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Chapter 4 • Political Transformations, 1450–1750 209

position and surrender his wealth to the Spanish. Even his brothers, Doña Marina quickly reassured and forgave
Cortés, who was never very gracious with his praise for them, while granting them “many golden jewels and
her, acknowledged that “after God, we owe this conquest some clothes.”
of New Spain to Doña Marina.” Aztecs soon came to In the centuries since her death, Doña Marina has
see this young woman as the voice of Cortés, referring been highly controversial. For much of the colonial era,
to her as La Malinche, a Spanish approximation of her she was viewed positively as an ally of the Spanish. But
original name. So paired did Cortés and La Malinche after independence, some came to see her as a traitor
become in Aztec thinking that Cortés himself was often to her own people, shunning her heritage and siding
called Malinche. with the invaders. Still others have considered her as
More than an interpreter for Cortés, Doña Marina the mother of Mexico’s multiracial, or mestizo, culture.
also became his mistress and bore him a son. But after Should she be understood primarily as a victim, a skillful
the initial conquest of Mexico was complete and he no woman negotiating hard choices under difficult circum-
longer needed her skills, Cortés married Doña Marina stances, or a traitor to her people?
off to another Spanish conquistador, Juan Jaramillo, with Whatever the judgments of later generations, Doña
whom she lived until her death, probably around 1530. Marina herself seems to have made a clear choice to cast
Cortés did provide her with several pieces of land, one of her lot with the Europeans. Even when Cortés had given
which, ironically, had belonged to Moctezuma. Her son, her to another man, Doña Marina expressed no regret.
however, was taken from her and raised in Spain. According to Díaz, she declared, “Even if they were to
In 1523, Doña Marina performed one final service make me mistress of all the provinces of New Spain, I
for Cortés, accompanying him on a mission to Honduras would refuse the honor, for I would rather serve my hus-
to suppress a rebellion. There her personal life seemed to band and Cortés than anything else in the world.”
come full circle, for near her hometown she encountered
her mother, who had sold her into slavery, and her half-
brother. Díaz reported that they “were very much afraid
of Doña Marina,” thinking that they would surely be QUESTIONS
put to death by their now-powerful and well-connected How might you define the significance of Doña Marina’s
relative. But in a replay of the biblical story of Joseph and life? In what larger contexts might her life find a place?

60 to 80 million. The greatest concentrations of people lived in the Mesoamerican
and Andean zones dominated by the Aztec and Inca empires. Long isolation from
the Afro-Eurasian world and the lack of most domesticated animals meant the
absence of acquired immunities to Old World diseases such as smallpox, measles,
typhus, influenza, malaria, and, later, yellow fever.
Therefore, when Native American peoples came into contact with these AP ®
European and African diseases, they died in appalling numbers, in many cases los-
ing up to 90 percent of the population. The densely settled peoples of Caribbean CONTINUITY AND
CHANGE
islands virtually vanished within fifty years of Columbus’s arrival. Central Mexico, What large-scale
with a population estimated at some 10 to 20 million before the Spanish conquest, transformations did
declined to about 1 million by 1650. A native Nahuatl (nah-watl) account depicted European empires
generate in the
the social breakdown that accompanied the smallpox pandemic: “A great many Americas, in Europe,
died from this plague, and many others died of hunger. They could not get up to and globally?
Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample.
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