Hernán Cortés and Malintzin (Radio Edit)
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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It's Lucy Worsley here and we're back with a brand new series of Lady Swindlers. Join me and my all-female team of detectives as we revisit the audacious crimes of women trying to make it in a world made for men. These were women who traded in crime but who were ahead of their time. History calls them criminals. Society calls them frauds.

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Available now. Listen on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. Today we are sharpening our language skills and sailing across the Atlantic to 16th century Mexico to learn all about the conquistador Hernan Cortes and his indigenous translator Malintzin.

And to help us understand this pair, we have a pair of very special guests. In History Corner, she's Senior Lecturer in the History of the Americas at Nottingham Trent University. Her research focuses on early modern Spain and Mexico, specifically religion, identity and empire. It's Dr Amy Fuller. Welcome, Amy. Thanks for having me. Delighted to have you here. And in Comedy Corner, she's a stand-up comedian, actor and writer. You'll have seen her on all the TV shows, including Live at the Apollo, Mock the Week...

Frankie Boyle's New World Order. Perhaps you've seen her on tour or read or listened to her hilariously honest memoir, The Other Mother. I love the audiobook. Or her podcast, WTB, which I think is short for a slightly ruder title. And you'll definitely remember her from our episode on Emma of Normandy, an absolute classic. It's Jen Brister. Welcome, Jen. Oh, Greg. It's an absolute pleasure. We had a lot of fun last time in medieval England trying to remember that everyone was called Elfgivu. Oh, my God. What a name, Elfgivu. And not only that, not...

or not having any knowledge about my own history, like, that is quite something. And now I'm half English and I'm half Spanish, so what I've realised is in the last episode I knew nothing about English history and today it'll be proven I know nothing about Spanish history. And Mexican history? Mexican history, even less. OK. So, what do you know? MUSIC

This is the So What Do You Know, where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. I'm guessing you've heard the name Cortés, the Conquistador. He's appeared in all kinds of TV shows and films, most notably as the big baddie in the DreamWorks animation The Road to El Dorado. But unless you are Mexican or maybe American...

I suspect Melintzin. I imagine she's perhaps a lot less familiar as a name. She's the subject of several Spanish language plays, operas and books, and appears in some famous murals, one painted by Diego Rivera. In Mexico City, he was the husband of Frida Kahlo. Oh, yes, I do know who he is. Look at me. One point already. Well done. But how have their reputations changed over time? And what exactly is Moctezuma's revenge? Let's find out.

We'll start with Cortés, purely because he happened to be born first. So, Amy, who was he? Is he an aristocrat? You know, when he's born, is he rich? He was born in 1485 in Medellín, which is in Extremadura in Spain. So he was a hidalgo. He was petty nobility, we'd probably call him. Not very rich. We don't know a massive amount about him, to be honest. We think he probably had some legal training. Right.

fairly well educated, I'd say. But in 1492, Hernán Cortés is seven years old. Columbus sails on behalf of the Spanish king and queen in search of India and bumps into what's called the New World, inverted commas. It's obviously not new to the people who live there. So what makes Hernán Cortés decide he wants to follow in Columbus's wake? Because 10, 12 years later, he's on a ship. Yeah, he's off to seek his fortune in the New World.

He arrives in 1504, so he's 19, and he goes off to a place called Hispaniola, which is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic. At that point, that's the base of operations in what they called the Indies. And the indigenous people that lived in Haiti and in the Dominican Republic, would they have...

any sort of relation to the Incas or like Mexico is not that far away were they more similar to they had smaller towns so you don't find the kind of big cities with the pyramids and things like that in the Caribbean but you do see decent sized kind of towns but they were supposed to go and convert them to Christianity and therefore they shouldn't have been allowed to enslave them but

But they just kind of enslaved them instead. It happens. You pop out there to talk about Jesus Christ and before you know it, you've got, you know, hundreds of thousands of slaves. Yes. We should probably turn to Melintzin. In 1504, Cortes is 19 years old. Melintzin is...

A toddler at this point? Yeah, so we think she was born in 1500. OK. We don't really know much about her or her early life.

