Breathe
By Alejandra Gonzalez Duarte
At the age of 12, Marina was taken from her home and sold into slavery. Resilient and bright, she soon mastered the language of her captors. Soon after, she was handed over to the newly arrived foreigners. Hernán Cortés was soon captivated, not only by her beauty, but also by her ability to move between two worlds. Marina's astuteness turned her into an interpreter, ally, lover and mother. Her relationship with him offered her not only a companion, but also a path to her liberation and a place in a world that had denigrated her time and again for being a woman.
Her contemporary, Isabella, Montezuma's firstborn, grew up under the yoke of a father who saw women as pieces to forge political alliances and consolidate his power. Married for the first time at age 9, before she was 15 she had already gone through three marriages, each a negotiation between powerful men, a sacrifice of her life to strengthen the empire. When war finally broke out and Moctezuma was overthrown, Isabel was given as a wife to one of the conquering leaders. In this last marriage, she found the opportunity to re-emerge as a leader in her own right. Together with her new husband, she was made a landowner, and from that position she educated her people in a new faith, teaching them to see their father's fall not only as a tragedy, but as a lesson dictated by destiny.
Although both stories speak of "love," it is crucial to recognize that this love was not a violence-free experience, but a response to extreme circumstances. The men in their lives, such as Cortés and Isabel's husbands, were mostly power figures who initially controlled them. However, through their relationships, these women found ways to overcome violence and exert influence, transforming their reality and the history around them. Both women, Marina (Malintzin, Malinalli or Malinche) and Isabel (Ichcaxóchitl, by affection), began their lives as victims, trapped by the violence in their homes. Before their marriages, they had already been sold, married and treated as bargaining chips by their own parents, who saw them as tools to secure alliances or power. Although they also faced violence in their marriages, their previous life under the control of their parents did not offer them a better fate.
The Conquest of Mesoamerica was not just a story of violent men imposing their will on a defenseless people. Many factors intervened: the resentment of the peoples subjected to the excessive domination of the Aztec monarch, the devastating impact of smallpox on a population without immunity, and also, those first women who, fleeing a cruel fate in their own homes, found an alternative to survive. They, the first mothers of the mestizo culture, saw in the collaboration between seemingly irreconcilable worlds an opportunity for transformation. Their resilience and legacy shaped what defines us today. It all depends on how the story is told, but to this day, Mexican women do not know to whom exactly we should demand forgiveness.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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