‘Conquest’: the impact - expert opinions (2)

We ended the first section of this two-parter with the question ‘Who conquered who?’. In this part we ask further hard-hitting questions: ‘Who entered whose history?’ and ‘What about the women?’ Barbara Mundy sets the scene eloquently: ‘What took place in the Basin of Mexico between 1519-21 was chaotic and inexplicable in its moment, with individuals only partially experiencing or learning of events that were happening in different places, at different times, like fragments of a broken mirror. Historical narratives, beginning with the letters of Hernando Cortés, have gathered up the fragments, setting them out into chronological order, choosing some as causes, others as effects, enhancing some, neglecting others. Today we encounter these narratives as uniform rivers of words on the page or on screen.
Up until the middle of the last century, historians had been largely content to stay within the confines of the historical narratives whose limits were set out in the sixteenth century. Over the centuries, these time-travelers - Francisco López de Gómara, Antonio de Solís, William Prescott - followed the course of the same dry river bed leading to the past. Their eyes squinted to catch sight of the familiar landmarks (the burning of the ships at Veracruz, the assassination of Moteuczoma, the massacre at Cholula) along the way.

Pic 1: Model figures of Doña Marina and Hernán Cortés

Elizabeth Baquedano reveals more about the life and importance of Doña Marina: ‘The Conquest of Mexico was not made by 550 Spanish soldiers or by the superiority of their weapons. The Conquest was made by a number of factors that contributed to its success in less than two years. Noteworthy was the contribution made by several native groups of Mexico who allied themselves with the Spaniards and by the help of a remarkable indigenous woman who became Cortés’s interpreter Malintzin, also called Doña Marina by the Spaniards. How did the Spaniards perceive this woman who was so essential to their success. How did the indigenous people portray her in their histories of the Conquest?
La Malinche, Malintzin, Malinalli and Doña Marina are all names commonly used when referring to Cortés’s indigenous interpreter. This extraordinary woman was born sometime around 1500. Her life before the encounter with Cortés and the Spanish army is not altogether well known. Malintzin was the daughter of a noble family near Veracruz but at the age of 5 she was sent away from her people to live in Tabasco with the Maya where she remained and learned a Maya tongue. One of Cortés’s soldiers, Bernal Díaz, claimed that her mother and stepfather sold her to merchants.

Pic 3: Illustration of Doña Marina by Miguel Covarrubias

‘It is at this point that Malintzin became indispensable to Hernán Cortés. As a native Nahuatl speaker she was able to translate from Nahuatl to Maya, which in turn could be translated into Spanish by Jerónimo de Aguilar. This role made Malintzin essential during the Conquest period. As translator to Hernán Cortés, the actions of Malintzin were a key factor in the fusion of pre-Colonial and Spanish societies. She soon learned Spanish as well.
Besides being an indispensable translator Malintzin showed her allegiance to Cortés rather than to her own people.
Malintzin changed the course of universal history. The many different roles she played can perhaps best be seen in the Lienzo de Tlaxcala where she is represented 20 times. She is often depicted as the central figure and is bigger in size than Cortés. She often dominates the scenes.

Pic 5: Marina’s central role in interpreting - even deciding - for Cortés is evident in this scene of negotiation in the Lienzo de Tlaxcala

It is thanks to the - in some cases recently discovered - evidence from books written/drawn by Aztec scribes around the time of or after the invasion that today’s scholars are able to compose a much more subtle and balanced picture of those monumental events - and of the role of women like Doña Marina/Malintzin. Some of those books, as Joanne Harwood points out, are close to home for those living and studying in the UK... ‘It is impossible to study the ‘Aztecs and the Spanish Conquest, 1519-1535’ without studying the books that the Aztecs produced both before and after the arrival of the Spanish invaders under Hernán Cortés. Most people are unaware that the Aztecs had books in a wide range of different genres, written using a complex and beautiful iconic script that, as scholar Gordon Brotherston has noted, combines in a single system mathematics, images and text. An extraordinary number of the few books that survived or were made after the arrival of the Spanish are located in the UK, including the early 16th century Codex Mendoza, held in the Bodleian Library Oxford. It has been likened to the Rosetta Stone because although it is written entirely in Aztec iconic script , it also includes alphabetic transcriptions in Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs, which is still spoken in Mexico today) and alphabetic Spanish. In another 16th century post-Cortesian example called the Codex Kingsborough, in the British Museum, Aztec scribes have adapted their iconic script to show the often repressive deeds of the Spanish encomenderos who appropriated indigenous land and labour during the colonial period. Such depictions have led Brotherston to ask who entered whose history when Europe encountered, conquered and colonised Mexico.’

Pic 7 Further evidence, this time from the Tizatlan Codex, of Doña Marina’s pivotal role in influencing events during the Spanish invasion

‘Far less common are comparisons that reveal how similar the Aztecs were to their European counterparts. We tend to forget that the Europeans held a medieval mind-set not much different from that of the Aztecs. For example, the conquistadores beseeched God and the saints to deliver them in battle, not unlike the Aztecs. Furthermore, sixteenth-century Spaniards beheld a society comparable, even superior in some ways, to their own. Aztec social, political, and economic practices were more familiar to medieval Europeans than to modern scholarship. Even regarding their notorious religious practices, some missionary friars were so struck by similarities in belief and worship between Aztec religion and Catholicism that they thought perhaps an Apostle of Christ had converted the Indians long ago. There is much more to the Aztecs than gore and sacrifice. After 500 years, it’s high time we elevate them out of the “most barbaric” category, to appreciate what we (and other peoples) all have in common.’
*Pasztory, Esther (2003) Aztec Poetry. Nahua Newsletter #35 (February):20-23. Fort Wayne, Indiana

Pic 9: Male and female figures (West Mexico); Museo de América, Madrid