CANALCATORCE — broadcast
20260920 113000 UTC
307 transcript segments
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking
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[00:00:00] without anyone knowing for sure how the daughter of a noble
[00:00:03] Nagua could have become a Mayan tlacotli.
[00:00:06] We will never know exactly why
[00:00:10] Malintzin was chosen. One of
[00:00:13] the Spanish sources, the famous Bernal Díaz gives us a kind of
[00:00:17] wild and crazy story that her mother
[00:00:20] was left in charge and hated the girl and wanted to remarry and so she
[00:00:23] sold her as a slave, but that makes no sense. But
[00:00:27] there are logical reasons why she might have been chosen. Some
[00:00:30] historians actually think that she may already have manifested her
[00:00:34] strong personality and that it could have been a sort of a
[00:00:38] punishment. More likely they chose her because her mother was
[00:00:42] herself a slave, someone powerless, and most often those who were
[00:00:45] chosen to give to the enemy, as it sort of hosted, were the daughters
[00:00:49] of people who had no power to defend them. Um,
[00:00:52] it could even be that she was simply kidnapped, simply
[00:00:56] taken by force, that seems unlikely, uh.
[00:01:23] arrive, went out to
[00:01:38] Before her, a world of extreme hardship opened up.
[00:01:42] That was a society different from her own, with different
[00:01:45] customs, that spoke a language, Maya, which
[00:01:48] she did not know. She was a
[00:01:51] slave.
[00:01:59] She had reached the lowest social status in a world alien to
[00:02:02] her own.
[00:02:11] For a Mayan noble, acquiring new slaves was a common
[00:02:15] peoples, one of practice, and the arrival of Malintzin probably didn't attract attention. She was
[00:02:19] the tlacotli of an important man from Potonchán, whom
[00:02:23] she would serve as a worker and
[00:02:24] concubine.
[00:02:28] She had no rights, although the Mayans treated their
[00:02:32] slaves with a certain humanity, her future
[00:02:35] seemed condemned, like that of all enslaved women,
[00:02:38] to a life of sub mission and work in the noble's
[00:02:42] house.
[00:02:51] That was how it was for the next 10
[00:02:54] years.
[00:02:58] We know nothing about...
[00:03:03] make a pact and to marry
[00:03:30] the Spanish. And with Starting with the language,
[00:03:33] the mastery of the two most important languages of those
[00:03:36] lands was going to change her
[00:03:39] then founded the Villa Rica de life, because the messengers were already bringing rumors of
[00:03:41] strange beings from beyond the
[00:03:44] sea, for some, men,
[00:03:48] for others, gods, and for many of those Mayans,
[00:03:51] demons.
[00:03:54] úpole, veijuntul dinique,
[00:03:58] Cortés applied the prevailing justice in vaale, ugelchumuktu.
[00:06:13] they confronted them trying to
[00:06:15] expel them, but the iron and horses
[00:06:19] used for the first time on the American continent in this
[00:06:22] confrontation decided the
[00:06:24] battle.
[00:06:30] The warriors of Potonchán had already fought and defeated the
[00:06:33] Spanish from the expedition of Francisco Hernández de
[00:06:36] Córdoba, two years earlier.
[00:06:40] Then they killed half of the Spanish and wounded the
[00:06:43] rest, but this time they returned home defeated.
[00:06:57] Those foreigners were difficult to
[00:07:00] defeat. The surviving warriors
[00:07:03] told of the power of the weapons of the men from the
[00:07:06] sea, of their terrible battle animals, of
[00:07:10] their armor that no arrow or...
