Malinche, the Spaniards, and the Settlement of Coatzacoalcos”

233 “Malinche, the Spaniards, and the Settlement of Coatzacoalcos” Camilla Townsend, Colgate University “Lost Colonies” Conference, March 26-27, 2004 (Please do not cite, quote, or circulate without written permission from the author) In November of 1524, near the town of Orizaba, Hernando Cortés watched as Juan Jaramillo, one of his captains, married Malinche, his Nahuatl-speaking translator and sometime mistress. They were united in the blessings of matrimony “as ordained by the Holy Mother Church” publicly and before witnesses. Their large company, which consisted of dozens of Spaniards, some Aztec noblemen, and perhaps as many as three thousand indigenous retainers, was in the midst of traveling from Tenochtitlan to the sea. They continued on to the altepetl1 of Guaspaltepec, and thence to a place called Olutla. On the way they had to use rafts to cross a great river, swollen with water in that season, and a goodly share of Juan Jaramillo’s plate and clothing – some of which he had undoubtedly just received as wedding presents—was swept away in the current. They could not even attempt to rescue it, for the water was full of waiting crocodiles. They stopped briefly in Olutla, and then went on to Coatzacoalcos, the area’s largest indigenous settlement. There Malinche had some public conversation (presumably in Nahuatl) with the reigning nobility. It was understood by the Spanish that their beloved translator was from these parts, and that she was related to one of the ruling houses; in retrospect, they each interpreted the specifics as they chose.2 1 The best translation is essentially “ethnic state”, but this concept does not exactly do justice to the term, which also bears some affinity to what we might call a town or a set of towns. For full discussion, see James Lockhart, The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992). 2 Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva España, ed. Joaquín Ramírez Cabañas (Mexico: Porrúa, 1960), 62 and 460. Obviously, what Díaz asserts regarding Malinche cannot be accepted uncritically, but his description of the entourage’s itinerary is in keeping with the actual geography, entirely consistent in two places in his text, and supported by what Hernando Cortés reported in his “Fifth Letter,” in Hernan Cortés: Letters from Mexico, ed. Anthony Pagden and J.H. Elliott (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986). As long as we do not take his report of Malinche’s purported speech to her family members at face value, we are on safe ground. A number of witnesses later swore that they had observed the legal and sanctified marriage. Archivo General de Indias, “Méritos y Servicios: Mariana, 1542,” Patronato Royal, 56, No. 3, r.4. 234 These events have, indeed, been interpreted in a multiplicity of ways ever since they unfolded. Most often, commentators have envisioned the ever on-the-make Cortés as pawning off a “used” woman on a slightly unwilling subaltern. He didn’t want to marry an Indian, so he got rid of her this way; the Indian woman passively accepted her fate. These ideas took root even during the lifetime of Cortés. Even his usually rather sycophantic biographer, Francisco López de Gómara, wrote, “Juan Jaramillo married Marina while drunk. Cortés was criticized for allowing it, because he had children by her.”3 Not everyone saw the marriage this way, however. Bernal Díaz, writing his own account years later, with Gómara’s book open before him, scowled and insisted that it was “not how the chronicler Gómara says.” He immediately added, “Doña Marina was a person of great presence [importance] and was obeyed without question by all the Indians of New Spain.”4 In the centuries intervening between that time and ours, most historians and Mexican nationalists have tended to follow Gómara, ascribing less than good motives to the conquistador, and compliancy and vulnerability to the Indian woman. I would like to suggest, however, that perhaps a more plausible explanation of what happened is that Malinche herself was making some demands. Specifically, it seems to me that she wanted to control the altepetl whence she came, and that she was taking steps to guaranty some power over her old home, which was now to be known as the settlement of Coatzacoalcos, or Espíritu Santo. This can never be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt: Malinche left no diary, and the Spaniards offered little more commentary than I have already quoted. But the context, when pieced together in its entirely, offers some powerful circumstantial evidence for the scenario I have suggested. Even if we cannot attain the standard of proof, it seems to me that the sleuthing exercise is worth undertaking, if only in that it allows us to practice our skills at rethinking Indians -- seeing them not simply as victims, but also as historical players. Malinche’s Youth 3 Francisco López de Gómara, The Life of the Conqueror by His Secretary, ed. Lesley Byrd Simpson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), 346. 