Hernán Cortés and Malintzin: the Spanish conquest of Mexico

Greg Jenner is joined in 16th-Century Mexico by Dr Amy Fuller and comedian Jen Brister to learn about Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his translator Malintzin. In 1521, the powerful Aztec empire was brutally conquered by the Spanish, led by the ambitious and fanatical Hernán Cortés. After a falling-out with his boss in Cuba, Cortés disobeyed orders and led an expedition party into Mexico. He was helped in his conquest by local peoples who bore a grudge against the Aztecs, chief amongst them the woman who became his translator: Malintzin. A skilled linguist, Malintzin was given to Cortés upon his arrival in Mexico, but after gaining her freedom was central to Cortés’s success. The two even had a son together. This episode tells the story of Cortés and Malintzin before, during and after the conquest, exploring how an Indigenous woman came to translate for a conquistador. From Malintzin’s murky childhood to Cortés’s desperate attempts to impress the king of Spain, via the rumours that he killed his first wife and the complicated politics of Mexico, we examine these two intertwined lives. If you’re a fan of bloody conquests, Indigenous histories and women surviving at any cost, you’ll love our episode on Cortés and Malintzin. If you want more from Jen Brister, check out our episode on Emma of Normandy. And for more Latin American history, listen to our episodes on the Aztecs and the Columbian Exchange. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Aida Abbashar Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Ben Hollands Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: James Cook

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:14Greg Jenner?

  Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. Today, we are sharpening our language skills and sailing across the Atlantic to 16th century Mexico to learn all about the conquistador Hernán Cortés and his indigenous translator, Malintzin. And to help us understand this pair, we have a pair of very special guests. In history corner, she's a senior lecturer in the history of the Americas at Nottingham Trent University. Her research focuses on early modern Spain and Mexico, specifically religion, identity and empire. It's Dr Amy Fuller. Welcome, Amy. Thanks for having me. Delighted to have you here. And in comedy corner, she's a stand-up comedian, actor and writer. You'll have seen her on all the TV shows, including Live at the Apollo, Mock the Week,

• 1:58Greg Jenner?

  Frankie Boyle's New World Order. Perhaps you've seen her on tour or read or listened to her hilariously honest memoir, The Other Mother. I love the audiobook. Or her podcast, WTB, which I think is short for a slightly ruder title. And you'll definitely remember her from our episode on Emma of Normandy, an absolute classic. It's Jen Brister. Welcome, Jen. Oh, Greg, it's an absolute pleasure. We had a lot of fun last time in medieval England, trying to remember that everyone was called Elfgivu. Oh, my God, what a name, Elfgivu.

• 2:25Speaker 05

  And not only that, not understand or not having any knowledge about my own history, like, that is quite something. And now, I'm half, I'm half English and I'm half Spanish. So, what I've realised is, in the last episode, I knew nothing about English history. And today, it'll be proven I know nothing about Spanish history.

• 2:44Greg Jenner?

  And Mexican history?

• 2:46Speaker 05

  Mexican history, even less.

• 2:47Greg Jenner?

  Okay. Do you know the name Cortez? I feel like he's a fairly big name from history.

• 2:53Speaker 05

  I recognise the name Cortez, but it wasn't, and I thought, I don't, who is this chap? And it was after I, I did a cursory Google, Amy, I hope you won't mind, that I went, oh, that guy?

• 3:03Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 3:04Speaker 05

  Yeah. So I do, unlike last time I was on the podcast, where I had absolutely no knowledge at all of what was going on, I would say I have three and a half percent more knowledge on this particular subject.

• 3:14Greg Jenner?

  Oh, wow.

• 3:15Speaker 05

  So, yeah, guys, wait till you're wowed.

• 3:17Greg Jenner?

  So, what do you know?

• 3:24Greg Jenner?

  This is the So What Do You Know?, where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. I'm guessing you've heard the name Cortez, the conquistador. I feel like it's a name that's in the ether. He's appeared in all kinds of TV shows and films, most notably as the big baddie in the DreamWorks animation, The Road to El Dorado. But unless you are Mexican or maybe American, I suspect Malintzin, I'd imagine she's perhaps a lot less familiar as a name. She's the subject of several Spanish language plays, operas and books, and appears in some famous murals. One painted by Diego Rivera in Mexico City, he was the husband of Frida Kahlo.

• 3:59Speaker 05

  Oh, yes, I do know who he is. Look at me, one point already, well done.

• 4:04Greg Jenner?

  Now, Malintzin has also been confusedly conflated with the Mexican folk tale of the wailing woman, La Llorona?

• 4:11Speaker 05

  La Llorona.

• 4:12Greg Jenner?

  Thank you. A vengeful ghost who drowns her own children. Yeesh, you don't want that in a children's movie, do you?

• 4:18Speaker 06

  Sometimes she stabs them. Depends on the version.

• 4:21Speaker 05

  I don't think he's gonna take up that story.

• 4:23Greg Jenner?

  No, no. But what's the real story of Cortez and Malintzin, its own different horror story involving ghosts and stabbings, maybe? How have their reputations changed over time? And what exactly is Moctezuma's revenge? Let's find out. Today, we're doing a bit of a buy one, get one free biography. We'll start with Cortez, purely because he happened to be born first. So, Amy, who was he? Is he an aristocrat? You know, when he's born, is he rich?

• 4:48Speaker 06

  We don't know what his first name actually was. It was either Fernando or Hernando, which was, has been contracted to a nan. So we always call him a nan Cortez. But his name was Fernando or Hernando Cortez de Monroy y Pizarro Alta Mirano. He was born in 1485 in Medellín, which is in Extremadura in Spain. It's the central west part of Spain, bordering with Portugal. And weirdly, a lot of the conquistadors are also from here. They seem to all come from this area. So he was a hidalgo. He was petty nobility, we'd probably call him. Not very rich, no titles, but he did, would have had a duty to bear arms for his feudal lord and exemption from taxation.

• 5:33Greg Jenner?

