ABSTRACT
Malintzin Tenepal was an interpreter, advisor, and sociocultural mediator between the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortez and the Nahuatl and Mayan civilisations. She is an enigmatic figure from the darker side of the Renaissance. Her story is as enigmatic as the history of the indigenous civilisations and the ensuing covering-over of their legacy by European colonial enterprises. Her life is a multilayered palimpsest where the lines between her fictional and historical identity are blurred as much as the indigenous history in the American continent. From a sociocultural perspective, Malintzin transcends her historical condition and geographic borders to become a potent signifier in the progression from colonial to decolonial discourse. In this process, she is vilified as la chingada (the fucked one) by patriarchal discourse, and then reclaimed through Mexican feminist and Chicana critiques as a border-crosser and a signifier of subaltern resistance. Her story is rewritten as a survivor and, in a decolonial interpretation of history and cultural studies, she is an anchor in a long line of vendidas (sell off/sold off women).
