ABSTRACT

Go-betweens are everywhere in the Atlantic world during the age of discovery and colonization, but how many of them were women? In a fascinating essay on gobetweens, literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt selects Doña Marina, or Malintzin, Hernán Cortés’s interpreter in the conquest of Mexico, as ‘the supreme instance of the go-between in the New World’ because she was the figure through whom all communication between the Aztec and Spanish worlds passed (Greenblatt, 1991, pp. 143-5). One does not have to look far to find other Indian women, such as Pocahontas or Sacagawea, playing similar roles elsewhere in the Americas (Karttunen, 1994). In Brazil, Catarina Paraguaçu, Isabel Bartira and Maria do Espírito Santo are Indian women known to Brazilians as daughters of chiefs who, because of their associations with Portuguese men, were central figures in the first Portuguese settlements in Brazil. These prominent examples suggest that Indian women were the quintessential gobetweens in the encounters, conquests and colonization of the Americas. But when faced with such interesting and compelling lives, it is always important to ask if these women are unique, or if indeed they are typical of a larger cultural pattern. This chapter seeks to answer this question by systematically searching for the female go-betweens in a formative period of Brazilian history: the first half of the sixteenth century. By using a typology that breaks down go-betweens by ethnicity and gender and by applying it to three discrete stages within this 50-year period, I argue that it is possible to evaluate the presence and significance of female go-betweens in Brazil. Despite the importance often accorded to Indian women as go-betweens between the Indian and European worlds, women, while present, did not dominate this role.