ABSTRACT
Malintzin, whom the Spanish called Dona Marina, played a key role in securing their victory over the Mexica in the conquest of Mexico. Malintzin was born into a noble family in the Nahua town of Paynala. After serving in Xicalango, Malintzin changed hands again and ended up working in servitude in the Chontal Maya area at the base of the Yucatan Peninsula. She was one of twenty women a Maya cacique awarded to Hernan Cortes in 1519 as an act of reverence and alliance. Malintzin’s aptitude in both her mother tongue of Nahuatl and her adopted Maya tongue proved invaluable to the Spaniards’ diplomatic and military campaigns against the Mexica. Beginning in the aftermath of Mexico’s Revolution of Independence, however, and increasingly in the twentieth century, the figure of Malintzin began to acquire a negative connotation. Known most commonly in the modern era as “La Malinche,” her chief association became that of betrayal.
