Gratitude 119

I am thinking right now of Malinche.  She was the indigenous mistress of Hernan Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico.  Octavio Paz, famed Mexican thinker, essayist and poet famously said that the Mexicans are all "hijos de la chingada, Malinche", or children of the fucked one, Malinche.  She was purchased as a slave by Cortes when she was a teenager from Tabasco in 1519.  She became his translator and his mistress and bore him two children, a son and a daughter, considered as the first Mestizos.  She was often considered a traitor to the indigenous people of Mexico, given the help that she gave to Cortes in his diplomatic and military campaigns.

I would propose a slightly different perspective.  Malinche was the most famous and high-profile victim of military rape in Mexico.  Marriages by Spanish and Aztecs alike in those days were very seldom seen as love-matches, but were official alliances between families.  The more prominent the family the more strategic and powerful the alliance.  She was not likely a willing partner to Cortes, at least not at first.  Let us be reminded that consent as we know it now, was a completely foreign concept then.

We could call Malinche the first casualty of rape between the Spanish and the Mejica.  I am quite sure that had they met on a dating site she probably would have deleted him.  Remember, there was absolutely nothing consensual in sex, nor was such a concept even imagined, especially in the aftermath of war.

By the same token, why would la Malinche, or any other self-respecting indigenous woman want to shag anything as disgusting and repulsive as a Spanish man?  The Spanish of the Sixteenth Century didn't bathe.  They hated soap and water.  They distrusted cleanliness.  It reminded them too much of the Muslim Moors whom they chased out of Spain, who were super-clean and way more civilized than the Catholic Castilians and they simply wanted nothing to do with soap and water.  It is reported that they even brushed their teeth with urine!  One might be inclined to wonder that maybe their revolting body odour might have been even more effective than their muskets and gunpowder for killing the Aztecs.

So, Malinche, like so many other native women, less than willing as they were slaves and booty of conquest, were expected to disrobe and lie expectantly for their new masters to mount and rape them.  Remember, this was not consensual sex.  All the poor girls could do was to lie there in  the dark, close their eyes and think of Montezuma! Besides the absolute humiliation and degradation of being less than willing sex-slaves, they had to endure the foul stench of their new masters as they assaulted them with their vile-smelling and unwashed garranchas (Mexican slang for erect penises).

So, this was the cradle of the Mexican people, the Mestizos who make up ninety percent of the population in modern day Mexico.  Children of rape from filthy invaders.  Not an auspicious beginning.  And, truth be told, I find them way nicer than the Spanish.