  Fernando Hernando Cortez de Monroy y Pizarro Alta Mirano is a great name. That does sound quite noble.

• 5:39Speaker 05

  That's like three too many names, surely.

• 5:41Speaker 06

  It is. It's greedy.

• 5:42Greg Jenner?

  And what about his childhood? Was he, goes to school, educated?

• 5:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, we don't know a massive amount about him, to be honest. And there's differing ideas about how educated he was. Some people say he went to the University of Salamanca for a time. We think he probably had some legal training. Fairly well educated, I'd say. He tells us a lot about himself.

• 6:06Speaker 06

  He is his, he's his favourite subject.

• 6:09Greg Jenner?

  Gotcha. So there's an element of, okay, all right. So there's an element of him telling his own history that he wants people to know.

• 6:14Speaker 06

  Very much so.

• 6:15Greg Jenner?

  Fair enough. But in 1492, do you know what happened in 1492, Jen?

• 6:19Speaker 05

  Oh, my gosh, don't ask me. But let's, do you want me to guess?

• 6:21Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, go on.

• 6:22Speaker 05

  So he's born in 1485. So in 1492, he is, what, seven?

• 6:26Greg Jenner?

  He is.

• 6:27Speaker 05

  So he is sent away.

• 6:29Greg Jenner?

  That's a good guess.

• 6:29Speaker 05

  He's sent away to school.

• 6:31Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, well, more broadly in history, what do you think is happening in terms of Spanish history or global history in 1492?

• 6:37Speaker 05

  Some kind of war.

• 6:39Greg Jenner?

  I mean, there are a lot of wars, but it's Columbus.

• 6:42Speaker 05

  Right, so I was going to ask you to contextualise Columbus in this. Okay, go on.

• 6:47Greg Jenner?

  Hernán Cortés is seven years old. Columbus sails on behalf of the Spanish king and queen.

• 6:51Speaker 05

  Gotcha.

• 6:52Greg Jenner?

  In search of India and bumps into what's called the New World, inverted commas. It's obviously not new to the people who live there. So what makes Hernán Cortés decide he wants to follow in Columbus's wake? Because soon after, like 10, 12 years later, he's on a ship.

• 7:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, he's off to seek his fortune in the New World. He arrives in 1504, so he's 19, and he goes off to a place called Hispaniola, which is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic. At that point, that's the base of operations in what they called the Indies. At this point, the Caribbean is on its way to being decimated, basically.

• 7:30Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 7:30Speaker 06

  They kind of round up lots of indigenous people and they get them panning for gold, which kills a lot of people, mainly because they work them to death, essentially. Plus all of the disease that they bring from Europe. Cortés does make a bit of money from this initially. So the idea is that they're going to populate this new world with settlers and they, one by one, they keep going to different islands, basically.

• 7:58Speaker 05

  And murdering people.

• 7:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 8:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, okay, that sounds very familiar.

• 8:02Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 8:02Speaker 05

  And the indigenous people that lived in Haiti and in the Dominican Republic, would they have had any sort of relation to the Incas? Or, like, Mexico's not that far away.

• 8:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 8:14Speaker 05

  Were they more similar to...

• 8:16Speaker 06

  They had smaller towns, so you don't find the kind of big cities with the pyramids and things like that in the Caribbean. But you do see decent-sized kind of towns. That's been kind of rewritten to make it seem like they're just in kind of mud huts, but actually, through archaeological research, we found that they did actually live in decent-sized towns. They were supposed to go and convert them to Christianity and therefore they shouldn't have been allowed to enslave them, but they just kind of enslaved them instead.

• 8:50Speaker 05

  It happens. You pop out there to talk about Jesus Christ and before you know it, you've got, you know, 100,000 slaves.

• 8:57Greg Jenner?

  Yes. We should probably turn to Malintzin. In 1504, Cortés is 19 years old. Malintzin is a toddler at this point?

• 9:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, so we think she was born in fifteen hundred.

• 9:11Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 9:12Speaker 06

  We don't really know much about her or her early life. We think that her father was of some kind of nobility.

• 9:20Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 9:21Speaker 06

  But we think that her mother was enslaved. She's Nahuah, so she's from central Mexico, but she's not Aztec, that's quite important.

• 9:29Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 9:29Speaker 06

  She's from an area that gets taken over by the Aztecs. It's kind of on the Gulf Coast.

• 9:36Greg Jenner?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:36Speaker 06

  She's sold into slavery with the Maya, essentially, when she's, when she's a young girl, we think. She lives among the Maya for quite a time.

• 9:44Greg Jenner?

  And we don't even know her real name, right? We, we know her by a later.

• 9:47Speaker 06

  No, we, we only know her baptismal name, which was Marina. And Malintzin comes from that because there's no R in Nahuatl. So they would hear Malina, but they put the sin at the end, which is an honorific title. So that is essentially Doña Marina in Nahuatl.

• 10:07Greg Jenner?

  Oh, okay.

• 10:07Speaker 06

  Malintzin.

• 10:08Greg Jenner?

  So you say she was kidnapped, sold into slavery by the Maya, who were different people entirely from the Aztecs.

• 10:13Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 10:13Greg Jenner?

  Who were different people entirely from the Nahuah.

• 10:15Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 10:15Greg Jenner?

  So we.

• 10:16Speaker 06

  Well, you could be, if you were Aztec, you were Nahuah, but you didn't have to be an Aztec if you were Nahuah.

• 10:23Greg Jenner?

  Gotcha, okay.

• 10:24Speaker 05

  So she, so, so Malintzin, she is Nahuah.

• 10:28Speaker 06

  She is Nahuah.

• 10:29Speaker 05

  She's not Maya and she's not Aztec.

• 10:30Speaker 06

  Yes, no. So it's from a different group entirely.

• 10:33Speaker 05

  And the Nahuah people are.

• 10:35Speaker 06

  So they are.

• 10:37Speaker 05

  Who?

• 10:37Speaker 06

  Basically, everyone who lives in the central region of what's now Mexico. So basically where the Aztec empire was.

