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Home , Alcalde, Alonso de Ojeda, Alonso Valiente, Aztec warfare, Cabildo (council), Chalco (altépetl)

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(Please do not cite, quote, or circulate without written permission from the author)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 , Hernando Cortés watched as Juan Jaramillo, one of his captains, married Malinche, his -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 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 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 after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central , Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992). 2 Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Historia Verdadera de 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 .”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 , 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 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 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 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 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 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 . 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 (Norman: University of 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 (, 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 , 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). , 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. This account has been properly deconstructed and discredited by literary critics, who note the resemblance to other stories familiar to the chronicler.9 Still, the tale serves as a healthy reminder to us of certain other elements of Malinche’s background. If not the daughter of a chief, she certainly had been raised in a noble household: her command of lordly speech and her ability to converse with the highest level chiefs would later prove this.10 And if she was raised in a noble Nahua household, then her father was almost certainly polygynous. Tensions between various types of wives and concubines abounded in this world. If her father had died, for example, then the wife who was mother to the heir would indeed have had the power to sell the children of the other wives. She would not have needed to, but she could have done so. Indeed, both stories could be partly true: in times of warfare or even of threatened warfare, the most vulnerable girls and young women were often given over to the enemy as part of a peace offering.11 In short,

8 Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, Crónica de Nueva España, ed. Marcos Becerra (Mexico: Jaime Ratés Martín, 1936), I: 163-64. Andrés de Tapia, “Chronicle of de Tapia,” in The : First Person Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, ed. Patricia de Fuentes (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 24. 9See, for example, Sandra Messinger Cypess, La Malinche in Mexican Literature: From History to Myth (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), 27-31, and Jean Franco, Critical Passions (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 73-74. 10 Frances Karttunen, “Rethinking Malinche,” in Indian Women of Early Mexico, ed. Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1997). Kartunnen assesses the variety of languages as well as the “lordly speech” or tecpillahtolli within which she was able to function, (300-301). 11Camilla Townsend, “’What in the World Have You Done to Me, my Lover?’: Sex, Servitude and Politics among the Pre-Conquest Nahuas as seen in the Cantares Mexicanos,” unpublished manuscript. For an excellent analysis of the power imbalances and political tensions embedded within the marriage system, see Pedro Carrasco, “Royal Marriages in Ancient Mexico,” in in Ethnohistory: the Indians of Central Mexico in the Sixteenth Century , ed. H.R. Harvey and H. Premm (Albuquerque: University of Press, 1984). 237

although it is possible that Malinche was simply ripped away from her home by marauding Aztec warriors, it is also possible that some segment of her own household was complicit in her removal. We will never know, but Malinche knew. She alone knew if she dreamed of returning to her people with the power to protect them, or to wreak vengeance, or both. In Xicalango, she was sold to the . Some traders bought her, and later sold her to a lord living in or near the village of Centla, on today’s Rio Grijalva, between Coatzacoalcos and Xicalango. She most likely would have been put to work during the day spinning cotton, or processing cacao beans, or collecting honey; she would also have served as a concubine. Years passed. She learned the new , but she did not forget her own.

The Conquest In 1519, the people with whom Malinche lived lost a great battle with Hernando Cortés and his followers, who had landed their boats on Maya shores. As a peace offering, the losers gave the Spanish leader twenty slave girls. We do not know any of their names – not even Malinche’s, for that appellation came later. In her family of origin, she may have been called something like Elder Sister, Middling One, or Youngest.12 As a slave, she probably had some sort of nickname applied to her. Now the Spanish summarily baptized all the girls, and gave one of them the name “Marina”.13 Of course, the Indians did not have the “r” sound, and when they later had formal dealings with this woman and added the honorific “-tzin”, her name quickly became Malintzin. When they addressed her, they used the vocative (“O Marina” we might say) and the name came out,

12 Rebecca Horn, “Gender and Social Identity: Nahua Naming Patterns in Postconquest Central Mexico,” in Indian Women of Early Mexico. See also Lockhart, The Nahuas, 117-130. 13 Some scholars have repeated the myth, which originated in the nineteenth century, that the Spanish probably chose the name “Marina” because it was similar to the Nahua calendar name, “Malinalli”, which must have belonged to the woman in question. This does not make sense on any level. The Spanish were not in the habit of trying to communicate with Indian girls about their past lives before they dispatched them to their new bed partners. Nor would the girl have been known by a Nahuatl name at the time, as opposed to a Maya one. Furthermore, “Malinalli” is a time period of ill-omen, and families almost always found a related event which occurred on a positive day sign by which they could name a child recently born. 238

