La Malinche / Hernan Cortes

La Malinche / Hernan Cortes

The purpose of this study is to understand what the story of La Malinche and Hernan Cortes reveal about the role of secrecy in erotic love for the purpose of understanding the logic or illogic reasoning of those who are "in love" by using a hermeneutic qualitative design method, resulting in a collective picture of the human experience in love, which will hopefully give us an understanding of why secrecy is more prominent in erotic love than it is in romantic love and what the repercussions of this are. At this stage in the research, the role of secrecy in erotic love as pertaining to the story of La Malinche and Hernan Cortes, will be defined by Jung's research on anima and animus, as well as selected works by other authors that pertain to the topic of secrecy in erotic love and lovers, in general.

A variation of the above purpose statement for quantitative research is the following: The purpose of this study is to verify the theory La Malinche's love for Cortes was imbued with many secrets in her heart, which were the cause of both her gender as well as her culture. La Malinche broke free from the patriarchal rules that were supposed to keep her in her traditional role. Her love and desire for Cortes pulled something else out of her that was perhaps unconscious and it allowed her to go against all of her people and help her lover take control of her and her people's country.

2. Introduction

La Malinche is an important woman in the history of Mexico, patriarchal story tellers have made her into the quintessential representation of female sexuality at its worst as well as a woman who is passive and wanting to be raped at the same time -- and she is always blamed and guilty of her betrayal to her culture and people.

La Malinche was forced to live with secrecy in her heart because she was not in a world that allowed her to be the feminine she wanted to be. She had to lie to herself in order to become aware of her own existence and, in a way, this blinded her. Another aspect of secrecy in love is that lovers often use secrecy to keep their love alive -- as part of the belief that when love is out in public it never lasts. Having a secret lover can often be more intriguing than the actual lover and it can make people do things that they wouldn't normally do -- as the world learned from the tragic story of Medea. Being secret lovers was necessary for Cortes and La Malinche. Secrecy is a part of erotic love as it adds an element of suffering and Jung would probably agree that La Malinche did not realize what she was doing when she murdered her son because love had prompted her to act irrationally and, for her, the love that she felt as a lover was stronger than that love that she felt as a mother, which is another element that needs to be considered when researching the reasons that La Malinche did what she did.

Justo Sierra, a historian of Mexican political identity, wrote that the Mexican nationality was born "from the first kiss of love" between Cortes and Malinche (Singer & Kimbles 41). The story of La Malinche and Hernan Cortes is of special interest to me because Malinche's betrayal of her country and people appeared to be incredibly incongruous with her culture and, because of these actions, she represents the ultimate symbol of female sexuality as she went against her people in the name of love for Cortes -- a man that she should not have loved and helped.

La Malinche, essentially, betrayed her people and went against male dominance and authority, which thus threatened her culture as a whole. She did it for the love of Cortes who was her owner and her lover as well as the father of her son. The threat solidified her as a symbol of female sexuality that is at once disparaged and kept under control in the Mexican culture (Michan 2003: 34).

The dual aspect of La Malinche's legendary history shows that a woman's dependence on men for her importance and security leads to forced passivity, loss of identity, violation and abandonment. Despite the continuing scape-goating of what La Malinche stands for in the culture today, her press to develop herself and her independence, as well as her bridging function, has a still perceivable lineage, albeit in nascent form, in the individual Mexican psyche (Michan 2003: 34).

The story of Malinche and Cortes is a love story -- not a romantic story, which is important to understand when considering the presence of secrecy in their affair. They do not live happily ever after as romances almost always end; instead, Malinche is joined into a conscious union with a man who has essentially violated her -- not unlike a lot of the Mexican women at the time who were taken as mistresses by Spaniards except for the fact that she loved the man who violated her. She loved Cortes and stayed by his side and made him promise to stay with her in Mexico. He also cared for her, taking care of her son and making sure that he got an education as well as a position in government. He also made sure that Malinche had a husband when he went back to Spain (Singer & Kimbles 2004: 43). "The bright aspect of La Malinche's story can be recognized only if we realize that for betrayal to happen, there also has to be love" (2004: 43) -- an interesting statement to consider.