• 10:46Greg Jenner?

  And you've mentioned the Aztecs. In our heads, I guess, over here in, in the UK, we, we know the Aztecs as like the dominant superpower of the region.

• 10:53Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 10:54Greg Jenner?

  Is that wrong?

• 10:55Speaker 06

  No, it's not wrong. But what people often refer to them as is ancient. They call them ancient Aztecs and they're early modern, if anything, not even medieval.

• 11:05Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, this is the same time as Henry the Eighth.

• 11:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, so they, they rise to prominence in the fourteen twenties. They managed to create this empire that's spread from the Pacific to the Gulf Coast in.

• 11:18Speaker 06

  Hundred years, basically, but it's patchy and this becomes a problem later on. They don't conquer everywhere. They're not after territory. It's a very different idea than we understand an empire to be.

• 11:31Greg Jenner?

  It's a franchise? Is it like, is it like Starbucks?

• 11:33Speaker 06

  They're after tribute. They're after tribute. So both in terms of goods that they want, but also people for sacrifice. So they essentially don't bother to conquer anyone who doesn't have what they want or is too difficult to conquer.

• 11:49Greg Jenner?

  If listeners want to know more about the Aztecs, we did them in series one. So scroll all the way down in the app to the very, very beginning. But that's the political powder keg that is awaiting the Spanish spark, Jen, as you've pointed out, actually, that we've got all these different sort of power bases. But let's get back to Cortez. He's in Hispaniola. So he has, he's not got to Mexico yet.

• 12:05Speaker 06

  No, no one has at this point.

• 12:08Greg Jenner?

  He is, well, we've already heard he's doing horrible things to the indigenous peoples. He's trying to get cash, but he's got a job.

• 12:14Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 12:15Greg Jenner?

  Is he a legal job?

• 12:16Speaker 06

  Yes, so he's a notary for a while. And then in 1511, he takes part in the conquest of Cuba, which was organised by Diego Velázquez, who then becomes the governor of Cuba.

• 12:29Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 12:30Speaker 06

  Initially, Velázquez is very impressed by him. He becomes his secretary. And that's when Cortez starts to rise to prominence. He gains more wealth and power. He's granted what's called an encomienda, which is essentially, it's legal slavery, basically.

• 12:49Greg Jenner?

  Oh dear. Yeah, okay.

• 12:50Speaker 06

  It's a grant of indigenous labour. So you don't actually own the people, because they're supposedly Spanish citizens, right?

• 12:58Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 12:59Speaker 06

  But you have control of their labour. So it is basically slavery.

• 13:05Greg Jenner?

  So, okay, it's, yes. So forced labour that the Spanish crown is allowing to happen.

• 13:10Speaker 06

  Yes, yes.

• 13:11Greg Jenner?

  So the encomienda system is obviously being cooked up to exploit the indigenous peoples. But the relationship with Velázquez, who's sort of his boss, sort of his patron, sounds quite tense, Jen. It sounds quite awkward.

• 13:26Speaker 06

  Competitive?

• 13:26Greg Jenner?

  Competitive, yes. Why do you think they fell out? What do you reckon the spark was?

• 13:31Speaker 05

  You've said that Cortez is very ambitious. He probably realises that if he's going to promote himself, he probably needs Diego Velázquez's job at the bare minimum, or at least to get rid of him so that he can have more control, more authority, I don't know.

• 13:49Greg Jenner?

  I mean, that's certainly the conventional way, but actually, there's a woman involved, there's a lady.

• 13:54Speaker 05

  Oh my goodness, there's always a lady.

• 13:56Speaker 06

  There's a woman involved, yes.

• 13:56Greg Jenner?

  And it's not a love triangle.

• 13:58Speaker 06

  No.

• 13:58Greg Jenner?

  It's a love ramboid, it's a sort of weird.

• 14:01Speaker 06

  Yes, so they fall out for a few different reasons. In 1514, Cortez leads a group of settlers who aren't happy with their lot, essentially, in almost a bit of a rebellion. So that obviously doesn't go down particularly well.

• 14:17Greg Jenner?

  So you were sort of right there, Jen, he tries to strike out on his own, doesn't quite land, okay.

• 14:22Speaker 06

  But then he also, Cortez has a relationship with a Spanish woman, who is the sister of, so Cortez shares an encomienda with a guy called Juan Suárez. He gets involved with his sister, Catalina Suárez. That family come over with the viceroy, as his sisters become ladies in waiting. Catalina's one of them, there's the mum and about three or four sisters. Now, Velázquez is in love, apparently, with one of these other sisters.

• 14:54Greg Jenner?

  Oh no.

• 14:54Speaker 06

  And so there's an understanding that if you get engaged to a woman, then you can start sleeping together. And so Cortez gets engaged to Catalina, and then fobs her off, tries to run away.

• 15:07Greg Jenner?

  Ooh.

• 15:08Speaker 06

  And apparently because Velázquez was in love with her sister, he puts, he throws her in.

• 15:15Greg Jenner?

  Jobs for the family honour, yeah, okay.

• 15:16Speaker 06

  And he throws Cortez in prison for this.

• 15:20Speaker 05

  So that he, so he asks for Catalina's hand in marriage, so that he can sleep with her.

• 15:26Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 05

  And then goes, do you know what, I'm not into this anymore.

• 15:29Greg Jenner?

  Yep.

• 15:30Speaker 05

  I've slept with you, but I've actually don't want to do this engagement. And so then Velázquez goes, oh, you can't do that. So I'm going to defend my, your, her sister's honour.

• 15:39Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 15:39Speaker 06

  Yes, yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 05

  And now I'm going to, what, have a duel?

• 15:42Greg Jenner?

  Chuck him in prison?

• 15:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, because it was legally binding.

• 15:46Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 15:47Speaker 06

  And you could, if you were kind of the scorned fiance, you could sue. So that's essentially what Catalina did. And then eventually he relents and goes, okay, all right, I'll marry you then.

• 15:59Greg Jenner?

