story as always, the one that erases the complexities, the one that annuls his agency and his strategies.
I have no doubt that the person behind the account of Hernán Cortés will applaud fiercely from some box at the end of the play.
If we want to do justice to the figure of Malintzin and with her to the figure of all the native women of her time who played a fundamental role in what happened 500 years ago, we need to start by stopping narrating her as a woman in love with Cortés, with this, we will also be able to have a more critical reading of our stories and also of the history and role of indigenous women today.
La Malinche enamored, which implies a mutilation of her agency from a patriarchal narrative, also recalls the neglect and denial of the agency that indigenous women have suffered through the centuries in the defense of our peoples, our ways of life and our territories.
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