Malintzin's Legacy

I found this book, in context to the others we have read, to be very interesting. Initially, I found myself wanting to compare the work to Prescott. But, I think that mental tendency was because both Prescott and Townsend roughly covered the same geographic area and similar histories. However, Townsend’s focus on a woman intrigued me. Furthermore, this was no “great woman” or a comparable hero/heroine as Prescott would have articulated in his research and writing. Townsend offers a (almost) normalized woman for the time and her story in context to the historical narrative of the time. Townsend uses a lot of her time in the book setting up and explaining the narrative of the time, but as a reader, I found it both helpful and appropriate for her arguments. Using the narrative, Townsend is able to cleverly get around details of Malintzin which could not be precisely analyzed. Townsend is very aware of her limitations, and as a reader, I appreciated her self aware nature as a writer. On page 5, Townsend explains that Malintzin’s actions needed context “…to see what kind of thoughts she might have entertained, [and] the extent to which her decisions mattered"(5). Townsend’s blatant rhetoric and her goals outlined in the introduction as a book of context surrounding a person gave the author credibility for her work. In what would be a difficult subject to breach without a historical narrative, Townsend hits a home run by surrounding her character with a narrative. To this, Townsend is successful in her work of showing Malintzin as a "…beautiful, talented, and self-confident woman who was both practical and politically astute.” (153).

Discussing the question of Malintzin as a traitor is an interesting point and a theme that stuck with me throughout the book. I believe that no, Malintzin was no a traitor by any means. Our notion of being a traitor depends on the abandonment of one group for another, but early in Malintzin’s life, she was abandoned (more or less). As a slave, Malintzin faced no choice but to seek the route of any perceived better life. Her later life dealing with Cortes and the Spanish, she became a translator and cultural interpreter. By doing this, she was not abandoning her old way of life- but protecting it. As I read, I viewed Malintzin as a middleman of peace (or at least a chance for it) and honestly I do not blame her for her choices. I saw Malintzin as a woman of opportunity, and given her life before, one cannot blame her for her part with Cortes and the rest of the Spanish. The choice of Malintzin, not becoming a martyr but an adaptor to change, was a brave one. I am not too well versed in my Latin History nor my Women’s History, but Malintzin appears to be an outlier for women in her time.

By building the narrative, Townsend not only provides the base of her argument, but also the story of Malintzin as a woman. By taking a familiar character of Latin History (although previously unknown to me) and applying a well thought out and careful narrative, Townsend personifies a character lost to time.