Malintzin’s Many Contexts

I was suspicious of Camilla Townsend’s Malintzin’s Choices before I had even read the back cover. After all, I reasoned, how does one attempt a biography of a person who left no written records, and can only be accessed through dubious (in my view) secondary sources, in which category I inlude Cortes and Bernal Diaz. I therefore found Professor Townsend’s frank discussion of the problems inherent in such an approach refreshing and welcome. No traditional biography of Dona Marina is feasible, as Townsend knows very well. But by examining the several Spanish sources together, she argues that it is feasible to reconstruct aspects of her world (and perhaps her worldview) for our examination, even if we cannot determine precisely how she responded to the situation in which found herself both crucial and marginalized.

The book, while focusing on Malintze, is equally about the indigenous experience of the Conquest, as Townsend claims, and especially about the female experience of the turbulent era. Although I knew full well that the Spaniards baptized the indigenous women before taking sexual advantage of them, in Townsend’s account these actions are more fully explained. To our modern sensibilities, this seems contradictory, not to mention criminally hypocritical. Townsend is particularly effective, however, in reminding  us that, whatever our sense of distaste, the baptisms were fully in keeping with the Spanish modus operandi, and must be understood in that context (36). The same applies for the now-well-understood establishment of the cabildo. The author is adept at explaining the situation clearly, and concisely: “He [Cortes] arranged to have the expedition’s men demand that they attemt to conquer Moctezuma…”(44).

Even more important for understand this meeting of two worlds, in my view, is Townsend’s presentation of the much larger, even macro, context. Her discussion of agriculture immediately comes to mind: understanding that ancient corn was less nutritive than ancient wheat and peas is essential to understanding  the evolution of societies, including their technological evolution. Similarly, the surviving pictorial representations of Malintze are telling, according to Townsend; there is a reason she is sometimes portrayed as larger than the surrounding figures: “She expertly supervises the collection of tribute on the Spaniards’ behalf” (75). (I confess, I sometimes fall into the trap of assuming premodern artists did not understand depth.)

The value of this book, of course, moves beyond Malintze, as mentioned above. She argues, pragmatically, that in order to understand Moctezuma’s thoughts and motives, for example, “we essentially have only his previous and future actions to go on” (89) The Mexica ruler was not caught off-guard, as many sources and modern histories attest. In fact, according to Townsend, he had been warily keeping an eye on the sea since 1517. Even if any analysis of Moctezuma is conjecture, the author claims, convincingly, that the effort helps to “undermine any easy acceptance of the utterances as fact” (89). Malintzin’s Choices is both a fine work of ethnohistory as well as a testament to the benefits and possibilities of ethnohistory to those of us who work with more familiar sources and with historical periods much closer to our own. Townsend’s book in some ways reminds me of Donald Kagan’s The Peloponnesian War. Kagan has only Thucydides’ work to rely on, along with a very few other sources, but from that he is able to, with some ambiguity, describe the history and worldviews of other Greek city-states and the Persian Empire. (This is not the most apt analogy, but I can currently not think of a better one.)

Finally, Townsend must be commended in spending time on Malintzin’s job. Every chronicle and modern history mentions that she served as a translator (among other things), but few give credit to the exhausting and unenviable position she found herself in (or, for all we know, wrangled herself into). The sheer act of translating, according to Townsend, is mentally very taxing, but that was not the end of her responsibility. She was the messenger who actually communicated the demands, and could do little to alleviate what must have been terribly awkward situations. “Despite her many skills,” Townsend writes, “there was absolutely nothing Malintzin could do to change the situation” (120). This comment, and this book, testify to the young woman’s grit and resourcefulness. The author, appropriately, offers no definitive answer as to whether Malintzin was a sexy opportunist or one who served as the proverbial “bitch,” as she puts it. There is no doubt she was in a hellish environment, and there is little doubt, it seems, that she used what tools she had at her disposal to carve a living in an uncertain world. That, it seems to me, is laudworthy.