“Malintze”.14 The Spanish, who did not have the “tz” consonant, heard “Malinche”, and so she is still known today. I will not belabor the story, known to all early Americanists, of how Malinche came to serve as a crucially important translator in the conquest of the Aztec state. Cortés had already picked up a Spanish shipwreck survivor, Jerónimo de Aguilar, who had lived for years among the Maya and spoke their language, so in a four-person chain, communications could pass from a Nahua chieftain through to a Spanish conquistador and back again. Malinche, who was clearly a gifted linguist and was young as well, shortly learned Spanish herself and then was able to work alone. She helped the Spanish find their way from the coast to the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlan, obtaining food and helping to uncover plots and defuse resistance all along the route. It is not necessary to exaggerate the importance of Malinche as an individual woman in appreciating the importance of her role. In a world as torn with ethnic tensions as was central Mexico, the Spanish would inevitably have found translators and aides as adept as Malinche; the conquest would certainly have occurred eventually, with or without her, for she was not unique. But the role of chief indigenous collaborator remains crucial, and it was Malinche who filled this role –quite brilliantly, we may say. Without her, Cortés would probably not have been the one whose name comes down to us today. He was not unique, either, and if he had failed, someone else would have succeeded. In November of 1520 the party of conquistadors entered the city of Tenochtitlan, and spent the ensuing six months making brief exploratory excursions, talking to local lords, and gathering information about the tribute the Mexica received. Cortés later claimed that he had placed Moctezuma under house arrest within a week of his arrival, but the veracity of that part of the story is highly debatable; it is more than likely that Moctezuma had his own reasons for entertaining the newcomers peacefully.15 In any case, in what at first seems an almost inexplicable incident, Cortés soon had his host send for mapmakers who knew the coast, so they could give him a thorough account of all

14 A more common form of the vocative would be “Malintzine” and scholars have often assumed that the Spanish simply chose to ignore or not to hear one syllable. But Jesuit scholar Carochi pointed out that a “more manly” form on the part of the speaker, conveying less affection, collapsed –tzine to –tze. For example, “Malintze” to address “María”. See Horacio Carochi, Grammar of the Mexican Language, ed. James Lockhart (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 44-45. 15 Francis Brooks, “Motecuzoma Xocoyotl, Hernán Cortés, and Bernal Díiz del Castillos: the Construction of an Arrest,” Hispanic American Historical Review 75, 2 (1995): 149-184. 239

possible ports. This they apparently willingly did, so honestly and so effectively that Cortés soon learned that the River Coatzacoalcos was the only waterway to have the length and depth that he was looking for. Though he had never seen it, he and his men were so well apprized of the location of the river’s mouth, that an expedition he sent out was able to find it with no difficulties.16 All this seems too good to be true – until one remembers that the translator in the room was in a position to be an active player in the scene, in that she herself was from Coatzacoalcos. When a rival Spaniard, Panfilo do Narváez, arrived on the scene, Cortés was forced to consolidate and called back the exploratory mission he had sent to Coatzacoalcos. The competing factions joined forces just in time to face a major indigenous assault in the city of Tenochtitlan; the Spanish and their Indian allies were violently ejected in the famous “Noche Triste”. Malinche was among the minority who survived. She helped the Spanish stagger back to their allies in the state of and then rebuild their coalition with other nations. In 1521, after bitter, protracted warfare, the Spanish took the capital city and gradually began to extend their empire throughout Mexico. As soon as he was able, Cortés began to send out groups of men to colonize other areas. In early 1522, the first such expedition was sent to Tochtepec (a major trading city on the way to the coast) and Coatzacoalcos. The leader was , and Bernal Díaz was among those who accompanied him. Though the locals along the river had been friendly in 1520, they were quite hostile now, in face of the Spaniards having arrived overland with the clear intention of staying. The Spanish founded the town of Espíritu Santo anyway, as they needed to establish a head town for their new colony as soon as possible, and they proceeded to distribute the region’s Indians in -- which were at this point more theoretical than real. They had to do battle every step of the way, and did not manage to extract tribute consistently by any means, as no victory was permanent and the Indians continued to fight against them.17 Whatever Malinche had or hadn’t told the Spanish about the area, they could see for themselves at this point that the settlement of Espíritu Santo was not going to make