We think that her father was of some kind of nobility, but we think that her mother was enslaved. She's Nahuatl, so she's from central Mexico, but she's not Aztec. That's quite important. She's from an area that gets taken over by the Aztecs. It's kind of on the Gulf Coast. She's sold into slavery with the Maya, essentially, when she's a

young girl we think she lives among the Maya for quite a time and we don't even know her real name right we we know her by her later we only know her baptismal name which was Marina and Melintzin comes from that because uh there's no r in Nahuatl so they would hear Malina but they put the sin at the end which is an honorific title so that is essentially Doña Marina in Nahuatl it

So Melinston, she is Nawa. She is Nawa. She's not Maya and she's not Aztec. Yes, no. So she's from a different group entirely. And the Nawa people are... So they are... Who? Basically everyone who lives in the central region of what's now Mexico. So basically where the Aztec Empire was...

In our heads, I guess over here in the UK, we know the Aztecs as like the dominant superpower of the region. Yes. They rise to prominence in the 1420s. They managed to create this empire that spreads from the Pacific to the Gulf Coast in 100 years. But it

it's patchy and this becomes a problem later on they don't conquer everywhere it's a franchise is it like is it like starbucks right okay tribute so both in terms of goods that they want but also people for sacrifice so they essentially don't bother to conquer anyone who doesn't have what they want or is too difficult to conquer let's

Let's get back to Cortes. He's in Hispaniola. So he's not got to Mexico yet. No, no one has at this point. He is, he's got a job.

Yes. Is he a legal job? Yes, so he's a notary for a while. And then in 1511, he takes part in the conquest of Cuba, which was organised by Diego Velázquez, who then becomes the governor of Cuba. Yes. Initially, Velázquez is very impressed by him. He becomes his secretary. That's when Cortés starts to rise to prominence. And then in 1518, Velázquez gave him another promotion...

And this one is an expedition promotion. I want you to go and explore, conquer. Well, explore and trade were the orders. The age-old trade. Can you go and trade, please? And where is it going?

He's off to the Yucatan. There are two expeditions before Cortés' expedition and that's where they find out about this great city called Tenochtitlan and Moctezuma and lots of treasure and things. This obviously piques Cortés' interest. So despite the fact that there are other candidates who would be more experienced, Velázquez gives him the job to go on the next expedition

So this is the third time. Third time. And he's like, I've got a good feeling for you, Cortez. Yes. Yes. Now Velazquez starts to hear rumours that Cortez has plans that don't involve him. And so at the last minute, Velazquez says, no, I don't want Cortez anymore. However, Cortez kind of sticks his fingers in his ears and goes, la, la, la, la, la.

Oh, really? And he evades arrest about four times, I think. And then finally, yes, basically, finally sets off in 1519. And he founds Veracruz, the first Spanish town in Mexico. He immediately divorces Velázquez from his sort of chain of command, right? He's just like, I founded a town and I answer to the Spanish king and Velázquez is dead to me and everything's fine. So how...

war but what about he's not coming back so much so that um he burns the boats so that no one can go away okay all right so his men are like um i wanted to go back just so you had a feedback yeah i actually left my wife and children back there actually he's like tough no you're not going back okay we know all about this from his first letter essentially it's an amazing letter it

It's not even a letter. It's like a rant. Yes. So he knows, essentially, that in the meantime, Velazquez will have obviously written to the king and said, look, there's this complete wrongan who's...

gone, you know, rogue. He's off. I don't even know what he's doing. And so Cortes knows all of this. He doesn't even make it a letter from him. He makes it a letter from the town council of Veracruz. That he's founded. That he has founded. And essentially, it's an insane letter. But he...

essentially discredits Velazquez and then talks about how great he is, how he... Oh, I put all of my fortune into this. Every step of the way, I've done everything by the book. I've converted everyone to Christianity. Tiny bit of trivia that's completely unrelated to the history, but I love it, is that the actor who voiced Cortez in the Road to El Dorado animation also was the voice of Winnie the Pooh.

And so I mean, that is upsetting. I'm just hearing the voice of Winnie the Pooh whenever Cortez speaks. Of course, Winnie the Pooh craves pots of honey. Cortez is after pots of money. So he's off. He's off seeking gold and glory. 1519. And he is going to meet Melintzin. Finally, we get our meet cute, except it's not a meet cute. It's a meet yuck.

Because she is enslaved and he is arriving as a conqueror. Yes. Yes. So Melintzin is one of 20 girls, I guess she's only 19, given to the Spanish conquistadors by the Maya as a kind of diplomatic gesture. Right. She's a present.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We're not sure at what point it becomes clear that she has really useful linguistic abilities. Right. So how does the translation work then? You know, if Cortez wants to say something to the Maya. So she could speak Maya and Nahuatl. So Cortez would speak to a guy called Jeronimo de Aguilar and Nahuatl.

he would then speak Maya to Melintzin and then she would speak Nahuatl to any Aztecs. Ooh, so it's like a chain of... And then backwards, if the other way around. You know, that never works well, does it? With the old whispers. It's like, hang on a second, I'm pretty sure I didn't say that. Yeah. But then she's got quite a lot of power.

