Malintzin's Mexico

This was a fascinating perspective to come across. I've said before, throughout this semester, that there aren't nearly enough women in mainstream history, but I think that I've read more in depth about women and people of color in history just over the past few months than I think I ever have in my entire academic career. So, I say (rather repetitively now) how refreshing it truly is. And as we've had some women that are so limited by their environment over the past few weeks, it is interesting to see someone take such advantage of it. Especially being an indigenous slave. That, for me, was the most fascinating part. Her using her agency, and even her position to her advantage, was incredibly impressive.

As we've been saying that microhistories provides a sort of keyhole to the everyday life by looking at someone that is slightly off the beaten path, this is a perfect example. This gives an excellent look into what MesoAmerican women's day to day lives were like, and the lives of the MesoAmerican people in general, as well as the lives of the slaves and the people who oppressed them, to some degree. Giving the perspective of the oppressed is always something that interests me, and Townsend does it so deftly here, which I appreciated. The combination of sources was truly unique, and I was surprised that she had gotten so much out of it.

Once Upon a Time in Malintzin's Mexico

In Malintzin's Choices Camilla Townsend has produced a descriptive and expertly written account of the conquest of Mexico that highlights the agency and point of view of a young meso-American woman who becomes the translator and advisor of Hernan Cortez after being sold into slavery. In many such a way as has been observed in the works of Ginzburg and Sparks she uses knowledge of the context to paint an image of Malintzin. In doing so she seeks to rescue her memory from vilification and place it in the context of her times. This seems to be a recurring theme in microhistory. The small and not-so-servile slave girl was not only useful to her Spanish allies but could also assert her own agency in doing so. Furthermore, Townsend takes pains to understand how the events of the conquest would have been viewed from the perspective of meso-american. This provides us with a glimpse of what Malinche would have been thinking even though she admits there is no way to know for sure.

Townsend's work tells us a great deal about daily life and meso-american women in general. Themes such as gender complementarity and household production are present throughout. In this way it reminded me of Martha Ballard's story only in this case we have an example of a woman choosing to engage in political events rather than shun them. I found it interesting that Townsend asserts that when coming into contact with Malinche her fellow meso-americans would have needed a new word to describe her, for she was in effect inventing a new social category for herself. She is perhaps an example of a Creole trailblazer. The use of written, oral, and visual evidence was refreshing. This must have been a difficult work to put together since she did not have a single source from which to draw information.

This being my second time reading this I felt I gained a better appreciation for it by viewing as a microhistory. The simple change in perspective gives a whole new light on the conquest of Mexico as well as provides insights into the mentality of normal-exceptional meso-american women.   

Malinzin's choices versus position

Reading Malintzin's Choices I was able to understand a story that I knew in a different light. I had some basic understanding of Cortes's march towards Tenochtitlan and his ultimate conquering of the Mexica area and I was aware of Marina who acted as a translator for the invading Spaniards. What Townsend contributed to my understanding of Marina/Malintzin is that she had more agency, and by association power, than other histories might portray.

Malintzin did have power according to Townsend, in fact she occupied a position of respect with regard to the Spaniards. She asserts that the Spaniards knew that the position she occupied made their actions possible, and that she contributed towards their end goals. As much as she was respected by the Spaniards, she was also respected by the people that they were coming in contact with who saw her not as one of them but possibly above them. So it seems that she actually occupies a position in what is a "no woman's land", that she really didn't belong within any group she was in contact with.

Townsend's close reading of her sources gives her the opportunity to portray Malintzin as a strong woman who contributed to the Spanish conquest. At the same time she provides Malintzin with agency she also makes it clear that she had very little agency in the beginning of her journey to leave the Spanish and return to her home. Townsend also provides us with some interesting questions that she strives to answer, such as the possibility that Malintzin actually enjoyed her elevated position, and the idea of returning to her home and slavery was not something that she wished to do. The result of her return would have been a significant reduction in status, which was not a choice that she would have readily accepted.

