La Malinche, Doña Marina, Malinali, Malinulli y Malintzín Tenepal

She has many names. She was born around the year 1505 in the Coatzacoalcos province, with the Aztec birth name Malintzín Tenepal (or Malinal). Her father was a tribal leader, and being born into nobility gave Malintzín special privileges of mobility and education. When Malintzín was young, her father died leaving her as his inheritor, until Malintzín’s mother, “still very young and beautiful” (García 123), remarried and bore a son. In order to pass on the inheritance to her new son and husband, Malintzín’s mother took Malintzín away in the night and sold her into Mayan slavery. Is it so ironic that la Malinche is the coined socio-historical term for vendida against her own people? Malintzín’s mother had a servant whose child coincidentally died, and used this dead child in Malintzín’s mock funeral so that her tribe would not discover the treachery and greed. In the essay Malintzín Tenepal: A Preliminary Look into a New Perspective, author Adelaida R. Del Castillo says, “To be sure, it must have been a very painful, traumatic and confusing experience to have gone from the drastic transition of Aztec princess to a Mayan slave” (García 123). Castillo insists that one can only speculate about Malintzín’s life experience between being sold into slavery and meeting Hernán Cortés, yet some historians say her Mayan slave life was that of “daily toil and drudgery” (Henderson 4), with a perpetual to-do list of food preparation, domestic chores, and caring for the children.
Then the (infamous?) Hernán Cortés arrived to her Mayan village and conquered its peoples. Out of their subservience to the new conquistador, Cortés was given Malintzín as a slave woman among 19 others and lots of material treasures. Malintzín was then christened Doña Marina by the Spaniards, because her intellectualism and knowledge and physical Indian beauty stood above the rest. According to Spanish recordings, Marina is described as compassionate, generous, understanding, and incredibly brave (particularly exceptional for a woman). She quickly became an essential to Cortés and his army when she could translate between the Aztec and Mayan languages. Marina quickly learned the Spanish dialect and was fluent in all the necessary languages. She is recorded to have always been directly at Cortés’ side throughout the Spanish conquest of the New World.
This is how Marina is commonly recorded in history: as the translator for Cortés, and further the essential tool that led Cortés and his followers to victory over the Aztec empire. Without her, most will claim, that Cortés could have never succeeded. She was not only his translator, but a guide, a consultant, “the nurse of defeated soldiers, the comforter of Cortés” (Adams 11) and sometimes an advisor. Because of la Malinche’s apparent devotion to Cortés and the Spaniards (the enemy, the colonizer) she is reputed all over Mexico and the U.S. Southwest Borderlands as the ultimate sell-out, a traitor, an evil-doer against her own people and family. Yet in a realistic context, what kind of personal experience did la Malinche have with her own family and people? She was sold into slavery by her own mother, and the tribes and villages of the Aztec empire were complaining endlessly about Aztec Emperor Moctezuma and his human sacrificial ways and bad taxing. So who turned their back on la Malinche? Like Castillo argues in her essay, one must take in multiple layers of historical information, not the sole fact of her as a translator, in order to carefully consider a “comprehensive account of Doña Marina’s behavior be given, for her actions were contingent upon the historical events of her time” (García 122).


Works Cited
Adams, Jerome R. Liberators and Patriots of Latin America: Biographies of 23 Leaders. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1991.

García, Alma M., ed. Chicana Feminist Thought: The Basic Historical Writings. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997.

Henderson, James D. and Linda Roddy Henderson. Ten Notable Women of Latin America.
Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1978.

thursday night

laundry machine whirling, pounding fast. the shower mat whipping hard around inside with the blanket that has spoiled milk stained on it from the kitties tipping it over. dishwasher whirring. whirr whirr. lots of dishes finally inside cleaning. all kinds of silverware, all my cereal bowls, my favorite coffee/tea mugs and also the spatula mike uses to flip his grilled cheddar cheese sandwich. the frying pan is in there too (after many uses).
coffee stains brown outlined like an amoeba on my countertop finally wiped away with fresh pine lemon scent sanitizer. after inhabiting its spot near the coffee pot in front of the microwave for a few days. longs days. now it's thursday, 11:30 pm and some of these things are finally cleaned. but not my bedroom so much. a pile of clothes lumps high next to my dresser and i am not sure what is clean and wrinkly, and what is dirty and worn.
counter tops rinsed off. days-old cooked frozen-pizza crumbs fed to the dog and wiped onto the linoleum floor. garbage truck comes tomorrow, so we take out all the trash and recycling then open the garage and put the large containers out onto the street. fresh deodorized bag goes into the kitchen trash bin. i dump crumpled aluminum foil inside, the holder of our hooka ash.
i creep into my sister's room, collect all the 2/5's full hard-plastic cups and nearly-empty fountain soda cups and dump the remains down the sink. recycle and dishwasher bound.
still listening to the whirr whirr and the whirl whirl.
maybe i will get to the clothes tomorrow. maybe my sister will empty the dishwasher. maybe i should throw away that old yogurt in the fridge.
don't forget to mail mom the W2 from brooklyn pizza co. what's the point of filing freakin taxes from a $7.75/hr job anyway. who freakin cares.
don't forget to fill out the time sheet for kore press. don't forget to turn in the attendance sheet for the grrls.
don't forget to pay off the $11 co-pay bill from psychotherapist Dr. Grossman's office. $25 co-pay? yeah right more like over $40 co-pay after the fact they tell me. no more of that stuff. that $11 bill has been sittin there like a dusty old candle on my desk since last semester.
don't forget to make a dentist appointment and don't forget to rebuild the resume. oh the resume.
don't forget to check the mail box! tell mom you bought another $5 movie off of on-demand.
peroni is one of my favorite beers, especially on a thursday night when i need it most. thursdays i need it most.
don't forget to laugh. just don't. set the alarm clock 7:04am.

