Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:00without anyone knowing for sure how the daughter of a noble
00:00:03Nagua could have become a Mayan tlacotli.
00:00:06We will never know exactly why
00:00:10Malintzin was chosen. One of
00:00:13the Spanish sources, the famous Bernal Díaz gives us a kind of
00:00:17wild and crazy story that her mother
00:00:20was left in charge and hated the girl and wanted to remarry and so she
00:00:23sold her as a slave, but that makes no sense. But
00:00:27there are logical reasons why she might have been chosen. Some
00:00:30historians actually think that she may already have manifested her
00:00:34strong personality and that it could have been a sort of a
00:00:38punishment. More likely they chose her because her mother was
00:00:42herself a slave, someone powerless, and most often those who were
00:00:45chosen to give to the enemy, as it sort of hosted, were the daughters
00:00:49of people who had no power to defend them. Um,
00:00:52it could even be that she was simply kidnapped, simply
00:00:56taken by force, that seems unlikely, uh.
00:01:23arrive, went out to
00:01:38Before her, a world of extreme hardship opened up.
00:01:42That was a society different from her own, with different
00:01:45customs, that spoke a language, Maya, which
00:01:48she did not know. She was a
00:01:51slave.
00:01:59She had reached the lowest social status in a world alien to
00:02:02her own.
00:02:11For a Mayan noble, acquiring new slaves was a common
00:02:15peoples, one of practice, and the arrival of Malintzin probably didn't attract attention. She was
00:02:19the tlacotli of an important man from Potonchán, whom
00:02:23she would serve as a worker and
00:02:24concubine.
00:02:28She had no rights, although the Mayans treated their
00:02:32slaves with a certain humanity, her future
00:02:35seemed condemned, like that of all enslaved women,
00:02:38to a life of sub mission and work in the noble's
00:02:42house.
00:02:51That was how it was for the next 10
00:02:54years.
00:02:58We know nothing about...
00:03:03make a pact and to marry
00:03:30the Spanish. And with Starting with the language,
00:03:33the mastery of the two most important languages of those
00:03:36lands was going to change her
00:03:39then founded the Villa Rica de life, because the messengers were already bringing rumors of
00:03:41strange beings from beyond the
00:03:44sea, for some, men,
00:03:48for others, gods, and for many of those Mayans,
00:03:51demons.
00:03:54úpole, veijuntul dinique,
00:03:58Cortés applied the prevailing justice in vaale, ugelchumuktu.
00:06:13they confronted them trying to
00:06:15expel them, but the iron and horses
00:06:19used for the first time on the American continent in this
00:06:22confrontation decided the
00:06:24battle.
00:06:30The warriors of Potonchán had already fought and defeated the
00:06:33Spanish from the expedition of Francisco Hernández de
00:06:36Córdoba, two years earlier.
00:06:40Then they killed half of the Spanish and wounded the
00:06:43rest, but this time they returned home defeated.
00:06:57Those foreigners were difficult to
00:07:00defeat. The surviving warriors
00:07:03told of the power of the weapons of the men from the
00:07:06sea, of their terrible battle animals, of
00:07:10their armor that no arrow or...
00:07:16could penetrate. Violence had not worked. If
00:07:20they wanted to keep the foreigners away, they would have to use
00:07:23diplomacy, and among Mesoamerican
00:07:28the most effective and most used diplomatic
00:07:31weapons was the giving of women,
00:07:34something that for Malintzin, an interfering slave, was going to change her
00:07:38destiny. When Cortés
00:07:42defeated the people of Centla, the people of Centla, as was normal
00:07:46and traditional custom,
00:07:49gave 20 women to Cortés. Why
00:07:53did this custom exist? This custom is a
00:07:56tribal remnant. In tribes, women are given
00:08:00as gifts to make a pact with the
00:08:03enemy, in such a way that when one of them is
00:08:06defeated, he gives a woman or
00:08:10gives several women to the victor in order to
00:08:16them and to expand the
00:08:19tribe and to avoid military
00:08:22conflict. And that custom still remained among
00:08:25Mesoamerican groups, and for that reason
00:08:29they gave these 20 women that they gave, among whom
00:08:33was Malinche, to Hernán
00:08:34Cortés.
00:08:39The Mayans gave 20 women to
00:08:42them, they managed to make them continue their journey to the
00:08:45west. In this way, the daughter of a noble
00:08:49Nahua who had been a Mayan tlacotli for 10
00:08:51years, now became a slave and concubine
00:08:55of another strange people, alien to everything known in
00:08:59Mesoamerica, but equally dominated by men.
00:09:42For her, it seemed like a new opportunity, an unlimited
00:09:46field of surprises and
00:09:47learning.
00:09:57Okay, a little
00:09:59bit.