[00:07:16] could penetrate. Violence had not worked. If
[00:07:20] they wanted to keep the foreigners away, they would have to use
[00:07:23] diplomacy, and among Mesoamerican
[00:07:28] the most effective and most used diplomatic
[00:07:31] weapons was the giving of women,
[00:07:34] something that for Malintzin, an interfering slave, was going to change her
[00:07:38] destiny. When Cortés
[00:07:42] defeated the people of Centla, the people of Centla, as was normal
[00:07:46] and traditional custom,
[00:07:49] gave 20 women to Cortés. Why
[00:07:53] did this custom exist? This custom is a
[00:07:56] tribal remnant. In tribes, women are given
[00:08:00] as gifts to make a pact with the
[00:08:03] enemy, in such a way that when one of them is
[00:08:06] defeated, he gives a woman or
[00:08:10] gives several women to the victor in order to
[00:08:16] them and to expand the
[00:08:19] tribe and to avoid military
[00:08:22] conflict. And that custom still remained among
[00:08:25] Mesoamerican groups, and for that reason
[00:08:29] they gave these 20 women that they gave, among whom
[00:08:33] was Malinche, to Hernán
[00:08:34] Cortés.
[00:08:39] The Mayans gave 20 women to
[00:08:42] them, they managed to make them continue their journey to the
[00:08:45] west. In this way, the daughter of a noble
[00:08:49] Nahua who had been a Mayan tlacotli for 10
[00:08:51] years, now became a slave and concubine
[00:08:55] of another strange people, alien to everything known in
[00:08:59] Mesoamerica, but equally dominated by men.
[00:09:42] For her, it seemed like a new opportunity, an unlimited
[00:09:46] field of surprises and
[00:09:47] learning.
[00:09:57] Okay, a little
[00:09:59] bit.
[00:10:04] The terrifying legends she had heard about the men who came
[00:10:07] from beyond the sea became clear at the sight of
[00:10:11] men, objects.
[00:10:21] Unlike the women who were daughters or sisters of nobles,
[00:10:25] they were slaves with whom the Spanish could do whatever they
[00:10:28] wanted.
[00:10:32] Malintzin's luck seemed to have worsened. If
[00:10:36] she wanted to have any chance, she had to learn that new language
[00:10:40] quickly.
[00:10:41] quickly.
[00:10:48] The Mayans' gift was soon
[00:11:12] to be baptized and, with Christian names, he
[00:11:16] paired them with his men. Those who are not fortunate should not
[00:11:19] be impatient, surely we will soon receive new
[00:11:23] women in the camp. world that Hernán Cortés and his
[00:11:26] companions were part of was indeed a very machista
[00:11:29] world. They were coming straight out of the Reconquista,
[00:11:33] so centuries of warfare, and centuries of warfare tend not to be very
[00:11:37] good for women. At the same time, we have to remember that Cortés and
[00:11:40] his companions came as men. There were few women with them,
[00:11:44] but very, very few, and I think we
[00:11:47] all know that an all-male world of warriors,
[00:11:51] um, does not tend to be profoundly sensitive to the needs of women.
[00:11:55] So I think it is fair to say, um, that when
[00:11:58] Malintzin passed from the hands of her indigenous captors to the hands
[00:12:02] of European captors, she was in
[00:12:04] for some trouble. She could expect the treatment to
[00:12:07] grow
[00:12:11] worse.
[00:12:19] was given to the most important man in Cortés's
[00:12:21] entourage. His name was
[00:12:25] Puerto, and he was a first cousin to the Count of Medellín in
[00:12:28] Spain. He was probably the wealthiest,
[00:12:32] certainly the most socially important man in the
[00:12:35] company. Cortés assigned Malintzin to
[00:12:38] him, the man he most wished to impress and please,
[00:12:42] so we can be certain um that Malintzin really was a beautiful
[00:12:46] girl with a notable presence. He would
[00:12:50] not have given Puerto Carrero um
[00:12:53] an ordinary girl. Malintzin was baptized
[00:12:57] Marina, the first of her names to go down in
[00:13:01] history, and from which later followed
[00:13:04] Malina, Malintzin, and
[00:13:06] Malinche. Cortés continued his journey
[00:13:10] along the coast to the west. His next stop, in San Juan de
[00:13:14] Ulúa, was going to be the scene of an encounter that would change
[00:13:18] the history of Spain and Mexico.
[00:13:21] It should be noted that she is a woman.
