Behind every powerful man. . . is a smart woman

                              

Some might call La Malinche a traitor, but if you were a slave, and slaves were destined for sacrifice to the gods when the winners changed in ritual wars, who would you side with?  Pretty it up as much as you want with cultural anthropological chit chat, but the woman may have been ahead of her time.  She is the mother of the mixed races of Mexico. And God only knows what the radical feminists do to this story.

“Before the Spanish conquest, the Aztec civilization controlled trade routes from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico and as far south as Guatemala.  Its rich and populous empire was helld together by marriage alliances and ritualized battles in which large numbers of enemy warriors were captured and sacrificed to honor and sustain the gods.  When Hernan Cortes sailed from Cuba to claim the Mexican mainland for Spain in 1519, he could not have anticipated the odds against him and his small force of 600 foot soldiers and 15 horsemen.

His ultimate success in subduing the Aztecs was in large part due to the help of a Nahua slave woman called La Malinche, who became his chief interpreter, advisor, and the mother of his firstborn child.  She advised Cortes on the weakness of Aztec alliances with other indigenous groups, their respect for ruthlessness, and their preference for capturing rather than killing their enemies in battle.  Cortes used his information to defeat an army that was better supplied and much larger than his own.  After God, he said, La Malinche was his most important ally.” 

Thomas B. Cole, MD, MPH, JAMA March 28, 2012 describing the cover of the journal named for La Malinche.