  Ah.

• 16:00Speaker 05

  That is the most romantic.

• 16:01Greg Jenner?

  What a wonderful rom com.

• 16:02Speaker 05

  Oh, that's the happy ending we were all looking for.

• 16:05Greg Jenner?

  Come on, Richard Curtis, pull your finger out. This is the story you want to see. Run to the airport, run to the jail cell. I love you really, probably, I don't know, these, these, you know.

• 16:14Speaker 05

  That's a great title. I love you maybe, probably, I don't know really.

• 16:19Greg Jenner?

  I have to point out again, Jen, I'm so sorry, but we're in a, we're in a double name situation again. We had Elguifu, Elguifu, Elguifu multiple times and we've got Catalina, Catalina. Because Cortez's mum is Catalina.

• 16:30Speaker 05

  Oh, no, this, right, this is gonna, already.

• 16:32Speaker 06

  He also calls one of his children Catalina.

• 16:34Speaker 05

  Come on, there's other names, guys. There's other names.

• 16:37Greg Jenner?

  This is why we've got you back, Jen. We only do it for episodes where we share names.

• 16:42Speaker 05

  I appreciate it.

• 16:42Greg Jenner?

  So, okay, so his wife begrudgingly is Catalina Suarez. Catalina Cortez or does she keep the Suarez?

• 16:48Speaker 06

  Oh, no, they don't change, they don't change their names. So she continues with her name. But this seems to mend the rift with Velázquez. And so Cortez becomes the mayor of Santiago in Cuba, so.

• 17:00Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so he does get a promotion. So he does, yeah, he gets a nice.

• 17:03Speaker 05

  Oh, it's a happy ending for the good guy.

• 17:05Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 17:06Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, great, great. So Cortez and Velázquez are besties again. He was climbing the ranks, he was the mayor of Santiago. And then in 1518, Velázquez gave him another promotion. And, and this one is an expedition promotion. I want you to go and explore, conquer?

• 17:24Speaker 06

  Well, explore and trade were the, were the orders.

• 17:30Greg Jenner?

  The age old trade. Can you go and trade, please? And bring lots of swords, yeah. And where is he going?

• 17:36Speaker 06

  So he's off to the Yucatan. In 1517, they finally, even though they're right next to it, it takes them forever to find the Yucatan. It's just there.

• 17:47Greg Jenner?

  And Yucatan is the peninsula of eastern Mexico, right? I've been there on holiday, it's lovely, but.

• 17:53Speaker 06

  So there are two expeditions before Cortez's expedition. So the first one goes in February of 1517. That's led by a guy called Francisco Hernández de Cuadra. Many of the people didn't survive. They basically get attacked by the mayor and most of them die, including the leader of the expedition. Um, but they they realise that there's a place with these big cities and so they think, hmm, want wanna investigate that.

• 18:24Greg Jenner?

  So you say, we say promotion, but is this Velázquez sending Cortés off to his death?

• 18:28Speaker 06

  Well, the second, so the second expedition which leaves in fifteen eighteen in in May is led by another guy called Juan de Gralva. That guy fares a little bit better and he actually manages to meet some Aztecs as well. And that's where they find out about this great city called Tenochtitlan and Moctezuma and lots of treasure and things. And so this this obviously piques Cortés's in- interest. So despite the fact that there are other candidates who would be more experienced, Velázquez gives him the job to go on the next expedition.

• 19:06Speaker 05

  So so the one in fifteen seventeen is Francisco.

• 19:10Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 19:11Speaker 05

  Doesn't go well, everyone dies. Fifteen eighteen is led by, sorry, it was named.

• 19:16Speaker 06

  Juan de Gralva.

• 19:17Speaker 05

  Juan de Gralva, okay. Okay, so Juan goes out in fifteen eighteen and and that fares a bit better because they meet the Aztecs.

• 19:25Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 19:26Speaker 05

  Nobody dies.

• 19:27Speaker 06

  Some people die, yeah, there there is.

• 19:29Greg Jenner?

  Some of them are partridge baskets, isn't it? One person died.

• 19:34Speaker 06

  There's still some death, not not quite as cata- catastrophic as the first one, but it's it's not great.

• 19:40Speaker 05

  And then Velázquez goes, listen, third time lucky.

• 19:43Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 19:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 19:44Greg Jenner?

  What do you reckon? Once more with feeling. I've got a really good, yeah, I I reckon this time they'll welcome us, yeah?

• 19:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, so this is the third, this is time, third, third, third time and he's like, I've got a good feeling for you, Cortés.

• 19:58Speaker 06

  Yes, yes. Now, Velázquez starts to hear rumours that Cortés has plans that don't involve him. And so at the last minute, Velázquez says, no, I I don't want Cortés anymore, let's let's not do this. However, Cortés kind of sticks his fingers in his ears and goes la la la la la.

• 20:18Greg Jenner?

  Oh, really?

• 20:20Speaker 06

  And he manages to, he goes to the other side of Cuba, basically, and gets more men, more supplies, and then heads off. I think he goes to another bit of Cuba and he evades arrest about four times, I think.

• 20:35Greg Jenner?

  Man, he's on the run.

• 20:36Speaker 06

  And then finally, yes, basically, finally sets off in fifteen nineteen.

• 20:41Greg Jenner?

  And he founds Vera Cruz, the first Spanish town in Mexico. He immediately divorces Velasquez from his sort of chain of command, right? He's just like, I founded a town and I am, I answer to the Spanish king. And Velasquez is dead to me and everything's fine.

• 20:57Speaker 05

  So how, war, but what about, so he's now, but he's gonna have to come back. So when he comes back, is he just gonna, um, just to let you know, I'm not listening to you anymore. I mean, how does that work?

• 21:09Speaker 06

  So he's not coming back.

• 21:10Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 21:11Speaker 05

  He's not.

• 21:11Speaker 06

  Um, Catalina's like, what? But I love you. He's not coming back, so much so that, um, he burns the boats so that no one can go back.

• 21:19Greg Jenner?