16 Cortés, “Second Letter,” in Letters from Mexico, 94-95. 17 Cortés refers to these events, but Díaz, as a participant, describes them in painful detail in Historia Verdadera, 390-95 and 417-29. 240

anyone rich anytime soon. The reality must have been especially galling in that moment, when the dense populations of the central valley were acquiescing to their encomenderos relatively peacefully. One must ask why in fact any of the Spaniards were at all interested in staying. We have documentary proof as to the identity of only five of these would-be Coatzocoalcos encomenderos. All five were of the kind to be “left out” in the great carving up of the central valley.18 Two --Lorenzo Genovés and Gonzalo Gallego-- had been part of Cortés’s original company, but they were a mariner and a caulker, respectively, and thus had little social standing. Another, Pedro Castellar, did not have the loyalty of the original group, as he had come with Nárvaez, and Pedro de Bazán, although of significantly higher social standing (he would later marry the niece of the royal accountant ), had not arrived in Mexico until just before the expedition departed and thus had no claim to any of the previously vanquished territories. The status of Bernal Díaz is debatable, but he himself said he did not receive a just reward in central Mexico because he was related to Cortés’s arch-enemy, Diego Velázquez. The prognosis in Coatzacoalcos was not good, but at this early stage, the Spanish had to follow whatever leads they had received from indigenous informants: it was not at all clear to them as yet where else they might go in order to meet with better fortune. In frustration, some of the colonizers, including Bernal Díaz, set off for Chiapas, but they soon returned. Cortés, in the meantime, with Malinche still at his side, was attempting to organize the governance of Mexico from his seat at Coyoacan, near Tenochtitlan. In most parts of Mexico, people heard of the change of government in the far-off Aztec capital, and in some places, they confronted their new encomenderos and then incorporated them into their reality as well as they could, usually without experiencing any extraordinary dislocation.19 But Malinche was in the eye of the storm, witness to great change. She watched as parts of the monumental indigenous city were demolished, that Spanish buildings might be built on top. The Franciscans arrived and began their proselytizing,

18 Robert Himmerich y Valencia, The Encomenderos of New Spain, 1521-1555 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), 127, 138, 150-51, 159, 162. Himmerich has done the invaluable service of collecting all known references to the earliest encomenderos and created short biographies of each. They are listed alphabetically, and thoroughly indexed. 19 This point is made in a variety of excellent works, the most recent being Stephanie Wood, Transcending Conquest: Nahua Views of Spanish Colonial Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003). 241

and she was part of the translation effort; whether it was true or not, the religious brethren believed she was a devout convert, so her efforts must have been active.20 We do not know where she lived, but several conquistadors later reported that Indian tribute was often still brought to her: since she could speak to those who were taxed, she would certainly have made a good collection agent.21 During this time, she endured the trials and tribulations of a pregnancy and gave birth to Cortés’s first son, whom he named Martín, after his father. Cortés would later legitimize the boy; in the child’s earliest years, it was still within the realm of possibility that he would be the conqueror’s heir.22 From the point of view of a slave girl born into a theocratic, tribute-based and polygynous society, Malinche had indeed arrived: she fraternized with priests, collected vassals’ payments, and nursed the probable heir. Lest anyone be tempted to see a love story in this eminently political tale, it may be necessary to point out certain facts. Cortés was married when he arrived in Mexico. Shortly after the capitulation of the Aztec state, his wife arrived from the Caribbean and moved into his household. Within a few months, she had died, apparently either of an asthma attack or at her husband’s hands. (He was later accused of her murder, but was never convicted.)23 But Cortés clearly still had no intention of marrying an Indian slave girl; he later married a Spanish noblewoman. Nor was he faithful to her in any other way. He brought many Indian women to his bed in this period, including two of Moctezuma’s daughters, and had relationships with several Spanish women as well. Whether Cortés and Malinche liked each other or not – and they may well have – they had certainly used each other, and they had used each other effectively, in ways they were both intelligent enough to understand.

20 Fray Toribio de Benavente, or Motolinia, praised her to the skies for her services in these early years. Historia de los indios de la Nueva España, ed. Giuseppe Bellina (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1988). 21 Witnesses in “Méritos y servicios: Mariana, 1542,” (op cit) and “Residencia contra D. Fernando Cortés, 1529,” in Archivo Mexicano: Documentos para la historia de México (Mexico: Victor García Torres, 1852- 53) both refer to her receipt of tribute after 1521. The Spanish would certainly still have needed her help in securing food. Beginning mid-sixteenth century, indigenous artists created images of Malinche based on their own or their forebears’ memories: her demand for tribute payments figures prominently in these illustrations. An excellent example is the Lienzo of Tlaxcala. The Anales of and the Florentine Codex both refer in their written texts to her demands that the Indians satisfy the Spaniards’ nearly insatiable appetites during the course of the conquest. 22 Kartunnen makes this point in “Rethinking Malinche,” 308. When Cortés was in Spain in 1529, he secured a papal bull legitimizing all his bastard children, including the eldest, Martín. His second wife would later bear a son, also named Martín, who in fact became his heir. 23 See “Proceso Criminal de Maria de Marcayda contra D. Fernando Cortés,” in Archivo Mexicano. 242

