"Yo Soy La Malinche": Chicana Writers and the Poetics of Ethnonationalism

Abstract

It was toward the end of the year 13-Rabbit in Tenochtitlan when Moctezuma, ruler of the Aztec empire, first received news of the strange-looking foreigners arriving on the coast of his domain. (In Christian terms, the time was August of 1519, and Tenochtitlan was the biggest city in the world.) strangers' bodies are completely covered, reported Moctezuma's messengers, that only their faces can be seen. Their skin is white as if it were made of lime... .Their deer (for so the Aztecs saw the Spaniards' horses) carry them on their backs wherever they wish to go. These deer, our lord, are as tall as the roof of house.... Their dogs are enormous, with flat ears and long, dangling tongues. The color of their eyes is burning yellow; their eyes flash fire and shoot off sparks. So reported the Aztec chronicles twenty years after Mexico had fallen to the invaders (Leon-Portillo 13). Were these peaceable visitors, Moctezuma wondered, invad- ers? the god Quetzalcoatl whose return had been prophesied by the ancients? Messengers upon messengers were sent to report on the newcomers' activities as they made their way into Aztec territory, and their news left Moctezuma distraught and bewildered. At first, so the chroniclers report, it was hoped Moctezuma would be encouraged by news of the Aztec woman traveling with the strangers, a woman from this land, who speaks our Nahuatl tongue. She is called La Malinche, and she is from Teticpac. They found her there on the coast(Leon-Portillo 13). One of Moctezuma's own subjects, young Aztec woman of noble birth, was acting as translator and mediator for the bearded newcomers, and was their leader's lover. As the party made its way inexorably toward Tenochtitlan, the reports multiplied, and so did the questions. Who was she? Why was she serving these pale visitors with their metal clothes and deadly, inexplicable weapons? Why was she helping them forge an army of Moctezuma's own conquered peoples? Why did she save them from ambushes, attacks, misunderstandings likely to prove their undoing? Was her presence, and her role as Cortes's lover, proof of his divinity? Or was she simply traitor? Exploration, imperial invasion, and plunder are endeavors overwhelmingly associ- ated with men. Yet this young Aztec woman, known variously as Malintzin, La Malinche, and Dofia Marina, became key participant in the struggle between the Aztec and Spanish empires, as it played itself out in Mesoamerica over the two and half years between Cortes's arrival and the fall of Aztec rule. Like many key historical agents, Malinche/Marina has acquired importance as mythic figure. From the time those first messengers reached Moctezuma down to the very present, she has remained site for the ongoing negotiation of meaning and self understanding in Mexican America. As Sandra Messinger Cypess has documented, her race, her gender, and her historical role as supporter of the Spanish challenge to Aztec rule make her one of the most complex