  No way. Okay, all right. So his men are like, um.

• 21:22Speaker 05

  I wanted to go back, just a little bit of feedback.

• 21:24Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, I actually left my wife and children back there, actually.

• 21:27Speaker 06

  She's like, tough, no, you're not going back.

• 21:29Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 21:30Speaker 06

  We know all about this from his first letter, essentially.

• 21:33Greg Jenner?

  It's an amazing letter.

• 21:34Speaker 06

  It is.

• 21:35Greg Jenner?

  It's not even a letter, it's like a, it's like a rant.

• 21:38Speaker 06

  It, it, it, yes. So he knows essentially that in the meantime, Velasquez will have obviously written to the king and said, look, there's this complete wrong'un who's gone, you know, rogue. He's off gallivanting, I don't even know what he's doing. And so Cortez knows all of this. So he doesn't even make it a letter from him. He makes it a letter from the town council of Vera Cruz.

• 22:05Greg Jenner?

  That he's founded.

• 22:06Speaker 06

  That he has founded. And essentially, it's an insane letter, but he essentially discredits Velasquez. He says that he is greedy, he's not doing any of the converting that he's supposed to be doing. He's only interested in his own personal wealth. He says that the first two expeditions were a total rubbish, got nowhere. That also they they were not interested in converting anyone, which, you know, was essentially the legal reason for them to be there. And so Cortez rants and rants and rants and then talks about how great he is, how he, oh, I put all of my fortune into this, every step

• 22:45Speaker 06

  of the way, I've done everything by the book, um, I've I've converted everyone to Christianity. I've made sure, you know, I took fries with me and I I I um.

• 22:55Greg Jenner?

  It's a massively long letter.

• 22:57Speaker 05

  Do you think Elon Musk read this letter and went, this guy sounds like someone I need to model my cellphone? So it, because I was going to ask you, why on earth, if you have founded a town and you're and you have had a successful expedition, isn't it that you want to go back to Spain with all of this glory and go, look at me, I did this, I've got a town, I've created this, I'm the big guy, not this guy. Why would you burn all your boats to stay?

• 23:25Speaker 06

  Because he's he's essentially a fugitive, because he's gone over the head of Velazquez, therefore he's a traitor, essentially. But lots of people write about this, saying, you know, they describe Cortez as this kind of, oh, he made all these risky decisions. And it's like, I'm sorry, if if I was going to be arrested for treason and hung, I'd be a bit of a maverick too, quite frankly.

• 23:48Speaker 05

  Right.

• 23:49Greg Jenner?

  Well, once you've done one crime, you can't go back and go, so sorry, sorry about the crime.

• 23:52Speaker 06

  And he wants to double down. He wants Tenochtitlan, he wants the treasure from Motzuma.

• 23:57Greg Jenner?

  We know he's ambitious. We know he's ambitious. So he's obviously trying to feather his own nest. Tiny bit of trivia, that's completely unrelated to the history, but I love it, is that the actor who voiced Cortez in the Road to El Dorado animation also was the voice of Winnie the Pooh. And so I'm just.

• 24:12Speaker 05

  That is upsetting.

• 24:13Greg Jenner?

  I'm just hearing the voice of Winnie the Pooh whenever Cortez speaks. Um, of course, Winnie the Pooh craves pots of honey, Cortez is after pots of money. So he's off, he's off in seeking golden glory, 1519, and he is going to meet Melanson. Finally, we get our meat cute, except it's not a meat cute, it's a meat yuck, because she is enslaved and he is arriving as a conqueror.

• 24:35Speaker 06

  Yes, so Malintzin is one of twenty girls, I guess she's only nineteen, given to the to the Spanish conquistadors by the Maya as a kind of diplomatic gesture.

• 24:48Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 24:49Speaker 06

  So, yeah, she's a present initially.

• 24:52Greg Jenner?

  Wow.

• 24:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 24:53Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 24:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 24:53Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 24:54Speaker 06

  We're not sure at one what point it becomes clear that she has really useful linguistic abilities.

• 25:01Greg Jenner?

  Right. Cortez has shown up, obviously not able to speak any of the language spoken by the indigenous people he's meeting. He's like, you know, hola, and they're like, what? So that's not going to work. So how does the translation work then? You know, if Cortez wants to say something to the Maya.

• 25:15Speaker 06

  What he also does is he picks up some Spanish men who had been shipwrecked in the Maya region and had lived with the Maya for a time.

• 25:24Greg Jenner?

  All right.

• 25:25Speaker 06

  So they could speak Spanish and Chonton Maya, I believe. So she could speak Maya and Noatl. So Cortez would speak to a guy called Hieronymo the Aguilar, and he would then speak Maya to Malintzin, and then she would speak Noatl to any Aztecs.

• 25:46Greg Jenner?

  Oh, it's like a chain of.

• 25:48Speaker 06

  Backwards, if the other way around.

• 25:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, with the old whispers, it's like, hang on a sec, I'm pretty sure I didn't say that.

• 25:54Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 25:55Speaker 05

  Yeah. But then she's got quite a lot of power, because then she can translate anything in any which way she can, once, in a way. Like, oh, yeah, he said this, did he? Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah.

• 26:05Speaker 06

  We think she learnt Spanish quite quickly. And actually Aguilar, he becomes kind of almost obsolete quite early on.

• 26:14Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, okay.

• 26:14Speaker 06

  So then she can kind of do all of it.

• 26:17Greg Jenner?

  Does she, does she become Marina then and there?

• 26:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, so she's baptised as Marina. She would never have been regarded as a slave among the Spanish.

• 26:27Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 26:27Speaker 06

  Because as soon as he starts to kind of conquer, then she's a Spanish citizen, essentially. Yeah, she's baptised and then obviously can't enslave Christians anyway, or not supposed to.

• 26:40Speaker 06

  But yeah, she she was incredibly important. They wouldn't have, you know, been able to do anything without her, essentially. Not only can she, you know, tell people what he wants to say and vice versa, but she also understands the etiquette, which is incredibly different.