Because then she can translate anything in any which way she can. Once, in a way. Like, oh yeah, he said this. Did he? Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. We think she learnt Spanish quite quickly. And actually, Aguilar, he becomes almost obsolete quite early on. Not only can she tell people what he wants to say and vice versa...

She also understands the etiquette, which is incredibly different. So she understands the etiquette of the Spanish and she also understands the etiquette of the Mayan. Is it the Mayan people? The other Nawa people. The other Nawa people. Yes. The Maya too, but it's the Nawa people that are more... That are in that part of... More kind of important to the conquest bit.

And Cortes is presumably using charm and violence, those two lovely combinations. Yeah, essentially he learns quite early on that the Aztec Empire isn't as solid as he thought it was. And he also learns that there are certain groups who aren't happy with the Aztecs. He gets the Totonacs on side initially by...

capturing an Aztec tax collector. Now, the most important allies that he picks up are the Tlaxcalans. They hate the Aztecs, absolutely hate the Aztecs. I feel like the Spanish have arrived...

There's not that many of them. No. They seem very annoying. They're going around telling people what to do. Oh, you can do that and I'll do that. And it's like, why don't they, the Tutanaks and the Mayans and everybody, they get together and go, let's just kill these Spanish guys because they are a pain in the butt. And they keep talking about some guy called Jesus. I don't know who he is. What do you say? I mean, it seems like somebody missed a trick very early on. Yeah, well, the Tlaxcalans, at one point, it seems like the Tlaxcalans might actually finish them off.

The Spanish really have to think about their tactics in order to not be killed, basically. So we have to conquer Tenochtitlan. Well, we're not going to do it. Cortes is going to do it. A vast, vast citadel, an incredibly sophisticated, huge city. Yeah. And 600 Spaniards show up.

And some allies. Yeah, with about 2,000 slash talons, probably. So about 2,500 people show up on the doors of this vast imperial citadel.

And they just, what, bring the doorbell and say, hello, we've come to conquer you? So along the way, obviously Moctezuma has heard about this. He has people all over his empire who can kind of go back and tell him things. So he's the Aztec emperor? Yes, we call the Tlatelani is the real word, which means he who speaks, but we tend to call him the emperor. He has spies that have told him about all of this, that they're these weird guys, weird people.

Is he not, like...

We've got to do something about these guys. Yeah, well, they set traps for them, which were intercepted by the Tashkalans, by Melintzin. They found out about things that were... OK, so Cortez is about to step on various booby traps. Yeah, basically. Melintzin's like, don't step on that, don't eat that. No, that's not a fruit. That's a grenade. Yeah. Moctezuma also sends people out with gifts and things. Chocolate? Yeah, probably. But also gold, which is not...

So in Aztec terms, that's basically a show of power and it would have sent the message of back off. I've got all of this power. But obviously... Yeah, to Cortez, he's like... To Cortez, he's like, these guys love us. They're giving us gold. This is great. Come on.

Hi! And so we know that Moctezuma meets Cortés. Yes, yes, on a causeway. And then suddenly the city falls. I mean, that's very truncated. Yes. Moctezuma invites them into the city. So his idea, and he's been painted very badly for this,

but there's a few reasons why he does this for a start once they're in the city they're at their mercy they're their hosts basically so they can control them to a certain extent their weapons don't work quite as well either in the confines of the city

But also Moctezuma would have been thinking, well, we can't have a battle kind of outside of the city because if it looks like we're losing, everyone else is going to join. Going to pile on. Oh, right. Exactly. They're going to control the narrative. Yes. So they first meet, it's November. So definitely by April. So they're there for ages. So November 1519. Yes. Six months later. So definitely.

definitely by then but probably sooner Cortez basically kidnaps Moctezuma yeah and they have this very strange thing where Moctezuma's pretending that everything's fine because if he lets on his people will essentially get rid of him and get the next Aztec emperor I mean have they not noticed there's something going on yes well he pretends that they're just like

At leisure together. It's very weird. This weird situation where he's got hold of Moctezuma gets... It comes to an end because Cortes hears that Velazquez has finally got his together. Oh, I forgot about him. We forgot about Velazquez, didn't we? And sent a massive army to arrest Cortes. So I think it's May, May of 1520, basically, Cortes hears he has to race off to the Gulf Coast and...