00:10:04The terrifying legends she had heard about the men who came
00:10:07from beyond the sea became clear at the sight of
00:10:11men, objects.
00:10:21Unlike the women who were daughters or sisters of nobles,
00:10:25they were slaves with whom the Spanish could do whatever they
00:10:28wanted.
00:10:32Malintzin's luck seemed to have worsened. If
00:10:36she wanted to have any chance, she had to learn that new language
00:10:40quickly.
00:10:41quickly.
00:10:48The Mayans' gift was soon
00:11:12to be baptized and, with Christian names, he
00:11:16paired them with his men. Those who are not fortunate should not
00:11:19be impatient, surely we will soon receive new
00:11:23women in the camp. world that Hernán Cortés and his
00:11:26companions were part of was indeed a very machista
00:11:29world. They were coming straight out of the Reconquista,
00:11:33so centuries of warfare, and centuries of warfare tend not to be very
00:11:37good for women. At the same time, we have to remember that Cortés and
00:11:40his companions came as men. There were few women with them,
00:11:44but very, very few, and I think we
00:11:47all know that an all-male world of warriors,
00:11:51um, does not tend to be profoundly sensitive to the needs of women.
00:11:55So I think it is fair to say, um, that when
00:11:58Malintzin passed from the hands of her indigenous captors to the hands
00:12:02of European captors, she was in
00:12:04for some trouble. She could expect the treatment to
00:12:07grow
00:12:11worse.
00:12:19was given to the most important man in Cortés's
00:12:21entourage. His name was
00:12:25Puerto, and he was a first cousin to the Count of Medellín in
00:12:28Spain. He was probably the wealthiest,
00:12:32certainly the most socially important man in the
00:12:35company. Cortés assigned Malintzin to
00:12:38him, the man he most wished to impress and please,
00:12:42so we can be certain um that Malintzin really was a beautiful
00:12:46girl with a notable presence. He would
00:12:50not have given Puerto Carrero um
00:12:53an ordinary girl. Malintzin was baptized
00:12:57Marina, the first of her names to go down in
00:13:01history, and from which later followed
00:13:04Malina, Malintzin, and
00:13:06Malinche. Cortés continued his journey
00:13:10along the coast to the west. His next stop, in San Juan de
00:13:14Ulúa, was going to be the scene of an encounter that would change
00:13:18the history of Spain and Mexico.
00:13:21It should be noted that she is a woman.
00:13:25In a world of men, in a 16th-century world, in a period of
00:13:29violence and conquest, where she had
00:13:33to try to do everything possible, eh, to
00:13:36eh, survive in a world of men and, above all, with an
00:13:40imposition, eh, by Hernán Cortés
00:13:44of a completely different
00:13:46worldview.
00:13:54The presence of
00:14:26Those emissaries spoke Nahuatl, a language that
00:14:29none of the Spanish knew, including
00:14:32Aguilar, that castaway rescued from Mayan
00:14:35captivity who had learned the language of his captors,
00:14:39but fortunately for Malintzin,
00:15:22enemies.
00:15:38he had in his forces had attempted to pressure her father's people
00:15:41attempted perhaps even to conquer them and it was
00:15:44because of what he had done and what his armies had done that she
00:15:48had been given into slavery. He was
00:15:51purely and simply an enemy.
00:15:55good, that they do, yes, civibile,
00:16:14role, because she was the one who allowed effective communication
00:16:18between the Spanish and the peoples of the Central Mesoamerican
00:16:21area. That is, Jerónimo de Aguilar had allowed them
00:16:25to communicate with some Mayan peoples, but when
00:16:29they began to interact with peoples from the Gulf Coast, with
00:16:32peoples from central Mexico, with the ambassadors of Moctezuma himself, the presence
00:16:36was necessary.
00:17:08For Moctezuma's emissaries, finding translators who spoke
00:17:12for the foreigners should not have seemed strange to
00:17:14them, but they must have been surprised to find
00:17:18that the voice of those foreigners was a
00:17:21woman, and a Nahua
00:17:23woman. Malintzin warned the Spanish
00:17:27that those emissaries were spies that Moctezuma
00:17:30sent to gather information about them. She was not
00:17:34mistaken.
00:17:45When Moctezuma received his emissaries, he understood that the
00:17:48foreigners would not be stopped with gifts. Their
00:17:52horses, ships, and weapons attracted his attention.
00:18:07but he was even more surprised to discover that the interpreter of those
00:18:10powerful foreigners was a local
00:18:13woman, one of
00:18:15them.
00:18:18Ah, I got
00:18:20it. Her name
00:18:24is Marina.
00:18:28Bow before her,
00:18:29follow her.
00:18:33That strange woman, Marina, was going to
00:18:36collaborate to change.