• 26:57Speaker 05

  So she understands the etiquette of the Spanish and she also understands the etiquette of the of the Maian, is it the Maian people?

• 27:04Speaker 06

  The other Nawa people.

• 27:05Speaker 05

  The other Nawa people, right.

• 27:07Speaker 06

  The Maya too, but it's the Nawa people that are more

• 27:10Speaker 05

  That are in that part.

• 27:10Speaker 06

  More kind of important to the conquest.

• 27:13Greg Jenner?

  And Cortez is presumably using charm and violence, those two lovely combinat-, you know, he's he's

• 27:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, essentially, he he learns quite early on that the Aztec empire isn't as solid as he thought it was. And he also learns that there are certain groups who aren't happy with the Aztecs. He gets the Totanacs on side initially by capturing an Aztec tax collector. So the Totanacs aren't happy with the amount of tribute they're paying. So he basically captures the tax collector and says, look, join us and you'll be free.

• 27:50Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 27:51Speaker 06

  Now, the most important allies that he picks up are the Tlaxcalans. They hate the Aztecs, absolutely hate the Aztecs. But they put up a big fight against the Spanish for quite a while. They're they're not happy to go to their side, mainly because they see them with the Totanacs, who were allies of the Aztecs, essentially.

• 28:11Greg Jenner?

  So the local politics.

• 28:12Speaker 06

  We don't trust you. So there are many battles before the Tlaxcalans eventually decide to allow them to, you know, to come aside.

• 28:21Speaker 05

  I feel like the Spanish have arrived. There's not that many of them.

• 28:26Greg Jenner?

  No.

• 28:26Speaker 05

  They seem very annoying.

• 28:29Speaker 05

  They're going around telling people what to do. Oh, you can do that and I'll do that. And it's like, why don't they, the Totanacs and the Mayans and everybody, they get together and go, let's just kill these Spanish guys because they are a pain in the butt. And they keep talking about some guy called Jesus. I don't know who he is. What do you say? I mean, it seems like they, somebody missed a trick very early on.

• 28:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, the Tlaxcalans do, at one point, it seems like the Tlaxcalans might actually finish them off. The Spanish really have to think about their tactics in order to to not be killed, basically. The thing that the Spanish have, which helps them, is obviously their steel swords.

• 29:06Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 29:06Speaker 06

  And

• 29:07Greg Jenner?

  Gunpowder?

• 29:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, although.

• 29:09Speaker 05

  But that will run out, surely.

• 29:11Speaker 06

  More's been made about the gunpowder than actually, like, it it it's useful, long range.

• 29:17Greg Jenner?

  Sure.

• 29:17Speaker 06

  But what the Spanish found was they had to stay in their kind of military kind of formations and not disperse whatsoever, because the moment they dispersed, they were just picked off one by one.

• 29:29Greg Jenner?

  Right, okay.

• 29:30Speaker 06

  But also Cortez had the idea that they just needed to be really visible, so they wouldn't fight at night, that was kind of just not done. So at night Cortez would kind of say, right, we're we're going to kind of make ourselves visible, so they know that we're not dead yet, you know, we're going to keep going, we're going to keep going. And then they kept trying to send gifts to them as well to say, look, you know, we come in peace, we don't want to fight you. There are factions within the Tashkallans who, some of them don't want to join the Spanish at all, and had they got their own way, they probably would have killed them.

• 30:06Greg Jenner?

  We're talking of an army of six hundred Spanish soldiers, it's not, it's not a huge army, it's.

• 30:11Speaker 06

  No. If it had gone the other way, perhaps if they hadn't gotten that well with the Aztecs, maybe the Tashkallans would have said sod it.

• 30:19Greg Jenner?

  So we have to conquer Tenochtitlan, well, we're not going to do it, Cortez is going to do it. A vast, vast citadel, an incredibly sophisticated, huge city.

• 30:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 30:29Greg Jenner?

  And six hundred Spaniards show up, and some allies.

• 30:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, with about two.

• 30:34Greg Jenner?

  Tashkalan.

• 30:35Speaker 06

  Two thousand Tashkallans, probably.

• 30:37Greg Jenner?

  So about two and a half thousand people show up.

• 30:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 30:40Greg Jenner?

  On the doors of this vast imperial citadel, and they just, what, bring the doorbell and say, hello, we've come to conquer you?

• 30:47Speaker 06

  So along the way, obviously Motecumeh has heard about this, he he has people all over his empire who can kind of go back and tell them things. Yes, we call the the Tlatuani is the the real word, which means he who speaks, but we tend to call him the emperor, yeah.

• 31:06Greg Jenner?

  I should take that title, that's my job.

• 31:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 31:09Speaker 05

  I think we can all take that as well, I guess, yeah.

• 31:12Speaker 06

  Um, so he, he has spies that have told him about all of this. And actually, he would have known about them for at least a year before Cortez even got to set up Veracruz because the previous guy met an Aztec kind of diplomat. And so he would have known that they're these weird guys.

• 31:34Speaker 05

  Is he not like, we've got to do something about these guys?

• 31:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, they set traps for them, which were intercepted by the Toshkallans by Molyneux. And they find out about things that were.

• 31:45Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so Cortez is about to step on various booby traps.

• 31:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 31:48Greg Jenner?

  And Molyneux is like, don't step on that, don't eat that. No, that's, that's not a fruit. That's a grenade.

• 31:52Speaker 06

  Yeah. Moctezuma also sends people out with gifts and things.

• 31:57Speaker 05

  Chocolate?

• 31:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 32:00Speaker 05

  Right, chocolate Moctezuma.

• 32:01Speaker 06

  Um, but also gold, which is not, so in Aztec terms, that's basically a show of power. And it would have sent the message of back off, I've got all of this power. But obviously.

• 32:15Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, to Cortez, he's like.

• 32:16Speaker 06

  To Cortez, he's like, these guys love us.

• 32:18Greg Jenner?

  Giving us gold, this is great.

