Malinche by Laura Esquivel Read Free Book Online Page B

characteristics was destined for failure, and perhaps because of this his parents had made sure they provided him with a good education.
    During the Mass, Cortés remembered the moment that he had said good-bye to his mother before leaving for the New World. He remembered her tears, her grief, and the portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe she had given him so that she would always be with him. Cortés was sure that it was the Virgin who had saved his life after the scorpion had bitten him and he asked at that time that she never abandon him, that she watch over him, that she become his ally and help him triumph. He wanted to prove to his mother that he could be more than a simple page in the service of the new king.
    He was prepared to do anything. To disobey orders, to fight, to kill. It wasn’t enough to have been mayor of Santiago de Cuba. He wasn’t troubled over having ignored the instructions of Governor Diego Velázquez, according to which it was recommended not to take risks, to treat the Indians wisely, to gather information about the secrets of that mysterious land, and to find Grijalva, who had led the previous expedition. Cortés had come on a voyage of exploration, not of conquest; with the aim of discovering, not of populating. What Velázquez expected from him was to explore the coastal regions of the gulf and to return to Cuba with some gold as ransom, peacefully obtained; but Cortés was much more ambitious than that.
    If his mother could have seen him now—conquering new lands, discovering new places, naming new things. The sense of power that he felt when he gave something or someone a new name must be comparable, he imagined, to that of giving birth. The things that he named were born in that moment and began a new life because of him. The bad part of this was that at times his imagination failed him. Cortés was good at strategizing, forming alliances, conquering, but not at inventing original names. Perhaps that was why he so admired the sonority and musicality of the Mayan and Náhuatl languages. He was incapable of coming up with names like Quiahuiztlan, Otalquiztlan, Tlapacoyan, Iztacamaxtitlan, or Pontonchan, so he searched the Spanish language to name each person and place them under his power in the most conventional way possible. For example, the Totonacan village of Chalchicueyecan he renamed Veracruz, since he had arrived there on the twenty-second day of April 1519, a Good Friday, the day of the True Cross, la Verdadera Cruz: hence, Vera Cruz.
    The same happened with the Indians that he had just been given. He chose the commonest names for their baptism, not bothering himself much about the matter. However, this didn’t prevent him from listening to the Mass before the baptism with great fervor. He was moved by the zeal in the eyes of the natives, despite the fact that the Mass as such was completely new to them. What he didn’t realize was that, for the natives, changing the names or the forms of their gods did not pose a problem. Each of their gods was known by at least two different names and appeared to them in different shapes, so the fact that a Spanish Virgin had been placed in the pyramid where before they had worshipped their ancient gods, was something that could be overcome with faith.
    Cortés, who had been an altar boy, had never felt a faith so united. And he thought that if these natives, instead of directing their faith toward a false god, would channel it with the same eagerness toward the true god, they were going to be able to produce great miracles. This thought led him to conclude that perhaps it was his true mission to save all the natives from darkness, to put them in touch with the true faith, to end idolatry and the nefarious practice of human sacrifice. In order to accomplish this, he needed to establish power, which could only be gained by challenging the mighty empire of Montezuma. With all the faith he could summon, he prayed to