Interpreters as Agents of Change. The Role of Malinche in the Conquest of America

MARÍA LAURA SPOTURNO

Edimburgo, Escocia

Conferencia; Research seminar; 2012

Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies, Heriot-Watt University

This seminar sets to examine and confront the recreation, both discursive and iconic, of the figure of Malinche in a set of chronicles and codices which appeared in the 16th century. On the one hand, I wish to analyse the presentation of Malinche in Bernal Díaz del Castillo's 16th century chronicles, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, which depict her as an interpreter between the Spaniards and the Mexica in the times of the Conquest of America. On the other hand, I intend to see how the views expressed by Díaz del Castillo, Cortés's loyal soldier, contradict, support, or extend the images of Malinche registered in two pictorial manuscripts produced in the 16th century: the Florentine Codex by Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún and the Lienzo de Tlaxcala, the work of the indigenous people. Ever since the Conquest, the figure of Malinche has been a subject of controversy. Was she a victim of the Spaniards, a faithful interpreter, a traitor of her own people, or a successful diplomat? Often regarded as the Mother of all Mexican people, Malinche still functions as a symbol of racial conflict and loyalties among the Mexicans, which has been recently re-elaborated and re-signified by Chicano feminists and writers. Nota: La Universidad de Heriot-Watt me invitó a dar un seminario/conferencia sobre el tema de Malinche y la conquista. Para ello tomé una parte del trabajo que luego expuse en el congreso de traducción de Durham en Inglaterra.