• 32:20Speaker 06

  Ding dong, hi.

• 32:23Greg Jenner?

  And, and so we know that Moctezuma meets Cortez.

• 32:26Speaker 06

  Yes, yes, of course.

• 32:27Greg Jenner?

  And then suddenly the city falls. I mean, that's, that's very truncated, but like.

• 32:31Speaker 06

  Yes, Moctezuma invites them into the city. So his idea, and he's been painted very badly for this, but there's a few reasons why he does this. For a start, um, once they're in the city, they're at their mercy, they're, they're hosts, basically. So they can control them to a certain extent. Their weapons don't work quite as well either in the confines of the city. But also Moctezuma would have been thinking, well, we can't have a battle kind of outside of the city. Because if it looks like we're losing, everyone else is going to join.

• 33:09Speaker 05

  Going to pile on.

• 33:09Greg Jenner?

  Oh, right. You're going to control the narrative.

• 33:12Speaker 06

  Yes, exactly. So although he's been, people say that he was stupid for doing this, there is, there are reasons.

• 33:20Speaker 05

  PR is important.

• 33:21Speaker 06

  It is.

• 33:22Speaker 05

  You've got to keep on top of that sort of thing.

• 33:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, so they first meet, it's November, so definitely by April, so they're there for ages.

• 33:29Greg Jenner?

  So November 15, 19.

• 33:31Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 33:31Greg Jenner?

  Six months later.

• 33:32Speaker 06

  So definitely by then, but probably sooner, but we don't know when Cortez basically kidnaps Moctezuma.

• 33:39Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 33:39Speaker 06

  And they have this very strange thing where Moctezuma's pretending that everything's fine. Because if he lets on, his people will essentially get rid of him and get the next Aztec emperor.

• 33:54Speaker 05

  I mean, have they not noticed there's something going on?

• 33:56Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well, he pretends that they're just like at leisure together. It's very weird. This weird situation where he's got hold of Moctezuma gets, it comes to an end because Cortez hears that Velázquez has finally got his together.

• 34:14Speaker 05

  Oh, I forgot about him.

• 34:15Greg Jenner?

  We forgot about Velázquez, didn't we?

• 34:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, and sent a massive army to arrest Cortez.

• 34:21Speaker 05

  So no friars, just an army?

• 34:23Speaker 06

  No, just the army, yeah. So I think it's May, May of 1520, basically. Cortez hears he has to race off to the Gulf Coast. He manages to convince those guys to join him.

• 34:35Greg Jenner?

  Nice.

• 34:36Speaker 05

  He is very persuasive, this guy. He's a charmer.

• 34:40Greg Jenner?

  He is a charmer.

• 34:41Speaker 06

  In the meantime, he leaves a guy called Pedro de Alvarado in charge. And we don't know if he does hear these rumours or not. But his version of events is that he hears rumours that the Aztecs are going to attack them. So they engage in a massive massacre, basically.

• 35:01Speaker 05

  Wait, wait, sorry. I feel like we've gone, and then there was a massacre. So, so the Spanish army have arrived.

• 35:10Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, Cortez races off to face them down.

• 35:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's got, he's, he's going, right, you guys join me. And they're like, love to.

• 35:15Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, here's all the gold I've got. Like, come get some gold.

• 35:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, look, I mean, we're loaded. Why would you stick with a Velázquez guy?

• 35:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 35:21Greg Jenner?

  Meanwhile, Pedro de Alvarado has left back in the city of Tenochtitlan.

• 35:25Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 35:26Greg Jenner?

  He then goes, oh, I've just heard the Aztecs are threatening to kill us all. We'd better kill them first.

• 35:30Speaker 06

  Yes, basically.

• 35:31Speaker 05

  So then they, he just goes on a...

• 35:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, and it's unarmed people as well. So basically, there's a big festival and they seal off this kind of temple precinct and kill.

• 35:42Speaker 05

  So that's not from...

• 35:43Speaker 06

  Lots of unarmed people.

• 35:44Speaker 05

  That's not the orders from Cortez, then?

• 35:47Speaker 06

  No, no.

• 35:48Speaker 05

  So when Cortez finds...

• 35:49Speaker 06

  Or at least Cortez tells us it's not.

• 35:51Speaker 05

  I bet you, he doesn't.

• 35:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, we can't trust him.

• 35:53Greg Jenner?

  He's not gonna leave any evidence of his complicity, is he? He knows what he's doing.

• 35:57Speaker 05

  Oh my, this Cortez guy.

• 35:59Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, and so Motecumua appears on a terrace to convince his people to to sort of calm down.

• 36:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 36:04Greg Jenner?

  And then somehow he dies.

• 36:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, so.

• 36:08Greg Jenner?

  I'm sure his people killed him.

• 36:09Speaker 06

  His people aren't very happy with him, obviously.

• 36:12Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 36:12Speaker 06

  Actually, Malintzin also goes on the terrace and tries to convey these messages. The conquistadors' version of events is that he is hit with a slingshot.

• 36:21Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 36:22Speaker 06

  And later dies of his of his wounds. However, the indigenous version of events is that he gets stabbed, basically.

• 36:30Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 36:30Speaker 06

  By Cortez, because he's no longer of any use, basically.

• 36:33Greg Jenner?

  So that's the end of Motecumua.

• 36:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 36:36Greg Jenner?

  Um, Cortez is now in in control, I think we can say.

• 36:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 36:39Speaker 05

  It's quite interesting because I didn't know, and and this makes a lot of sense, that the Spanish had allies amongst other indigenous communities or or people. I I just assumed that all of the Aztecs were murdered by the conquistadors, like the Spanish. But they actually, they actually got help.

• 36:59Greg Jenner?

  Cortez then continues and and Mexico is conquered by Spain and it becomes part of the Spanish Empire and sends home all the silver and gold back to Spain. So that's sort of the the conquest story. And then Malintzin, at this point, has kind of done her job.

• 37:12Speaker 06

  No.

• 37:13Greg Jenner?

