Malinche was the Amerindian woman who translated for Hernan Cortes - from her lips came the words that triggered the downfall of the great Aztec Emperor Moctezuma in the Spanish Conquest in 1521. In Mexico Malinche's name is synonymous with "traitor", yet folklore and legend still celebrate her mystique. Was Malinche a betrayer? Or is it that our histories construct the heroes and villains we need?
Anna Lanyon journeys across Mexico and into the prodigious past of its original peoples, to excavate the mythologies of this extraordinary woman's life. Malinche: abandoned to strangers as a slave when just a girl; taken by Cortes to become interpreter, concubine, witness to his campaigns, mother to his son, yet married off to another. Malinche: whose intelligence, courage and gift for language won her survival through unimaginably precarious times. Though Malinche's words changed history, her own story remained untold - yet its echoes continue to haunt Hispanic culture.