snip snip.

i cut my hair short again.
snip snip snip.
inches and inches of a long year's worth of p a t i e n c e.
there's some bleach and blond in there too.
falling to the ground, beneath my feet, beneath my swivel chair.
snip snip
locks of hair float like feathers, barely resting against the floor.
short hair like this, it's just me. who was i trying to fool?
not me no no.

in my sister's bathroom, she wears gloves and separates my new hair into sections and squirts the 'back to natural' hair dye.
squirt squirt.
brown, brown, chocolate mocha cappuccino hazelnut roasted chestnut BROWN.
i wait the 25 minutes, rinse, condition, and towel dry.
i comb my hair to the side and bring forth my little bangs with my fingers.
ah-ha. mhm. mmm. there i am.

thanksgiving...

hello
so, we had turkey and wine at about 4 in the afternoon
i fell asleep around 5:30pm
and now here i am
it's midnight.
and i can't sleep--
oops.

hello there

why hello there
have been so busy
not an excuse or anything
but man
so busy
and my brain just bursting
it really is

now i am "home" in phoenix
at my parents' house
used to be my house, too
grew up here
but my home is somewhere else now, i suppose
but anyway
my mom is mad at me for opening a second bottle
can ya blame the woman?
but then again, can ya blame me?
long hours, good wine (free wine, for me), excellent company (mother, father, sister, aunt, uncle, grandma, cousin, dogs)
so i gotta pop anotha bottle
my uncle, he's on his Xth beer now
so i mean, another bottle for me, is justified, somewhat
red, dark, red and dark

it's funny when my harmless father gets drunk off of
12 oz cans of miller lite
it's funny
he's a sweet man
and drinks under pressure

my mom, she wants me to pay her $5 for the pay-per-view on the cox bill cuz i purchased one of those on demand films the other day
and she's mad about it
$5
when i was fucking exhausted and tired and near sick and i just wanted to watch a movie at my purest convenience
for $5
and she's mad
so i gotta pay her back
the five dollars
i'm okay with that.
but i feel bad for her that she's mad about it.
poor woman.
overcome by the dollar.

my uncle, on his Xth beer,
now he's fuckin around with his $2,000 lense
takin pictures of my cuz watchin a 3d animation movie
my sister is over there too
and my aunt, my cousin's mother
my uncle just fuckin around with that bitchin lense
bitchin

now my mom is showing me a water bottle now
"she drinks sooo much water now"
it's that jenny craig business she works for,
they have a water bottle that filters tap water in some form
and you know that water, when you are hungry just drink the water
to fake out your hunger pains
and you will lose weight
be skinnier
more attractive
you know
water isn't necessarily healthy or anytihng
accessible, drinkable water that is

die water die
i need water
die

now i am home
just trying to relax my brain
but i see my mom chopping vegetables for tomorrow's 'thanksgiving'
and i see her aloof and alone and chopping
after her third glass of chardonnay
i can't help but think of
why is my dad out by the fire pit, drinking a beer, smoking a cigar,
while my mother
she is aloof
tired
chopping vegetables for tomorrow
and i can't help but think, why is it this way
do we even realize this...
this situation
and i lay my head back
and relax my brain
to the thud thud thud sound of the knife against the cutting board
and wonder if this is how it is supposed to be

is anything supposed to be
of course not.

sleep well

so i have started this new thing, kinda. basically i have to lay down to bed each night with straight blankets, lotioned hands, and take some deep breaths. blow out the scented candles. write in my journal. and say to myself, decide in my head, okay, i am going to sleep well tonight and have a good day tomorrow.
yeah, might sound weird or silly, but i swear it actually works. you gotta tell yourself that tomorrow is going to be a good day and mean it.
so, tomorrow is going to be a good day.
goodnight.

do as the romans do.

some quotes from my travels in europe last summer.



"So... someone today told me that "backpackers STINK and are DIRTY." I said "I agree but... get off your high horse you WHEELED SUITCASE ASS BIATCH!!"
-wall poetry in backpackers hostel, roma by gibro from canada


"you speak two languages, you live life twice as much. you speak three languages, you live life three times as much."
-wisdom from an elderly french-canadian woman on the train from budapest to bratislava