While Townsend must make many assumptions from the lack of documentation I believe that she manages it well. She is clear about when she is speculating about what happened which I feel provides a feeling of honesty. She also makes clear the lack of documentation or in fact, the Europeanization of the available resources makes close reading very important. Overall, I accept the story she has written about Malintzin at face value and feel that it is the best that we can hope for with what there is to work with.

Malintzin and A New Approach to Microhistory

Malintzin’s Choices is a fascinating book, true to form for the books in this course, but it takes a very different approach to microhistory from anything we have read previously. With no written first-person accounts to establish the framework for Townsend’s history, she had to get to the subject of her history – Malintzin – in a different way. As she said in her introduction, this is really a book about context. Rather than taking the reader inside the life of the subject and looking outward to explore and learn about the contextual world around her, Townsend builds the contextual world first and then uses the available details within that known context to construct the unknown details of Malintzin’s life. This is a difficult microhistorical methodology, requiring substantial knowledge of the historical context in order to identify the necessary details to inductively develop the subject.

The idea of creating a detailed sketch of a person’s life by examining everything the world in which that person lived is a little like a sculptor carving an equine statue by taking a block of marble and chipping away everything that doesn’t look like a horse. If you’re really good, as Townsend is, you’ll end up with something beautiful. If, on the other hand, you are not incredibly knowledgeable about the world in which your subject lived, you are more likely to end up with a statue of a five-legged llama, or maybe just a nondescript blob. There is an art to writing the way Townsend does in Malintzin’s Choices, and neophyte students of the art probably should not attempt it.

Having said that, it is important to recognize that Townsend proved herself to be remarkably gifted at this form of art. She took a long misunderstood, even maligned, historical figure and crafted an entirely new narrative with virtually no direct evidence to support it, but a narrative that is nonetheless compelling and arguably quite accurate given the voluminous circumstantial evidence on which she relied. Has Townsend exonerated Malintzin? I think so, or at the very least, she provided an alternate and believable narrative that makes her actions and decisions understandable. Townsend showed that Malintzin lived in an unimaginably complicated, difficult world, faced impossible choices, and did the best she could – probably the best anyone could be expected to do – given her situation.

Filling in the Gaps-A Whole New Level

We have talked a few times over the course of the semester about the ways in which authors either do or don’t fill in the gaps about questions readers might have.  For example, Cook and Cook don’t go into the story of Dona Beatriz in Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance.  Perhaps this was because they didn’t have any sources that could prove useful in such a task.  As we have mentioned, Natalie Zemon Davis, on the other hand, fills in the gaps by looking at what might have been typical for someone living in a certain time period.  Camilla Townsend is certainly willing to attempt to fill in the holes of her narrative where a dearth of information has provided challenges.  One example is the way in which Malintzin goes into detail about what the childbirth process could have been like for Malintzin.  Even if one might feel as though Townsend goes a little over the top in this part of the book, one can’t help but appreciate Townsend’s style.  Part of what makes Malintzin’s Choices such a great book is the way that Townsend brings Malintzin to life and convey to the reader the way in which Malintzin had a certain degree of agency.  Even though it is impossible to write a typical biography of Malintzin since she left no written documents, Townsend is able to effectively examine what we do know about the situations in which Malintzin found herself and explore the different possibilities that Malintzin faced.

Sources Moving beyond a Spanish-Indigenous Dichotomy

Malintzin’s Choices is a fascinating and creative into the life and surrounding world of the translator of Cortés. I was especially struck by the way Camilla Townsend used her sources to illuminate the multi-faceted world that Malintzin and the other indigenous peoples inhabited during the period of the Spanish conquest of the Mexica. In doing so, she questions the credibility of some of the long-standing ideas surrounding the conquest that generally caricature the various indigenous peoples as naive and unsophisticated. She demonstrates that the idea the Nahua thought the Spanish were Gods is more likely an invented tradition. Instead, the Nahua meant something along the lines of “sorcerer” when using the word “teotl” (49-50). Here, Townsend used her understanding of the Nahua world, Spanish sources, the Nahuatl language as well as the contexts behind the production of Nahuatl sources to come to this conclusion. In a strange but convincing irony, she disputes the Nahuatl sources produced under the aegis of a Franciscan priest, and brings to bear a close reading of sources from Cortés and Charles V that make possibility that they perceived the word teotl to mean God sound ridiculous (46-51). Her knowledge of the Nahuatl language here is incredibly important.