Then in 1524, Cortés came to Malinche and told her he needed her to leave their toddler son with his cousin, the Licenciado Juan de Altamirano, so that she could accompany him and hundreds of others on a trek through the swamp-strewn Mayan jungles where she had once been enslaved among enemies, and march all the way to the sea. It was a trip that she of all people knew would take months if not years, and which they might not survive at all. His thought process seems clear: he believed he needed to march overland to with an extraordinary force, because a rebellious captain of his had set up a competing colonial government in the midst of Indians over whom he, Cortés, had no control. Naturally, he would need her translation efforts and her guidance if he were to have any hope of success. But what of her priorities? What could possibly convince her to leave her son, her regular meals, and her relative status and security to embark on this wild venture that had as good a chance of weakening Cortés’s position as of strengthening it? To the extent that the question has been implied at all in the past, it has been assumed that she loved him, and made his desires her desires. But even if that were not culturally improbable, his behavior in the preceding two years would certainly have cleared her vision. She did go, and performed her part with gusto. We must seek an alternate explanation for her decision.

The Probable Promises of Cortés It is imperative that we consider the possibility that Malinche simply had no choice -- that she went, literally or figuratively, at gunpoint. She of all people knew what kind of power Hernando Cortés had at his disposal. This interpretation, however, does not stand up to later events: it is clear that she worked with her usual zeal and was not simply dragged along, present in body but not in spirit. The conquerors who later referred to their experiences on the grueling trip expressed gratitude to her. Cortés, who mentioned her role as little as possible in his correspondence with the king and in the information he gave to his biographer, almost fell over himself to offer her rare tribute in his account of the trek to Honduras. Twice he asserted that the Spanish owed their escape from a particular pinch to her ability to persuade the indigenous.24 Furthermore, she was active in ways that cannot simply be interpreted as efforts to safeguard her own survival. In the

24 Cortés, “Fifth Letter,” in Letters from Mexico, 376 and 407. 243

course of the trip, Cortés claimed to have discovered that the current ruler of the Mexica, Cuautemoc, whom he had brought along for safekeeping, had hatched a plot against him. He had the man tried and executed. Spanish and Maya sources agree that Malinche played an active role in the supposed “judicial process” and in the priests’ last efforts to reach the perceived sinner.25 In short, Malinche does not appear to have acted like a coerced woman doing only what she was bid as quickly and quietly as possible; rather, she was, as usual, a strong and memorable presence. What could have been the inspiration for her commitment to such a cause? In September and October of 1524, when Cortés was weighing the trip, he was a widower and free to marry. Catalina de Suarez was certainly dead, whether she had been murdered by her husband or not. Malinche could have raised the question of marriage. We will never know if she did or not. It does not matter: even if he was not explicit, she was savvy enough to see that the contrast between Hernando Cortés, married to a former Indian slave girl, and Hernando Cortés, married to the niece or daughter of a Spanish count or duke, was so stark that there could be no contest. In his continuing struggles for power in relation to other Spaniards, other factors would obviously trump her ability to communicate with the indigenous. There remained, however, the path soon to be taken by many another Indian mistress of a conquistador: she could marry a less powerful Spaniard, one for whom marriage to an influential Indian would be more attractive than damaging.26 As long as he were powerful enough, her interests would still be protected. The timing of the sudden marriage, at the start of a major expedition that Malinche would obviously not have favored herself, speaks volumes: she had apparently bargained for a husband. Sixteenth- century legal documents provide ample evidence that Indian noblewomen were well aware that they could use Spanish husbands to their advantage in legal battles over land and other matters.27 The catch for most Indians was that usually only noblewomen from ruling houses were able to obtain such useful husbands, and even they often found

