Malinche: The Voice of a Nation
Ifyou change the present enough, history will bend to accommodate it.
Barbara Kingsolver
In troduction
Malinche was the Interpreter, intermediary and inamorata o f
Cortes. She determined the outcome o f meetings, negotiations, and
conversations yet she personifies ambiguity (M etcalf 8). This young,
sixteenth Century woman changed the history o f the Americas by her gift
o f speech, yet lefit nothing o f her own words.
She is part o f Am erica’s 21st Century multi-cultural heritage. She
appears in artwork and murals as a hero and a whore. Black velvet
paintings o f her sexualized figure signify a male patriarchal
Interpretation o f history (Esquibel 301). Malinche graces the walls of
eponymous Mexican restaurants in Sarasota, Florida; Rahway, New
Jersey; and Wauconda, Illinois. She decorates calendars and cigar boxes,
appears in the 2012 Genzoman digital art cartoon, “M alinche,” and
embellishes 2013 “Aztec Art” tattoos by Jaime Gallegos. Her image
adoms vans and low riders (Sandoval 179).
Her will to survive speaks to the powerless and marginalized.
She inhabits the edge, the border, the periphery. She is the bridge, the
connection, and the supreme mediator between two cultures. She is
present when Anglo historians describe the success o f the Conquistadors,
when a Chicano looks at his heritage, when a Chicana develops her sense
o f identity.
This acceptance o f divergent views o f Malinche as revered,
reviled, and a role model employs the ideas o f three theorists. Scholar
Peter Novik argues that every historian writes from his own perspective.
British anthropologist Victor Turner States that paradigm shifts o f a
nation’s founding mythology occur during times o f stress. Chicana
Gloria Anzaldua promotes a post-modern view that embraces ambiguous
or contradictory concepts. These academics provide a multidisciplinary
analysis