00:18:46Women in general, as they said in the chronicles, Sahagún,
00:18:50for example, says that women should keep
00:18:53silent, it didn't seem like they were deaf and dumb, says
00:18:56Sahagún. So the fact that this woman spoke all the
00:19:00time and that thanks to her great alliances were made,
00:19:03makes her truly a
00:19:07character. Almost
00:19:08supernatural.
00:19:11Now with the possibility of communicating with the locals, Cortés
00:19:16la Veracruz, and managed to have himself proclaimed
00:19:20captain and chief justice to free himself from the
00:19:23authority of Diego Velázquez, then
00:19:26governor of Cuba. That caused some of his
00:19:29men, loyal to Velázquez, to try to
00:19:32desert.
00:19:3616th-century Spain, an implacable
00:19:39and cruel
00:19:40justice.
00:19:43The pilot had his toes cut off. The
00:19:47sailors were given 200
00:19:49lashes.
00:19:52The instigators were
00:19:54hanged.
00:20:02Malintzin then discovered that also among those men, as
00:20:06among her people, among the Mayans or the Mexicas,
00:20:09violence was part of their nature.
00:20:24The attempt at desertion had consequences beyond physical
00:20:27punishment.
00:20:37no other Spaniard would try to desert, he grounded the ships
00:20:40leaving them stranded near the
00:20:42coast.
00:20:58None of his men raised their voice.
00:21:02The die was
00:21:03cast.
00:21:08It's hard to imagine how Malin could interpret that unexpected
00:21:11gesture. The foreigners' floating houses sank
00:21:15before
00:21:16them.
00:21:53To the Veracruz camp, different indigenous people
00:21:56approached.
00:22:01They were not Mayans, but members of a different
00:22:04people, a people subjected by the powerful
00:22:07Mexicas.
00:22:10And Malintzin, seeing them
00:22:13receive them.
00:22:31Those visitors attracted the attention of the Spanish, who
00:22:34were unaware of the social and political organization
00:22:37of how many peoples inhabited those
00:22:40lands, information that Cortés
00:22:43found fundamental to carry out his plans.
00:22:47plans.
00:23:52aided by his interpreter, he headed to Cempoala to meet with the
00:23:56fat cacique, lord of the
00:23:58Totonacs. Like all rulers of the
00:24:02era, the fat cacique was surprised that the voice of those
00:24:06foreigners was a
00:24:50his small plane quickly on a paradisiacal island without
00:24:53knowing that eight desperate men are running to
00:24:56meet him. We are castaways, I say
00:24:59castaways, sleep peacefully, there are still
00:25:02gentlemen in the world, well gentlemen, we must
00:25:05take risks, my love for you has made me
00:25:09light as a feather. Cinema 14
00:25:12presents, eight men and one woman. Sunday,
00:25:1610:05 AM.
00:25:51she had the intelligence, the determination and the
00:25:54support to make herself
00:26:34um the the scene at the end indicating that she's a person of status.
00:26:38Okay, well the Spaniards didn't do
00:26:41TZ, they couldn't hear a TZ, they heard, instead of,
00:26:44they heard CH, so they thought that the Indians were calling
00:26:48her Malinche or Malinche, okay, and
00:26:51so to this day she is often referred to as la Malinche, or
00:26:55sometimes Dona
00:26:56Marina.
00:27:00Cortés.
00:27:32to do so.
00:27:38The Totonacs sealed the alliance by giving them eight women,
00:27:41but this time they were not slaves but
00:27:45noble women,
00:27:47daughters of important members of Totonac society,
00:27:51including one of the fat cacique's
00:27:53daughters.
00:27:57The women were distributed randomly.
00:27:59randomly.
00:28:05The Spanish did not clearly differentiate between Totonac
00:28:08princesses and Mayan slaves, but Cortés, knowing that
00:28:12he had removed Malintzin from Porto Carrero's side, decided
00:28:16to offer the cacique's daughter as
00:28:18compensation.
00:28:23By then Malintzin was too valuable to be separated from
00:28:27her, and uniting interests, both
00:28:31strengthened their ties.
00:28:36there are several novels that have spoken of deep romance
00:28:39and such, I believe that sex and love in
00:28:42many moments of history have nothing to do with each other, and in a situation of so much
00:28:46inequality, of so much cultural difference, I
00:28:50would not bet anything on the feelings of Malinche or
00:28:53Cortés.
00:29:21an insatiable appetite for women. Malintzin,
00:29:25after so many years as a tlacotli, was accustomed
00:29:28to having sexual relations with her owners, and on this
00:29:31occasion, both their interests coincided. I
00:29:35believe that Cortés used Malinche, and
00:29:38Cortés used Malinche because it was another
00:29:42another step
00:29:44to be able to structure the entire conquest of the area.
00:29:48So for her too, establishing a
00:29:50sexual relationship with Cortés was the way to
00:29:54consolidate a different status from the rest of the