25 The best treatment of this incident in Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 147-57. 26 James Lockhart assessed the situation this way in the Peruvian case in Spanish , 1532-1560: A Colonial Society (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), 210-212. 27 Pedro Carrasco, “Indian-Spanish Marriages in the First Century of the Colony,” in Indian Women of Early Mexico, especially 96-100. Carrasco points out that one can literally count the handful of Indian men who married Spanish women. 244

themselves forced to accept partners who were not as influential as they might have hoped --for the higher a Spaniard’s social standing, the less likely he was to be interested in an Indian spouse, unless she could promise extraordinary resources. So Malinche’s options were quite limited, unless Cortés would help her. A marriage to one of Cortés’s original captains, with claims to hidalgo status, was certainly the highest level match she could possibly hope to attain. Remarkably enough, she got just that. Rather than being married off to a drunken commoner, as is usually implied, Malinche in fact secured a relatively well-placed and useful husband. The list of privileged “first conqueror” captains included , Gonzalo de Sandoval, Cristóbal de Olid, Juan Velázquez de Leon, Cristóbal de Olea, Juan de Escalante, , , Pedro de Ircio, Alonso de Avila, Francisco de Luga, Andres de Tapia, Luis Marín, and Juan Jaramillo. Of these, only three were present and available in 1524, the others being married, or else having died, returned to Spain, or gone off to conquer other areas.28 One of the three, Ordaz, was not the marrying kind and eventually died without spouse or issue.29 That left Tapia and Jaramillo. Each was working to solidify his hidalgo status. Both were vecinos of (indeed, they literally had neighboring plots of ground there). Each held a substantial encomienda and enjoyed the friendship of Cortés. Jaramillo perhaps enjoyed a slight advantage, in that he was Cortés’s lieutenant, his

28 The men’s situations were as follows: Alvarado: in Sandoval: in Coatzacoalcos Olid: rebelling in Honduras Velázquez: dead (Noche Triste) Olea: dead (siege of Tenochtitlan) Escalante: dead Ordaz: never married Montejo: possible exception, but in his mid-50s Ircio: spoken of disparagingly, probably already courting Leonel Cervantes’ daughter Avila: in Spain Luga: no mention at this time (dead?) Tapia: available to marry Jaramillo: available to marry Marín: in Coatzacoalcos and Chiapas It is interesting to note that there would not have been many choices even if Malinche had broadened her list of gentlemen whom she would consider beyond those who held the rank of captain: only 21 of the 135 surviving “first conquerors” acquired wives during the second quarter of the sixteenth century, and most of these held no pretensions to gentility. Himmerich, Encomenderos of New Spain, 74. 29 Himmerich, Encomenderos of New Spain, 208. 245

second in command, for the duration of the expedition to Honduras. He was also the son of Alonso Jaramillo, who had been active in the conquests of and , and who had arrived in Mexico not long after his son and been appointed , a councilman of the governing .30 (It should be noted that a man of doubtful noble origin would almost certainly not have been given such a prestigious position ten years later, but in 1523 and ’24, Cortés was not in a position to be as particular as the Crown would later be.31) Indeed, in June of 1524, Juan himself had apparently acted as a substitute for his father, probably during an illness, and appeared briefly as a regidor.32 Compared to Jaramillo, Andres de Tapia may have been either more insecure or more ambitious, or both: it may be relevant that he later married a Spanish noblewoman and changed his name to Andres de Tapia y Sosa.33 We will never know how the final selection came to be made, but Malinche married Jaramillo. There may well have been something in particular which Malinche wanted a Spanish husband to protect, other than her person. There is strong evidence that Cortés gave Malinche as a dowry the encomienda of Olutla, her hometown. That her relationship with that place was important to her seems likely: the location of the marriage is even more suspicious than the timing – that is, in a Zapotec village just as the cavalcade was about to cross into the Nahuatl-speaking territory where she was born.34 Afterwards, they went on to Olutla, and then she purportedly gave some sort of address to the local nobles gathered in Coatzacoalcos.

30 AGI, “Méritos y servicios: Juan Jaramillo, 1532,” Patronato Royal, 54, No. 8, R.6., folios 1-2. The records of the Cabildo of Mexico support Jaramillo’s claims in all these regards. 31 For a discussion of the significance of appointments to the position of regidor, see Lockhart, The Nahuas, 36. Regidores almost always came from wealthy and noble families; the position of , on the other hand, might be used to recognize an individual of particular merit. 32 10-18 de junio, 1524, in Primer Libro de las Actas de Cabildo de la Ciudad de México (Mexico: Ignacio Bejarano, 1889), 14-15. This could of course be an error, but it seems unlikely, given that Alonso’s name appears regularly, then is replaced by Juan’s for two weeks in a row, then reappears. 33 Himmerich, Encomenderos, 247. 34 Bernal Díaz said twice that she married near Orizaba. At the second mention of it, he added that it was “in a little village belonging to one-eyed Ojeda” (en un poblezuelo de un Ojeda, el Tuerto). He said he learned this from a friend named Aranda and other witnesses when the group arrived in Coatzacoalcos, where Díaz himself was living, within days of the event. The details, and the unself-conscious of referring to the place, ring true. More importantly, there did in fact exist one , who had lost an eye in the siege of Tenochtitlan, and who had received as his encomienda the altepetl of Tiltepec, not far past Orizaba. It was in Zapotec territory, near the border with Coatzacoalcos. See Himmerich, Encomenderos, 205, and Gerhard, Historical Geography, 367-68 246