Taking into account the contexts of the production of her sources is one of the greatest strengths of Townsend’s analysis.  This is clear in her discussion of the importance of translators in the Spanish conquest, and the significance of Manlintzin in particular. Instead of reading the Nahuatl sources in combination and drawing a single picture of how they viewed interpreters/Malintzin, she reads them linearly. This method allows her to demonstrate that the first generation focused on the importance of translators and Malintzin  in their pictoral representations of the events. It was only in later generations (those that came after Malintzin had died) that her status was reduced as a result of the general reduction in the need for translators during their period (72-76).

Townsend does a great job capturing the multiplicity of the indigenous experience during the Spanish conquest. She makes clear that there was no single experience demographically or temporally. The close reading of all the available sources and the Nahuatl sources in particular that Townsend employs makes these arguments possible. In addition, it returns agency to both Malintzin and the other indigenous groups that separates the period of the Spanish conquest from the Spanish-Indigenous dichotomy. In its place, a world of a multiplicity of competing autonomous and semi-autonomous interests between various Mexica and Nahua peoples as well as the Spanish develops, in which Malintzin and others like her are competent actors and shaping the outcome along with the Spanish conquerors. 

Biographical Microhistory?

Before last semester, I must admit I didn't know the name Malintzin, nor the importance of the name in history.  Since reading Camilla Townsend's Malintzin's Choices again, I better understand the whole extent of the story of Malintzin, as before I had not realized the impact of her important contribution, nor had I imagined the possibilities of the choices she would have had to have made.  Before reading Malintzin’s Choices again, I revisited William Prescott’s account of Malintzin, who he mentioned more than a few times, in the History of the Conquest of Mexico, where Prescott portrayed her as "Marina" - a useful interpreter and concubine to Cortes.  Prescott even mentioned her son by Cortes - Don Martin Cortes, although not really her daughter Maria (by Jaramillo), and all of this of course written from the Euro-centric point of view.   I believe Townsend is writing this book about the experience of native peoples, specifically women and that Malintzin is the lens.  In Townsend's interpretation, we realize the critical role of language as not only a (practical) mechanism to relate opposing sides to one another, but also language as a way to create a unique existence for Malintzin - a way for her to exercise agency is a very rare way for any woman of her era, let alone a slave turned translator - an invaluable asset to Cortes an the Spanish.  While Townsend's work certainly isn't a typical biography, it does seem biographical to some extent, or at least it has biographical elements.  But at the same time it does feel to me a lot like a micro-history, using the life experience of Malintzin as a lens to look at indigenous peoples in Mexico in the 16th century.  Maybe it’s a biographical microhistory?  In her review of the book, Louise M. Burkhart points out that there is a certain risk inherent in writing about Marintzin and "what would she have felt?"  This is understandable, and Thompson acknowledges "the woman left us no diaries or letters, not a single page." But what I believe what we have in Malintzin's Choices is a powerful study in context based history (perhaps micro-history) in which we can look at and interpret the situations in which Malintzin was involved and surmise how she must have made certain decisions.  Thompson points to ethnographic evidence of both the Nahuas and the Spaniards as key to interpreting Malintzin and the "kinds of thoughts she might have entertained."  I really found the chapters on both of her children quite compelling, as a testament to the power Malintzin had not only to perpetuate herself, but to put her children forth into the world as people who "won places for themselves in the world of conquerors" as their mother had done before them.  One can imagine that Malintzin, like a lot of parents since time began, wanted a good life for her children - it seems the exercise of her agency was a gift she sought to bequeath to her children.