Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel says it is time for a re-examination of what resulted from the clash and combination of European and indigenous cultures in Mexico since the early 16th century, and progress beyond what has become a knee-jerk condemnation of the Spanish side. "The time has come for a better understanding of our mixture of races and to weigh all that the Spaniards brought" to the Mexico whose history began in 1519, she said in an interview with EFE at the presentation of her latest novel, "Malinche" (Suma de Letras, 2006).
"Official" Mexican culture makes something of a cult of the pre-Columbian native world while demonizing the Spanish conquerors, who engaged in widespread massacre, enslavement, rape and robbery. For example, Aztec resister Moctezuma is a popular hero, while Hernán Cortés is universally a complete villian.
At the same time, European-descended and mestizo Mexicans who speak Spanish, the language of the conquerors, have exercised political and economic power since the conquest, while the indigenous - about 10 percent of the population - have languished in abject poverty.
Esquivel called it necessary to cultivate more empathy and sympathy for La Malinche, an indigenous woman stigmatized for having been the interpreter and lover of Cortés.
"I took on writing the book because she seems to me a marvelous character, and when I began to reconstruct her spiritual world, her intellectual world, I found her a very complex, exciting, fascinating person," the writer said.
The 55-year-old author of "Como agua para chocolate" (Like Water for Chocolate), among other works, said she first began piecing together the emotional structure of "Malinche" from the critical moments of her leading character´s life - from the time she is delivered as a slave until she disappears into the chronicles of the conquistadors.
But Esquivel, who lives in New York, not only wrote the story but also created a manuscript of pictographs in which she narrates through images the most significant moments of her heroine´s life.
The novel about the Malinche, or Malinalli as she is also known, is "a universal story" because it sets forth two ways of seeing the world, the indigenous way and the conquistadors´ way, Esquivel said.
"These two worldviews are so opposed that they are still in conflict today, which is why I believe this novel will resonate the world over," she said.
Esquivel said that despite being fictionalized history, all the events in the book really happened and were taken from an extensive bibliography, although they may not have occurred exactly as she describes them.
"I tried to have Malinche´s grandmother say all that was important for me to transmit so that what comes across very clearly is her cultural past, her relationship with her ancestors and the cosmos, with the elements of fire, earth, air and water," Esquivel said.
