Book Presentation: La Invención de la Malinche. De la historia al mito

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese gathers to celebrate latest accomplishment of Professor Emerita Sandra Cypess

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Mexican Cultural Institute gathered on September 7th for the book presentation: La Invención de la Malinche. De la historia al mito by emerita professor, Sandra M. Cypess in conversation with alumna Tanya Huntington, Manuel Cuellar and current faculty member Ryan Long.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Doña Marina, called Malintzin by the indigenous people, is one of the most important characters of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico. Popularly known as La Malinche, she was the daughter of a cacique, a slave, translator, guide, interpreter of different languages, a sort of cultural ambassador and mother of one of Cortés' sons.

This book is the revised and expanded version of the text originally published in 1991 in English by Sandra Messinger Cypess. It analyzes the diverse transformations of the representation of Marina in literary texts and popular culture from colonial times to the 21st century. Based on writings by Hernán Cortés, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Ireneo Paz, Miguel León-Portilla, Octavio Paz, Elena Garro, Rosario Castellanos, Sabina Berman, Margo Glantz and Jesusa Rodríguez, among other writers and artists, the thesis is that the understanding of this figure depends on the ideology of those who interpret her.

La Malinche, as noted in the introduction, continues to be a paradigm, an object of study based on diverse sources and ideologies. Thus, in an increasingly unanimous way, today she is seen as an enigmatic, multifaceted woman. An invention based on the life of Malintzin, the Nahua woman whose role was central to this period in the life of what is now Mexico.