As part of the Women of Maíz program to counteract discrimination against the female sector in indigenous communities, a program was outlined to vindicate the figure of Malintizin, stigmatized by history.
President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo maintained that she has always been seen as a traitor, when she was enslaved by another indigenous group and then sold to the Spanish.
During the presidential conference, a space was set aside to remember Malintzin and his place in history. Playwright Jesusa Rodríguez explained that part of the Mujeres del Maíz program incorporates a set of cultural actions dedicated to dismantling the “lies woven around” Doña Marina. That is why the international colloquium was held Malintzin: Woman word in the Palace of Fine Arts in order to analyze his figure, and the procession was organized What a traitor or what the hell.
Rodríguez stated that she has been “the most misunderstood interpreter in history, who came to speak five languages. She was a character who in the most difficult circumstances knew how to use her gift of languages to free herself from the condition of slave, make strategic power decisions and be respected by her contemporaries. She was slandered and branded a traitor due to the misogyny and racism prevailing in the 19th and 20th centuries.”
The indigenous poet and essayist Yelitza Ruiz stated that these actions are part of an exercise to repair the memory of Malinztin, relegated to a stain in history always associated with betrayal, without understanding the circumstances in which the events occurred, since someone who in captivity does not have the possibility of betrayal. She is a clear example of “how misogyny and racism draw biased versions in the popular imagination, but it also brings us closer to the fact that every story must be seen from the vision that passes through us of the body, language, gender and ethnic origin.”
Sheinbaum added that even though Malintzi was a translator, the atrocities that were committed in the Colony are not attributable to her. He recalled that at the time, the Nobel Prize in Literature Octavio Paz spoke in The labyrinth of loneliness that we Mexicans come from a terrible trauma, which is the abuse of indigenous women, that is the origin of the word “chingada”, so we must do a current review of that past.
Malintzin and many indigenous women must be vindicated. It is important to now discuss machismo and the alleged betrayal of a woman who lived through very particular circumstances to now recognize the cultural greatness of the indigenous peoples and a fertile history that no other people in the world has, he said.
“That is what we claim with Mexican Humanism. We also have the responsibility to talk about the role of women in history, about the great heroines and all the anonymous heroines, and to claim women as part of Mexico, because it means talking about equality and eradicating machismo,” Sheinbaum added.