The importance of women in early Spanish society

According to Gregory Rodriguez, in his book “Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds,” women played an integral part of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Women were important in the Spanish conquest of Mexico because many were given as gifts to establish political relationships, they were used to help convert the natives to Christianity, and through intermarriage, a new peoples emerged.

Along with food, gold, jewels, cotton, and other gifts, the most highly sought after treasure is the native Indian woman. Not only did the Spanish seek after the women, there was a political reason for the caciques to offer them as gifts to Hernán Cortés. Rodriguez quotes “anthropologist Pedro Carrasco, ‘the donation of women as a way of establishing and maintaining political relations was customary in ancient Mexico’” (11). Most of the women donated were slaves, but some were the various caciques’ own daughters. These special girls were given to Cortés’s senior commanders. After a while, “many ordinary soldiers seem to have found girls too” (11).

The Mayans originally gave one such slave girl, Malinali, to Cortés after a bloody battle. Cortés initially gave Malinali, who after baptism became Doña Marina, to Alonso Hernández Puertocarreero. Doña Marina had a talent that turned out to be very valuable to Cortés, bilingualism. Doña Marina spoke Nahuatal, the “lingua franca of the Aztec empire,” as well as Mayan (6). Upon discovering Doña Marina’s skill, Cortés “appointed her his interpreter and gave Hernández Puertocarreero another Indian Woman” (7). Doña Marina soon learned Spanish as well, and became Cortés’s voice to the Indians. Rodriguez wrote, “[Doña Marina] became both the go-between for all crucial communications with the Indians as well as...

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...certificate of whiteness” (53). Laws that pertained to the Sistema were hard, if not impossible, to enforce. As time progressed, “social status became determined more on money than by race,” wealth greatly influenced social status (54).

In conclusion, if not for early Indian women, Mexico’s population, and religion would be entirely different. If not for Doña Marina’s bilingualism, Cortés would have had a much harder time communicating with the Indians. It would have slowed the conquest down, and there could have been a very different outcome. In accepting women as gifts from the caciques, and baptizing them, Christianity spread rapidly. The Indians, to appease the Spanish, surrendered their gods. Most importantly, the children of the Spanish, Indian, and black created new racial groups, and a hierarchal system to classify them.

Works Cited

Gregory Rodriguez,