[00:13:25] In a world of men, in a 16th-century world, in a period of
[00:13:29] violence and conquest, where she had
[00:13:33] to try to do everything possible, eh, to
[00:13:36] eh, survive in a world of men and, above all, with an
[00:13:40] imposition, eh, by Hernán Cortés
[00:13:44] of a completely different
[00:13:46] worldview.
[00:13:54] The presence of
[00:14:26] Those emissaries spoke Nahuatl, a language that
[00:14:29] none of the Spanish knew, including
[00:14:32] Aguilar, that castaway rescued from Mayan
[00:14:35] captivity who had learned the language of his captors,
[00:14:39] but fortunately for Malintzin,
[00:15:22] enemies.
[00:15:38] he had in his forces had attempted to pressure her father's people
[00:15:41] attempted perhaps even to conquer them and it was
[00:15:44] because of what he had done and what his armies had done that she
[00:15:48] had been given into slavery. He was
[00:15:51] purely and simply an enemy.
[00:15:55] good, that they do, yes, civibile,
[00:16:14] role, because she was the one who allowed effective communication
[00:16:18] between the Spanish and the peoples of the Central Mesoamerican
[00:16:21] area. That is, Jerónimo de Aguilar had allowed them
[00:16:25] to communicate with some Mayan peoples, but when
[00:16:29] they began to interact with peoples from the Gulf Coast, with
[00:16:32] peoples from central Mexico, with the ambassadors of Moctezuma himself, the presence
[00:16:36] was necessary.
[00:17:08] For Moctezuma's emissaries, finding translators who spoke
[00:17:12] for the foreigners should not have seemed strange to
[00:17:14] them, but they must have been surprised to find
[00:17:18] that the voice of those foreigners was a
[00:17:21] woman, and a Nahua
[00:17:23] woman. Malintzin warned the Spanish
[00:17:27] that those emissaries were spies that Moctezuma
[00:17:30] sent to gather information about them. She was not
[00:17:34] mistaken.
[00:17:45] When Moctezuma received his emissaries, he understood that the
[00:17:48] foreigners would not be stopped with gifts. Their
[00:17:52] horses, ships, and weapons attracted his attention.
[00:18:07] but he was even more surprised to discover that the interpreter of those
[00:18:10] powerful foreigners was a local
[00:18:13] woman, one of
[00:18:15] them.
[00:18:18] Ah, I got
[00:18:20] it. Her name
[00:18:24] is Marina.
[00:18:28] Bow before her,
[00:18:29] follow her.
[00:18:33] That strange woman, Marina, was going to
[00:18:36] collaborate to change.
[00:18:46] Women in general, as they said in the chronicles, Sahagún,
[00:18:50] for example, says that women should keep
[00:18:53] silent, it didn't seem like they were deaf and dumb, says
[00:18:56] Sahagún. So the fact that this woman spoke all the
[00:19:00] time and that thanks to her great alliances were made,
[00:19:03] makes her truly a
[00:19:07] character. Almost
[00:19:08] supernatural.
[00:19:11] Now with the possibility of communicating with the locals, Cortés
[00:19:16] la Veracruz, and managed to have himself proclaimed
[00:19:20] captain and chief justice to free himself from the
[00:19:23] authority of Diego Velázquez, then
[00:19:26] governor of Cuba. That caused some of his
[00:19:29] men, loyal to Velázquez, to try to
[00:19:32] desert.
[00:19:36] 16th-century Spain, an implacable
[00:19:39] and cruel
[00:19:40] justice.
[00:19:43] The pilot had his toes cut off. The
[00:19:47] sailors were given 200
[00:19:49] lashes.
[00:19:52] The instigators were
[00:19:54] hanged.
[00:20:02] Malintzin then discovered that also among those men, as
[00:20:06] among her people, among the Mayans or the Mexicas,
[00:20:09] violence was part of their nature.
[00:20:24] The attempt at desertion had consequences beyond physical
[00:20:27] punishment.
[00:20:37] no other Spaniard would try to desert, he grounded the ships
[00:20:40] leaving them stranded near the
[00:20:42] coast.
