La Malinche

Marina ([maˈɾina]) or Malintzin ([maˈlintsin]; c. 1500 – c. 1529), more popularly known as La Malinche ([la maˈlintʃe]), was a Nahua woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast, who became known for contributing to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519–1521), by acting as an interpreter, advisor, and intermediary for the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. She was one of 20 enslaved women given to the Spaniards in 1519 by the natives of Tabasco. Cortés chose her as a consort, and she later gave birth to their first son, Martín – one of the first Mestizos (people of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry) in New Spain.

La Malinche's reputation has shifted over the centuries, as various peoples evaluate her role against their own societies' changing social and political perspectives. While most historians emphasize her importance to the conquest of the Aztec Empire, recognizing her multilingual abilities (she spoke both Nahuatl and Maya), they disagree on the reasons why La Malinche assisted the Spanish. After the Mexican War of Independence, which led to Mexico's independence from Spain in 1821, dramas, novels, and paintings portrayed her as an evil or scheming temptress. In Mexico today, La Malinche remains a powerful icon – understood in various and often conflicting aspects as the embodiment of treachery, the quintessential victim, or the symbolic mother of the new Mexican people. The term malinchista refers to a disloyal compatriot, especially in Mexico.