Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche examines the historical and cultural legacy of the Indigenous woman at the heart of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico (1519-1521). A controversial and enigmatic figure with a complicated life story, the woman known colloquially as Malinche played a central role in the major and minor transactions, negotiations, and conflicts between the Spanish and the Indigenous populations of Mexico. Traitor, Survivor, Icon establishes and examines her symbolic importance and the ways artists, scholars, activists, and everyday women have appropriated and used her as means of expression.

The exhibition premiered at the Denver Art Museum earlier this year and was co-curated by Denver Art Museum’s Curator of Art of the Ancient Americas Victoria I. Lyall and independent curator Terezita Romo.

The year 2021 marked the quincentennial of the fall of Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire. In 1519, Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes landed along the Gulf coast of Mexico with a small expeditionary party. As he and his men interacted and fought with the Maya and Nahuatl speaking peoples of the region, language was a nearly insurmountable barrier. When they reached the present-day state of Tabasco on the Gulf of Mexico, Cortes received a gift of twenty young women from a local ruler. One of them was a teen-aged girl who was baptized Marina and later referred to as Malinche. Though her origins remain obscure, she clearly had ties to the region, and was fluent in both Nahuatl and Maya. She skillfully leveraged her linguistic gifts in order to survive. Over the course of the next two years, as the Spanish and their Tlaxcalan allies suffered setbacks and eked out victories before their final triumph over the Aztec in August of 1521, Malinche would become Cortes' translator, cultural interpreter, and eventually, the mother of their child. While her original name is lost to history, both Spanish and Indigenous accounts of the Aztec Spanish Waragree on the pivotal role this young woman played in one of the most significant events of modern history.

Text: https://www.cabq.gov/artsculture/albuquerque-museum/exhibitions/la-malinche

Exhibition Schedule for Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche 

Denver Art Museum

(February 6–May 8, 2022)

Albuquerque Museum

(June 11–September 4, 2022)

San Antonio Museum of Art

(October 14, 2022–January 8, 2023)

Above image: Mapa for Malinche and our Stolen Sisters, 97 X 97 in, hand processed watercolor and 23k gold on amate paper. Collection of the artist. Image courtesy of Denver Art Museum.