For Malinche to have demanded an encomienda was remarkable: only three indigenous persons ever received one in a permanent sense. Two of these were the daughters of Moctezuma, and the other was Juan Sánchez, a powerful nobleman from who seems to have become thoroughly Hispanized.35 It is certainly possible that Malinche did not, after all, have enough leverage, even in the current situation, to receive an encomienda. Indeed, no paper record of such a transfer in 1524 exists. But then, no legal documents of any kind written in Espíritu Santo in this period survive; the zone was in chaos. The evidence that Malinche received such a “wedding present” comes from testimony collected by her daughter and her son-in-law in the , years after her death.36 At that time, they were arguing that they should inherit Juan Jaramillo’s original encomienda of Xilotepec in the central valley (rather than the third he wanted to leave them), because Malinche had brought to the marriage as a dowry the encomienda of Olutla, which had subsequently been stripped from her, and which should by rights have been handed down to her daughter. Obviously, the couple was strongly motivated to make this claim, but they had an impressive list of witnesses, including, most significantly, the father of Juan Jaramillo’s second wife, who stood to inherit all of Xilotepec if Malinche’s daughter were perjuring herself.37 The witnesses called said that they knew that Malinche had received Olutla, either because they had been present at the time, or because it was common knowledge (público y notorio). Their stories diverged slightly, reflecting their different experiences and positions within the drama, but none contradicted each other. One might wonder why Olutla was available to be gifted, since the Spanish had divided up the area two years earlier, in 1522. One of the witnesses, Juan de Lympias,

35 Himmerich, Encomenderos, 27. 36 “Méritos y servicios: Mariana, 1542,” (op cit). Despite the file’s title, the case preserved in the AGI actually includes material spanning a decade. In 1542, apparently having learned that her father’s will left two-thirds of the encomienda’s profits to her step-mother, or fearing that it would do so, the newly married sixteen-year-old María and her husband gathered witnesses to speak in support of her mother’s character and contributions. In 1547, they gathered more testimony concerning the legitimacy of their own marriage– also reproducing the material gathered in 1542. The case continued in the early 1550s, as Jaramillo lay dying and then after he had died. After 1552, the encomienda was indeed split between the two parties. 37 Ibid, folio [25]. Leonel de Cervantes acknowledged his position. Dixo: ques dedad de mas de sesenta años, e ques suegro del dicho Xoan Xaramillo, e que or eso no a de dexar de deszir la verdad de lo que supiere en este caso. 247

addressed just that question, though it had not been put to him. After saying that he saw Olutla given into Malinche’s hands, he added that it had belonged to Juan de Cuéllar, but that Cortés took it away from him.38 This story could easily be true: Cuéllar was a lowborn trumpeter who had arrived with Narváez and who had then joined Sandoval’s expedition to the Coatzacoalcos area. For some reason, in 1525, he returned to Mexico City with a document from Cortés giving him the encomienda of Ixtapaluca on Lake .39 Another witness, (who was related to Cortés, and very wealthy) mentioned that Malinche and Jaramillo left a man in Coatzacoalcos to oversee their interests while they were away in Honduras.40 Presumably, they then packed up their piece of legal paper in the trunks that Indian porters were expected to carry to Honduras for them. But almost none of the baggage ever made it to the coast. Those people who ended up getting there were happy to have arrived with their bodies in tact and did not much mourn their property. Malinche, looking at the Gulf of Honduras at last, may still have hoped that she would live to be a “player” at home, in the world of Espíritu Santo, of Coatzacoalcos. Malinche was pregnant again. When the child was born, they named her María, in honor of the Virgin.41 This was one girl-child who would never be sold as a slave.The Disintegration of the Bargain On one hand, Malinche got exactly what she seems to have bargained for. She had linked herself to a rising star. At the first meeting of the Council after the return of the expedition from Honduras in 1526, Jaramillo was named alcalde, or magistrate, a position often used to recognize an individual of merit.42 Within a few years, in 1530, he would receive the more prestigious position of regidor, a royal appointment generally reserved for noblemen.

