Expedition Of Cortes Summary

The Expedition of Cortes would have completely fallen apart if there were not any translators, the most famous of which and probably on of the only, was Malintzin. Malintzin was a slave, and was eventually taken by Cortes to be part of his corp, especially in order to translate, because of her induction to the corp she was had to become Christian and was given a catholic name in Marina. Doña Marina aided the spaniards in many ways, through translating for the Tlaxcalans, thus giving allies to Cortes and preventing more war, to helping Cortes defy Montezuma and take over as the head of much of Latin America. Camilla Townshend wrote a book on Malintzin, narrating her life, but also having to take many liberties into how prominent her role was

Now what historians cannot figure from writings they must pull in information from other sources, anthropology, archeology, art and architecture history, all are important to increase the understanding of the past. Camilla Townshend discussed the lives of many women that were in the same shoes as Malintzin, and that often they were sold into slavery by their parents, this is what Townshend assumes is the case with Malitintzin. This would be understandable from other sources of evidence, but Bernal Diaz gives a separate account, which states that Malintzin is the daughter of two cacique or chieftiens, and her father passed away and then remarried, had a son with the new husband, making Malintzin a problematic because she can earn some of the inheritance being the oldest, Malintzin’s mother then sold her and told her step-father that she had died. Townshend basically rejects this notion, saying that this is similar to one of Diaz’s favorite fairytales. This is an understandable rejection, you have to view this with caution, but Townshend rejects this notion outright, saying in a sense, that non of the specifics of the story hold any truth. The rejection of the specifics shows a bias that Townshend holds, this being that she doesn’t necessarily trust the European documents, which could be extremely helpful in even understanding the goings on of the some of the