Malinche

A woman in love or a traitor to the homeland?

Malinche: a woman in love or a traitor to the homeland?

By Sheryl Losser

Matlintzin in a Mexican engraving from 1885. Artist unknown.

Malinche, Malintzin in Nahuatl, was born around 1500 to a powerful local chief in the Yucatan Peninsula. Her name today is synonymous with betrayal and a traitor to the homeland. She is the most controversial woman in Mexican history. She was a woman born into royalty who became a slave, and the translator, advisor, and lover of the conquistador Hernán Cortés. Was she a traitor? Was she a woman in love? Or as a slave, was she forced to do what she did to survive?

Malinche’s father died when she was young. Her mother remarried to another indigenous local chief. She conceived another child, a son, with her new husband. By birthright Malinche, as the eldest child, was the heir, but the chief wanted his new son to be his heir. This created a problem, and a conflict emerged over which child would be the heir to the chiefdom. Her mother and her second husband decided to resolve the dispute by selling Malinche into slavery.