On Malintzin/Dona Marina/Malinche
Camilla Townsend. Malintzin’s Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico. University of Mexico Press, 2006.
Disclaimer: reading this book was a little tiresome after having read through the conquest of Mexico and its attendant events and personages several times already, enough to have the sequence of events, the important people, the sources, pretty well memorized. Given that Townsend’s book unfolds in a rather novelistic manner, my previous familiarity probably detracted from the book’s effect. I imagine that had I read it without much prior knowledge, it would have been more effective. As it was, there was little that I was not already aware of or sources I had not either already read or knew about. This is not necessarily a fault of the author- the extant traces of Malintzin’s life are relatively few. She appears most prominently in Diaz’s account and in the accounts of the Tlaxcalans, but even in those there is only so much that can be gathered. Townsend at least does a good job collating these various sources; at times she does engage in somewhat critical analysis of these scattered traces. At other times she seems to take the literary traces at face value.
In the introduction she promises to employ ethnographic material to further elucidate Malintzin’s life; while some of this promised material appears, one suspects that much more could have been done with it. Certainly there is no great theoretical rigor, which is perhaps in part due to the projected audience of the book, though again one wonders how broad of an audience an academic title like this can reach. There is but one Amazon review, a not very good indicator for a book already four years old. It’s a pity, really- Malintzin (or Dona Marina, or Malinche) has to be one, if not the most engaging and fascinating of the great cast of characters in the period of the conquest. Her life invites a novelistic or imaginative approach, and while Townsend- like many other academic writers who take this path- sometimes descends to rather maudlin scenes, overall, when examining Malintzin’s place in the story, gives a decently imaginative and sympathetic account. At times Malintzin disappears, the reader wondering where exactly she has gone (have her choices run out? Are things finally fixed?). Yet she does continue to reappear, even in the final two chapters, where perhaps the strange and uncertain genealogy that Malintzin and her descendants bore- from one culture and kingdom to another, never quite fitting in anywhere yet often triumphing (or seeming to triumph at least).
I could bring up other problems- I suspect much more could be asked about the practices and ranges of action and meaning that Malintzin could draw upon in the course of her travels, as she rose to a degree of prominence few, men or women, indigenous or Spanish, in her world could claim. At any rate, Townsend has not exhausted what can be said about this genuinely (to my eyes at least) remarkable woman. Granted, much of what she did can be understood as falling within possible and accepted parameters within both indigenous and Spanish society. Nonetheless, it is hard not to feel the sort of admiration and even love that Diaz and apparently many others felt- admiration and love that continued to echo long after her death, that continues (mingled with hatred and rejection to be sure) to echo down to us, these long centuries later.
