La Malinche

La Malinche (c. 1496 or c. 1505 c. 1529, some sources give 1550), known also as Malintzin, Malinali or Doña Marina, was a woman (almost certainly Nahua) from the Mexican Gulf Coast, who played an active and powerful role in the Spanish conquest of Mexico, acting as interpreter, advisor and intermediary for Hernán Cortés. She was also a mistress to Cortés and gave birth to his first son, who is considered one of the first Mestizos (people of mixed European and indigenous American ancestry). In Mexico today, La Malinche remains iconically potent. She is understood in various and often conflicting aspects, as the embodiment of treachery, the quintessential victim, or simply as symbolic mother of the new Mexican people. She is often known by the pejorative term La Chingada .[citation needed] The term malinchista refers to a disloyal Mexican.

La Malinche (c. 1496 or c. 1505 c. 1529, some sources give 1550), known also as Malintzin, Malinali or Doña Marina, was a woman (almost certainly Nahua) from the Mexican Gulf Coast, who played an active and powerful role in the Spanish conquest of Mexico, acting as interpreter, advisor and intermediary for Hernán Cortés. She was also a mistress to Cortés and gave birth to his first son, who is considered one of the first Mestizos (people of mixed European and indigenous American ancestry). In Mexico today, La Malinche remains iconically potent. She is understood in various and often conflicting aspects, as the embodiment of treachery, the quintessential victim, or simply as symbolic mother of the new Mexican people. She is often known by the pejorative term La Chingada .[citation needed] The term malinchista refers to a disloyal Mexican.