4 Díaz, Historia Verdadera, 62. His words were as follows: Y la doña Marina tenía mucho ser y mandaba absolutamente entre los indios en toda la Nueva España. 235 Malinche was apparently born in the altepetl of Olutla, a few leagues to the west of the Rio Coatzacoalcos and not far from the shore of the Gulf Coast.5 Her daughter later asserted that she had connections with the towns of Olutla and Tetiquipac, and her grandson said they were with Olutla and Xaltipan: these were undoubtedly neighboring communities, for years later they were all three given together in encomienda to a single Spaniard.6 The chiefdoms in the area mostly governed themselves independently, but the dynastic overlord whose territories were on the River itself –and thus more fertile and populous-- may have been first among theoretical equals. The Popoluca and Nahuatl languages were both spoken in the area, but the ruling noble families mostly spoke Nahuatl. The region was just outside of the areas required to pay tribute to the Aztec state, but Aztec merchants moved constantly through the region and in some places almost certainly had married into the ruling families. In a classic pattern, connections with Tenochtitlan were probably poised to become even closer: there is some evidence that battles with the Aztec king’s armies had occurred just prior to the arrival of the Spanish.7 Malinche may well have been a victim of that warfare. Gómara, whose source of information was usually Cortés himself, said that as a young girl she was kidnapped during a war and given into the hands of merchants, who sold her to Mayas in the market 5 Everyone who knew Malinche and mentioned where she was from referred to Coatzacaolcos, with the sole exception of Gómara, who said she hailed from Jalisco. But even he added, “de un lugar dicho Viluta,” which is another phonetic rendition of the Coatzacoalcos village mentioned by others as Oluta, Olutla or Huilotla. It would have been virtually impossible for Malinche to have come from as far away as Jalisco, whereas it makes perfect sense for her to have been from Coatzacoalcos; Gómara must have had a mistake in his notes, or the printer could not read his writing. Olutla no longer exists. Bernal Díaz insisted it was just to the west of the major town of Coatzacoalcos on the river, and as he lived there for several years, it is likely he knew what he was talking about. One scholar has even found a reference to his having written an early official report on the area, though it has never been found. See Peter Gerhard, The Southeast Frontier of New Spain (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 30. 6 “Méritos y Servicios: Mariana, 1542,” (op cit) and “Enumeración de los servicios de su abuelo y de doña Marina, su abuela, de don Martín, hijo natural de los sobrdichos y relación de sus meritos proprios,” in Cartas y otros documentos de Hernán Cortés, ed. Mariano Cuevas (Seville, 1915), 289-94. Cervantes de Salazar also added mention of Tetiquipac, calling it Totiquipaque. Luis Marín later received all three villages in encomienda. (See note 47.) 7 Frances Berdan, “The Economics of Aztec Luxury Trade and Tribute,” in The Azptec Templo Mayor, ed. Elizabeth Hill Boone (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1983). Pedro Carrasco, “Markets and Merchants in the Aztec Economy,” Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society 2 (1980), 249-269. Anne Chapman, “Port of Trade Enclaves in Aztec and Maya Civilizations,” in Trade and Market in the Early Empires, ed. Karl Polyani, Conrad Arensberg and Harry Pearson (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1957). Ross Hassig, Aztec Warfare: Inperial Expansion and Political Control (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 225-235. Peter Gerhard, A Guide to the Historica Geography of New Spain (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 137-38. Gerhard, Southeast Frontier, 48-49. 236 of Xicalango, a port town further east along the coast. The sixteenth-century scholar Francisco Cervantes de Salazar and the conquistador Andres de Tapia, who knew Malinche personally, also agreed that she had been stolen away by traders.8 This account makes perfect historical sense: Xicalango was indeed the great neutral trading zone of the Gulf Coast, where Nahua merchants brought many slave women and children (and other luxury products) to sell to Maya merchants. Bernal Díaz, who also knew the woman herself, left a much more elaborate tale: he said she was the daughter of a chief, and that when her father died, her mother remarried and sold her off, so as to protect the inheritance of a newly born son.

Load more