Revisiting Malinche: A Study of her Role as an Interpreter

MARÍA LAURA SPOTURNO

Translators, Interpreters, and Cultural Negotiators. Mediating and Communicating Power from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era.

Palgrave McMillan

Año: 2014; p. 121 - 135

"Revisiting Malinche" explores the recreation, both discursive and iconic, of the figure of Malinche, Captain Cortes's major interpreter, in a set of documents which appeared in the sixteenth century and which were meant to give testimony of some of the aspects of the Conquest of Mexico. More specifically, the chapter analyses the presentation of Malinche in three documents: Bernal Díaz del Castillo's chronicles, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, Bernardino de Sahagún's Florentine Codex, and the pictorial manuscript known as the Lienzo de Tlaxcala. "Revisiting Malinche" offers a study of this controversial historical character, which considers the historical, personal and political realities that conditioned her linguistic and cultural intervention in the Conquest of Mexico.