38 Ibid., folio [end]. Limpias called himself an hidalgo. He was part of the original entrada of 1519, and participated in a succession of other ventures, so he could have been in a position to know. 39 Himmerich, Encomenderos, 148. Cuéllar seems to have lived until about 1545; it is unlikely that others would have lied about his affairs in 1542 while he was still present to contradict them, though of course it is possible. 40 “Méritos y servicios: Mariana, 1542,” folio [end]. Himmerich, Encomenderos, 254. 41 The name could also conceivably have been chosen to honor Jaramillo’s mother or grandmother, but they did not bear the name María. 42 26 de junio de 1526, Actas de Cabildo, I: 88. 248

Jaramillo also put energy into protecting his encomienda. He had been assigned the labor of Xilotepec, an Otomí town, after the conquest of the Panuco region. It was a large community, forty-two miles northwest of Mexico City. In a strategy typical of him, Cortés had assigned one-quarter of the income to a man of little social standing, who would be expected to remain in residence and oversee things, and three quarters to one of his favorites – in this case, Jaramillo. The original one-fourth assignee, Francisco de Quevedo, soon died, and was replaced by Hernando de Santillana, a shoemaker who had been part of the original entrada and whose two brothers had both been killed. Now at the end of the , when Santillana died, Jaramillo was able to use his influence to prevent the man’s son from inheriting a share. The son later complained bitterly, “Hernando de Santillana [was] always very poor, and Jaramillo very powerful, and a servant of Cortés, and married to another servant of his.”43 Sadly, perhaps, the final proof of Jaramillo’s status in this period is found in the marriage that he was able to contract almost immediately after Malinche’s death, which occurred very soon, in 1528 or 1529.44 Leonel de Cervantes, comendador of the Order of , had arrived in 1519 with Narváez, and had returned to Spain to fetch his wife and five daughters, reappearing in 1524. He married each of the girls –who carried the

43 Instituto Valencia de Don Juan, Madrid, “Memorial del pleito entre Gaspar de Santillana, con Juan Xaramillo, difunto, y doña Beatriz de Andrada y don Pedro de Quesada, 1586,” containing “Hernando de Santillana pone demanda a Juan Xaramillo, 1538,” Archivo histórico caja 35, 23, documento 258, reproduced as appendix in Georges Baudot, “Malintzin, Imagen y discurso de mujer en el primer México virreinal,” Cuadernos americanos 40 (1993): 181-207. The man’s words were as follows: Hernando Santillana siempre muy pobre y el dicho Xaramillo muy poderoso y criado del Marqués, cassado con una criada suya. Baudot misinterprets the case in several places, but his transcription is not at all illogical and is probable correct. There has traditionally been considerable confusion as to Jaramillo’s possession –or lack of possession—of the encomienda of Xilotepec because there were so many people involved, and therefore so many lawsuits. See Gerhard, Historical Geography, 383. However, the much later 1583 case lays bare the convoluted story. Himmerich in Encomenderos mentions that Cortés often divided up encomiendas in just this way in other cases (79-83). 44 Malinche was still alive in the middle of March, 1528, as the cabildo awarded “Juan Jaramillo and Doña Marina, his wife” a land grant near for them to graze sheep. 14 de marzo de 1528, in Actas de Cabildo, 162-63. Their words were as follows: En este dia los dichos Señores le hicieron merced a Juan Xaramillo e a Doña Marina su mugger de un sytio para hacer una casa de placer e huerta e tener sus ovejas en la arboleda que está junto á la pared de Chapultepec a la mano derecha que tenga doscientos e cincuenta pasos en cuadro como le fuere señalado por los diputados. In 1529, however, in the “Residencia contra D. Fernando Cortés”, a witness mentioned that she was deceased. In “Méritos y servicios: Mariana, 1542,” folio 2, María Jaramillo makes the statement that her father has been remarried for twenty years. This statement has been assumed by some scholars to have been made in 1547, and since Malinche died in 1528 or ’29, the “twenty years” would therefore have been approximate –in reality, about eighteen. However, the statement actually appears in an undated document, which it seems to me is included with the 1552 material, and was clearly written as Jaramillo lay dying, which occurred c.1550. This would date the marriage to about 1530. 249

