Malintzin's Choices and "The Paradigm"

After skimming a few of the other responses, I came across the notion of biography vs Microhistory which was the subject of Kendra’s post. I am not sure I have a technical answer as to where the line is drawn and to which category Malintzin’s Choices falls, but I feel like is a mix of several. While reading Townsend’s work, I never really considered it a biography nor did I really consider it a microhistory. Yet, it encompasses functions of both. Malintzin is obviously the lens upon which we engage the subject which includes gender history, environmental history, and several other themes we have seen thus far. I suppose I could see the work as a Microhistory in the sense that its main focus is one woman as she contributed to Cortez’s subjugation of the natives. However, I feel as if it is a bit overraching when compared to Scandal at Bizarre. Townsend is definitely showing the impact of the small on the large and how the small reflects the larger themes. It is also a biography in the sense that its lens is one single individual. But, the book is as much about the context of the whole as opposed to just Malintzin. Perhaps one of the reasons I found this book hard to label derives from the limited sources Townsend had available. She utilized inferences about what Malintzin most probably felt, thought, said, acted, etc. Almost has an ancient western historian sort of feel to it.

When comparing Townsend with Prescott important differences appear immediately. Townsend is obviously focusing on the natives (through Malintzin) while Prescott is focusing on the “Western” experience and interpretation (through Cortez). In that regard, these two works, juxtaposed, fit very nicely together. I do not recall much about Malintzin in Prescott (perhaps that is important to note as well). However I found a crucial line of thinking that even I found myself susceptible to. Even with Townsend’s great introduction and argument that Malintzin is simply a human and her actions reflect the actions any normal person would do, I still found myself at times seeing her as a traitor. These notions were more subconscious and a direct result of over simplification of the Native’s context. Such is an example of the historian’s issues with reductionism. It’s easier for us to group things into labels in our mind, such at Native(s) which exemplifies the western viewpoint.  When doing so it is easy to see Malintzin as a traitor to her own people since they are all Natives. It is this notion itself that Townsend is attempting to dispel.(7) She does a lovely job in illustrating for the reader the factionalism and many nations of the Natives as well as Malintzins own enslavement by the “Aztecs”.

Townsend is attempting to break the paradigm and revisit the case of conquest from another viewpoint. The one notion that helped solidify this notion for me is the numerous times she brings to light the fact that conquest was a process, not a moment. Conquest demands understanding and this is done through Malintzin and other such interpreters, a negotiation perhaps, between the varying peoples of modern day Mexico and the Europeans. (58) Such a viewpoint isn’t contextually possible for Prescott to uphold due to 19^th century paradigms.