He manages to convince those guys to join him. Nice. He is very persuasive, this guy. He's a charmer. He is a charmer. In the meantime, he leaves a guy called Pedro de Alvarado in charge of...

And we don't know if he does hear these rumours or not, but his version of events is that he hears rumours that the Aztecs are going to attack them. So they engage in a massive massacre, basically. And so Moctezuma appears on a terrace to convince his people to sort of calm down. Yeah. And then...

Somehow he dies. Yeah, so... I'm sure his people killed him. His people aren't very happy with him, obviously. Actually, Melinton also goes on the terrace and tries to convey his messages. The conquistadors' version of events is that he is hit with a slingshot and later dies of his wounds. However, the indigenous version of events is that he gets stabbed.

basically, by Cortés because he's no longer of any use, basically. So that's the end of Montezuma. Cortés is now in control, I think we can say. It's quite interesting because I didn't know, and this makes a lot of sense, that the Spanish had allies amongst other indigenous communities or people. I just assumed that all of the Aztecs were murdered by the conquistadors, like the Spanish. But they actually...

They actually got help. Cortes then continues and Mexico is conquered by Spain and it becomes part of the Spanish Empire and sends home all the silver and gold back to Spain. So that's sort of the conquest story. And then Melintzin, at this point, has kind of done her job. No. She could...

Could she not just go, all right, job done, thanks so much, I'm off? She's so important that she becomes part of the conversion effort as well to begin with. And she also is involved in other missions that Cortez goes on, like to Honduras, for example. So she's, yeah, she continues to be his right-hand woman.

I mean, they have a kid together, don't they? They do. We have no idea, obviously, how consensual that was. But they have a child called Martín. The interesting thing about Melintzin is that's sort of where the story ends. She dies quite young. She dies in 1529. She's barely 30 yet, if that. So that's quite sad. And that's where we leave her in the story. Martín gets sent to Spain and actually lives with the Spanish nobility.

Spanish royalty. Okay. So he and Cortés formally recognises him as his son as well. Do we know how she died or...? I think she just kind of succumbed in the end got one of the many diseases that the Europeans so kindly brought over. Yeah.

And she was so young. It's like she really only, in that whole period, was around for a decade. And within that decade, she had such a huge influence. I think also when you're a young woman and you've got literally no agency, you grab it where you can, don't you? You do. How does history view her? Do historians view her kindly? Not so much. Well, historians, it depends on...

So essentially we have the big, great, great, I'm putting...

quotation marks around that historian of the conquest who's a Victorian and the Victorians have a lot to answer for in terms of history being written called William Prescott he is the biggest Cortez fanboy he is obsessed with Cortez he does say she's important but he also sexualises her quite a lot and talks about basically that her linguistic skills also included the language of love and

I mean, where's he getting that from? There's absolutely no evidence of that at all. Dirty old man. Yeah. So for a long time, Cortes was viewed favourably for many centuries and would have been lauded and applauded. This brings us to my next question, actually, Amy, because for so long, Cortes has been on the run from the Spanish authorities. People have been sending armies after him. But he finally conquers Mexico, which means presumably he gets to go to the King of Spain

hello, this is yours because of me, so do you want to let me off and give me a job? I mean, does he get a reward? So, yes, he does. Initially, he becomes the governor of what they call New Spain, which is what Mexico is called initially. Yeah, he does get rewarded. He also makes sure to have his letters published very quickly. So they're all... I think there's five of them and they're all published by 1525, just so...

His legacy is secure. He gets made governor of Mexico, but it doesn't always... He's too hot-headed, isn't he? He is. He can't just settle for something and go, this is fine, this is enough. No, he... Uh-oh, what does he do? Well, he gets too big for his boots, basically. He's been too big for his boots for about two decades. So, yeah, so the king appoints an investigator, Ponce de Leon, to come after him, strips him of his governorship in 1526...

Yeah, so Ponce de Leon dies quite soon after he arrives. The second guy who is sent to investigate him also dies within like eight months. What are they dying from? I think they're dying from Cortez, that's probably. Yeah, we don't know. I mean, some people have said it might have been Cortez.