prestigious title doña-- to prominent encomenderos, creating an impressive and powerful family network.45 Doña Beatriz, the last of the five, was between twelve and fifteen when Malinche died, and Cervantes shortly accepted Jaramillo as her suitor. But if Malinche had secured a powerful husband for herself and father for her daughter, she fared less well in any efforts she may have made to govern part of a new colony in Coatzacoalcos. Espíritu Santo’s most unpromising beginnings did not prove illusory. The settlement never took off. The indigenous continued to rebel, and Spanish colonists could not quell them, for they were drawn more thickly to other areas, where placer gold had been found, for example, or where ships were being built to travel the Pacific. In 1531, the region was dissolved as a political entity, and divided up for governing purposes between Vera Cruz, and the Marquesado del Valle (that is, Cortés). Malinche could have thought about reconfirming her encomienda rights to Olutla in the little time she had left after her return from Honduras, but it would have been impossible to do so. While Cortés had been absent from Mexico City, between November 1524 and June 1526, various factions had battled for power, and the after-effects still lingered, in that there was now a sense that no previous decisions need be considered permanent. Cortés would spend years battling to defend his own interests; he was hardly in a position to guaranty any promises he had made to an Indian woman in the jungle near the River Coatzacoalcos several years before. In 1527, Baltasar de Osorio was sent to Tabasco as chief magistrate (capitán y teniente de justicia mayor), with the expectation that he would attempt to sort out and make a record of whose encomienda was whose.46 He stripped the rights of most of the 1522 grantees --including Bernal Díaz-- most of whom were no longer there anyway. In the general reshuffling that occurred afterwards, Luis Marín, who was one of Cortés’s original captains and who had not received an

45 Himmerich in Encomenderos (63-65) has researched the background of the spouses of each of Leonel’s daughters. A sixth daughter was born in Mexico, and Himmerich assumes that Beatrriz, known as the youngest, was that child. However, that is impossible, as she would then have been no more than eight when she married, even if the nuptials occurred as late ad 1532. She was undoubtedly the youngest of the five older girls, and could have been born no later than 1519, when her father left Spain, and no earlier than about 1515, if she was the youngest of five children and her mother was still of an age to bear another ten years later in the mid 1520s. As a widow, she was still young enough to be an appealing bride to the ’s brother, Francisco de Velasco, in the early 1550s. 46 Gerhard, The Southeast Frontier, 36-38. 250

encomienda in the central valley, was eventually assigned the labor of eight Coatzacoalcos villages, including Tetiquipac, Xaltipan, and Olutla.47 No one said anything about Malinche’s claims, at least not in any document that has survived, and she herself was dead by that time. One of the Old World diseases had at last killed her. The meeting with her extended family at the end of 1524 turned out to have been her last. The region remained a backwater till the twentieth century, when oil deposits were found in the Gulf. Today, standing on the shore of Coatzacoalcos, the sun still sets over the left shoulder, just as it did when Malinche was a girl, but the view has changed: the palm trees rise as stark, dead trunks, having lost their leaves, and beyond these odd sticks the metallic oil wells rise from the sea. In Xaltipan, an Australian traveler recently asked an iguana seller in the market place if she had ever heard of Malinche. Yes, the woman said, this was her country. And then the woman asked if the visitor knew the story of Tecamichapa. The visitor didn’t. The iguana seller told her it was the gift Cortés gave to Malinche after the conquest, but it was, after all, a only floating island in the river, a collection of swampy muck with no place to plant the feet. “They say that she was beautiful … very, very beautiful, and clever too. … But perhaps not clever enough, if all she got for her trouble was Tecamichapa.”48 Perhaps, in some ways, the story that has come to be told in Coatzacoalcos encapsulates the truth – but if so, it suggests a faulty explanation. Perhaps Cortés did ultimately offer Malinche little more than shifting sands and fictive rights. But if she failed to gain her ends, it was not for lack of cleverness. Nor was it, certainly, for lack of effort. The indigenous could not hold their own, despite all their cleverness and all their efforts, against the resources the Spanish had at their disposal. Malinche herself undoubtedly recognized that fact before she succumbed to one of the new maladies the Europeans had brought. She would never rule at Olutla.

47 Gerhard, Historical Geography, 139, and Himmerich, Encomenderos, 189 48 Anna Lanyon, Malinche’s Conquest (St. Leonards, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1999), 29-30. Interestingly, in the eighteenth century, Clavijero mentioned a local tradition existing near Huilotla that Malinche had come from there. His comments were widely translated and became common property. See Francisco Saverio Clavigero, A , ed. Charles Callen (London: J. Johnson, 1807), I: 9.