[00:20:58] None of his men raised their voice.
[00:21:02] The die was
[00:21:03] cast.
[00:21:08] It's hard to imagine how Malin could interpret that unexpected
[00:21:11] gesture. The foreigners' floating houses sank
[00:21:15] before
[00:21:16] them.
[00:21:53] To the Veracruz camp, different indigenous people
[00:21:56] approached.
[00:22:01] They were not Mayans, but members of a different
[00:22:04] people, a people subjected by the powerful
[00:22:07] Mexicas.
[00:22:10] And Malintzin, seeing them
[00:22:13] receive them.
[00:22:31] Those visitors attracted the attention of the Spanish, who
[00:22:34] were unaware of the social and political organization
[00:22:37] of how many peoples inhabited those
[00:22:40] lands, information that Cortés
[00:22:43] found fundamental to carry out his plans.
[00:22:47] plans.
[00:23:52] aided by his interpreter, he headed to Cempoala to meet with the
[00:23:56] fat cacique, lord of the
[00:23:58] Totonacs. Like all rulers of the
[00:24:02] era, the fat cacique was surprised that the voice of those
[00:24:06] foreigners was a
[00:24:50] his small plane quickly on a paradisiacal island without
[00:24:53] knowing that eight desperate men are running to
[00:24:56] meet him. We are castaways, I say
[00:24:59] castaways, sleep peacefully, there are still
[00:25:02] gentlemen in the world, well gentlemen, we must
[00:25:05] take risks, my love for you has made me
[00:25:09] light as a feather. Cinema 14
[00:25:12] presents, eight men and one woman. Sunday,
[00:25:16] 10:05 AM.
[00:25:51] she had the intelligence, the determination and the
[00:25:54] support to make herself
[00:26:34] um the the scene at the end indicating that she's a person of status.
[00:26:38] Okay, well the Spaniards didn't do
[00:26:41] TZ, they couldn't hear a TZ, they heard, instead of,
[00:26:44] they heard CH, so they thought that the Indians were calling
[00:26:48] her Malinche or Malinche, okay, and
[00:26:51] so to this day she is often referred to as la Malinche, or
[00:26:55] sometimes Dona
[00:26:56] Marina.
[00:27:00] Cortés.
[00:27:32] to do so.
[00:27:38] The Totonacs sealed the alliance by giving them eight women,
[00:27:41] but this time they were not slaves but
[00:27:45] noble women,
[00:27:47] daughters of important members of Totonac society,
[00:27:51] including one of the fat cacique's
[00:27:53] daughters.
[00:27:57] The women were distributed randomly.
[00:27:59] randomly.
[00:28:05] The Spanish did not clearly differentiate between Totonac
[00:28:08] princesses and Mayan slaves, but Cortés, knowing that
[00:28:12] he had removed Malintzin from Porto Carrero's side, decided
[00:28:16] to offer the cacique's daughter as
[00:28:18] compensation.
[00:28:23] By then Malintzin was too valuable to be separated from
[00:28:27] her, and uniting interests, both
[00:28:31] strengthened their ties.
[00:28:36] there are several novels that have spoken of deep romance
[00:28:39] and such, I believe that sex and love in
[00:28:42] many moments of history have nothing to do with each other, and in a situation of so much
[00:28:46] inequality, of so much cultural difference, I
[00:28:50] would not bet anything on the feelings of Malinche or
[00:28:53] Cortés.
[00:29:21] an insatiable appetite for women. Malintzin,
[00:29:25] after so many years as a tlacotli, was accustomed
[00:29:28] to having sexual relations with her owners, and on this
[00:29:31] occasion, both their interests coincided. I
[00:29:35] believe that Cortés used Malinche, and
[00:29:38] Cortés used Malinche because it was another
[00:29:42] another step
[00:29:44] to be able to structure the entire conquest of the area.
[00:29:48] So for her too, establishing a
[00:29:50] sexual relationship with Cortés was the way to
[00:29:54] consolidate a different status from the rest of the