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ETHNOHISTORY/INDIGENOUS POLITICS Malintzin's Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico. By Camilla Townsend. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. Pp. xv, 287. Illustrations. Maps. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $23.95 paper.
Malinche is so well know in Mexico today-and probably as well known to scholars of Latin American history-that it is hard to imagine that she was given merely passing attention in the sixteenth century and more or less forgotten until the nineteenth. But, of course, the well-known Malinche is not the historical Malintzin, but a post-1820s construct, one batted about over the last two centuries between competing visions of Mexico's national genesis and identity.
That mythical Malinche has been thoroughly deconstructed and reassembled, but the historical figure has been relatively ignored. This is partly because Malintzin lived a short, poorly-documented life. As Camilla Townsend observes at the start of Malintzin 's Choices, "a traditional biography of Malinche . . . cannot be done" (p. 5). Not to...