#spanish-conquest

#spanish-conquest

Spain, which initially dismissed any possibility of issuing such an apology in strong terms, acknowledged last Friday through Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares that there was pain and injustice inflicted upon the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. While the statement did not come directly from the Crown, as the Mexican government had hoped, it nonetheless represents a gesture of enormous symbolic and political significance, aimed at repairing the strained diplomatic relationship which at times verged on hostility.

La Malinche, or Malintzin, was the primary interpreter in the retinue of Hernán Cortés during his conquest of Mexico in the early 16th century and has become one of the most divisive women in Mexican history. Though she was called Malintzin by the Nahuatl-speaking peoples of the Aztec Empire, she was known as Doña Marina or Malinche to the Spanish conquistadors, and modern scholars typically refer to her by the latter.