Cortes but we're not 100% sure about that but yeah in 1528 Cortes goes back to Spain to talk to the king he's well received he's even given a title he's removed from being the governor of New Spain but he's given he's made the Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca all

of the men in this entire historical period. Jen, you're holding your eyes like you've got a migraine. Absolutely appalling human beings. Despite us knowing all of this, Cortez is a hero.

Well, I mean... Not now, but then. He's constantly investigated, isn't he? Yes. They're constantly trying to investigate him for murder, for embezzlement, for not following orders. He is ruthless, he is avaricious. Even the Spanish think that. But he gets away with it. How does he die in the end? Does Moxizuma get his revenge, as the famous idiom would have it? Well, so he dies of, we think, pleurisy, but just before that he has a really bad case of dysentery. Good! LAUGHTER

I mean, what a way to go.

Yeah, it sounds like a horrible death and, you know, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Nice guy, truly. OK, so pleurisy is probably what killed him, but dysentery probably didn't help. OK, so there you go, Jen. Hernán Cortés and Melintzin. It's quite the story, isn't it? It is quite the story. It's quite a sad story. It's tragic, really. There's no part of it that isn't... He is genuinely one of the most unpleasant men in...

In history, I would say. He's a truly awful human being. And sure, Melindson, by proxy, you could say, yeah, but, you know, she was no saint either. And that is absolutely true. But the power dynamic there was so, you know, you can't compare the two. You're looking at a young girl who was enslaved and was trying to survive. Yeah.

And she wasn't to know how it was going to turn out, you know, that it was going to end up being some sort of genocidal mania. And then this Cortez guy was just like total narcissist psychopath. Good guy. Good guy. Good guy. The nuance window.

Time now for the Nuance Window. This is the part of the show where Jen and I machete our way through the jungle for two minutes while Amy tells us something we need to know about Melinsin. So my stopwatch is ready. You've got two minutes. Take it away, Dr Amy. So sadly, after Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, Melinsin's public reputation went downhill.

There was a desire to reclaim the history of the nation from the coloniser and to explain how the conquest happened. But unfortunately, this led to her becoming a scapegoat. She's often referred to as the Mexican Eve, a traitor and a whore who betrayed her people, despite the fact that she wasn't Aztec, nor did she have much agency of her own.

Weirdly, the hundreds of thousands of indigenous allies do not get blamed. They're presented as being tricked by Cortez into fighting against Moctezuma the tyrant. Yet she is not awarded the same dispensation.

However, as depressing as all that is, let's reflect on how she was viewed by her contemporaries, largely because it's quite annoying for Cortés and his fanboys. So not only did the other conquistadors testify that she was absolutely fundamental to the conquest, so much so that they could not have achieved their victory without her, but the Tlaxcalans in their pictorial sources present her in every scene that Cortés features, even in amongst the fighting, like a real badass.

And sometimes she's even depicted as bigger than him, basically insinuating that she was more important than him. And in fact, because she was always in Cortés' company, the indigenous people they spoke to referred to Cortés as the captain of Marina or Malinche. This not only demonstrates her importance to the native allies, but even better, it effectively demoted Cortés because he was named in terms of his relationship with her allies.

I actually am team Balintzin. I'm sure I didn't turn out great in the long term, but I think she did what she had to do to survive. Listener, if you're bursting for more Brista, check out our episode on Emma of Normandy with all the elf-givus. For more Mexican history or famous interpreters, you can do the Aztecs episode, Series 1, the Sacagawea episode, or the Colombian Exchange episode, which is about Columbus and after.

That fact. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with friends, subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds, and also make sure to switch on your notifications so you never miss an episode.

I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In History Corner, we had the amazing Dr Amy Fuller from Nottingham Trent University. Thank you, Amy. Thanks for having me. It was great fun. And in Comedy Corner, we had the brilliant Jen Brister. Thank you, Jen. Oh, what a delight. I've really enjoyed it. And thank you, Amy. I've learned a lot. And to you lovely listeners, join me next time as we translate another overlooked historical story. But for now, I'm off to write a long letter to the King of Spain, blaming someone else for all of my failures. Bye!

From BBC Radio 4, this is What Seriously? I'm Dara O'Brien. And I'm Izzy Sutty. And in our new series, we're bringing you short stories and tall tales. What Seriously? is packed with real-life strange but true stories that make you go, What Seriously? and provide you with excellent social ammo to impress your friends. The twist is we don't know how each story unfolds and we'll have to figure it out one fragment at a time with our special guests who each have a mysterious connection to the tale. That's right. I am your spy expert.

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