An enduring impact
Jul. 8—Visitors to the exhibit Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche might quickly notice something about the mysterious titular character: She looks different in every image and film.
That's partly because of the time she lived — she was born around the year 1500 — and partly by design, Delilah Montoya told a crowd assembled at the Albuquerque Museum on June 26. Montoya is among the Southwest artists whose work is featured in the exhibit's next stop at the San Antonio Museum of Art, where it will be displayed beginning Oct. 14.
After Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés landed along Mexico's Gulf Coast in 1519, a local ruler "gifted" him 20 young women, among them a teen later called Malinche. Her linguistic talents provided her with unusual perspective and power in the years that followed, positioning her to both navigate and benefit from a collision of cultures.
"You know, what was she thinking? We don't know," Montoya says. "This is one of the reasons why, if you go through the exhibition, her image changes. And it's changing to meet the expectations of the audience."
Malinche, who was fluent in both Nahuatl and Mayan languages and later in Spanish, served as Cortes' translator and cultural interpreter. She later gave birth to their child.
Partly through her translations, Malinche ended up playing a key role in the Spanish conquest of the Aztec in 1521. She hadn't sought the role, and her motivations are unknown. She remains a maligned figure in Mexico.
Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche continues at Albuquerque Museum (2000 Mountain Road NW, Albuquerque, 505-243-7255, cabq.gov/artsculture/albuquerque-museum) through Sept. 4. It features more than 70 pieces of art, including paintings, as well as video and audio components.
The exhibit, which draws on earlier work by independent curator Terezita Romo, focuses on five archetypes embodied by Malinche. They are La Lengua (The Interpreter), which considers her role as translator and interpreter; La Mujer Indigena (The Indigenous Woman), an exploration of the archetype of Indigenous women living in pre-conquest Mexico; La Madre de Mestizaje (The Mother of a Mixed Race) shows her as the perceived mother of the mestizo identity of post-conquest Mexico; La Traidora (The Traitor) looks at perceptions of her supposed treachery or cultural and ethnic betrayal; and Chicana carries her story into the 20th century.
Among the exhibit's striking 20th century images is Robert C. Buitrón's Malinche y Pocahontas Chismeando con PowerBooks (1995), a photograph of actors portraying her and Pocahontas — a Powhatan interpreter born about a century after Malinche — seated at a table and joyfully interacting. One wall over, Malinche stares intensely from a 50-inch-tall painting dating to 1940 titled La Malinche (Young Girl of Yalala, Oaxaca) by Alfredo Ramos Martínez.
The exhibit also features work by New Mexico artists Vicente Telles, Brandon Maldonado, and Okuu Pin' (Jason Garcia). It was organized by the Denver Art Museum, where it premiered this year.
"Personally, I think that I wanted to understand how this person, whose image I saw every day growing up as positive," says Romo of how she became interest in La Malinche, "could be seen as a vile traitor by the majority of Mexicans and even politicized by Chicanos. She's a complicated person who does not fall into neat positive and negative categories."