  She could, could she not just go, all right, job done, thanks very much, I'm off?

• 37:16Speaker 06

  She's so important that she becomes part of the the conversion effort as well to begin with. And she also is involved in other missions that Cortez goes on, like to Honduras, for example. So she's, yeah, she continues to be his right hand woman.

• 37:33Greg Jenner?

  I mean, they have a kid together, don't they?

• 37:35Speaker 06

  They do. We have no idea, obviously, how consensual that was, but they have they have a child called Martin.

• 37:42Greg Jenner?

  But she she doesn't marry Cortez because he's married, so she's with Cortez, but she then marries another Spanish, another Spanish.

• 37:49Speaker 06

  Um, she marries a guy called Juan Jaramillo.

• 37:53Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 37:53Speaker 06

  Um, in fifteen twenty four, he's one of the captains.

• 37:56Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 37:57Speaker 06

  We actually think that she probably wasn't given.

• 38:01Speaker 06

  And to him that actually it was her choice to have this kind of, because she, she would have understood that that was the way that she could acquire kind of her own power and everything. So it seems to be strategic.

• 38:13Greg Jenner?

  The interesting thing about Melinson is that sword where the story ends, she dies quite young. She dies in fifteen twenty nine. When she's only, she's barely thirty, yeah, if that. So that's quite sad. And that's where we leave her in the story. Apart from perhaps in your nuance window. But what about Cortez? Does he then say, oh, big thanks to Melinson? You know, does he, is there a sort of like in memoriam section where he's like, she, you know, I really needed her. Or does he just sort of pretend she never really did anything important?

• 38:41Speaker 06

  No, he, we think she, sorry, we think that he rewarded her with an encomienda as part of her dowry.

• 38:48Greg Jenner?

  So she got enslaved workers too?

• 38:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 38:51Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 38:51Speaker 06

  But she, which means that she would be one of only, I think, three indigenous people who were given permanent encomiendas.

• 39:00Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 39:00Speaker 06

  So that shows kind of just how important she was. And Martin gets sent to Spain and actually lives with the Spanish nobility, Spanish royalty.

• 39:10Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 39:10Speaker 06

  So he and Cortez formally recognizes him as his son as well.

• 39:17Greg Jenner?

  Right. So they're legitimate.

• 39:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, he legitimizes.

• 39:20Greg Jenner?

  Cortez does downplay her a bit in his letters, but

• 39:22Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:22Greg Jenner?

  But other writers sort of put her back into the picture at the time.

• 39:26Speaker 06

  So what we have to remember, obviously, with Cortez's letters are it's the Cortez show. And this is all about me and you can't do this without me. So you can't possibly, you know, arrest me and try me for treason. So nobody gets a look in, apart from Cortez, really, in his letters. But Bernard Diaz, in particular, the other conquistador, he loves her. He writes about her as if she's a saint. He compares her to Joseph of the Technicolor Dreamcoat fame.

• 39:58Greg Jenner?

  Wow.

• 39:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, he says that, you know, earth like color. Yeah. And, and, you know, sold into slavery as a child. And he's got a whole scene where she goes back to her family and forgives them for what they did to her. Even though that's probably, probably never happened.

• 40:14Greg Jenner?

  Sure.

• 40:15Speaker 06

  But yeah, it's a bit of a hagiography.

• 40:17Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, yeah, it does. That's all very safely.

• 40:19Speaker 05

  Do we know how she died or?

• 40:21Speaker 06

  Um, I think she just kind of succumb in the end got one of the many diseases that that the Europeans so kindly brought over.

• 40:31Speaker 05

  And she was so young, you know, from like, it's like she really only in that whole period was around for a decade. Um, and within that decade, she had such a huge influence and. I think when you're also when you're a young woman and you've got literally no agency, you grab it where you can, don't you?

• 40:48Greg Jenner?

  You do.

• 40:49Speaker 05

  How does history view her? She's, do historians view her kindly?

• 40:53Speaker 06

  Not so much, no, she, well, historians, it depends on. So essentially we have the big, great, great, I'm putting quotation marks around that, historian of the conquest, he's a Victorian and the Victorians have a lot to answer for in terms of history being written, called William Prescott. He is the biggest Cortez fanboy. He is obsessed with Cortez to the extent where he, he desperately wants to find his tomb. He wants an, he wants an engraving of like, he, he never actually goes to Mexico. He kind of acquires stuff from Mexico, but he keeps asking, yeah, basically.

• 41:37Speaker 06

  So he, he essentially wants like a, you know, when kids do like those robings.

• 41:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:42Speaker 06

  So he wants that of his tomb. He also wants to collect Aztec skulls to go in the, um, yeah, in the indigenous American skull, uh, collection in Harvard. So, yeah, he's a problematic guy and he not only kind of, he does say she's important, but he also sexualizes her quite a lot, um, and talks about basically that her linguistic skills also included the language of love.

• 42:10Speaker 05

  I mean, where's he getting that from?

• 42:11Speaker 06

  Oh, he's just.

• 42:12Speaker 05

  There's absolutely no evidence of that at all.

• 42:14Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 42:14Speaker 05

  Dumb old man. Yeah. It's, it's, so, so for a long time Cortez was, was, was viewed favorably for many centuries and would have been lauded and applauded.

• 42:24Greg Jenner?

  Well, this brings us to my next question, actually, Amy, because for so long Cortez has been on the run from the Spanish authorities. You know, people have been sending armies after him, but he finally conquers Mexico, which means presumably he gets to go to the king of Spain. Hello, this is yours because of me. So do you want to let me off and give me a job? I mean, what does he get rewarded?

• 42:44Speaker 06

  So, yes, he does. Initially, he becomes the governor of what they call New Spain, which is what Mexico's called initially. Yeah, he does get rewarded. He also makes sure to have his letters published very quickly. So they're all, I think there's five of them and they're all published by 1525. Just so his legacy is secure. He gets made governor of Mexico, but it doesn't always.

• 43:11Greg Jenner?

  He's too, he's too hot headed, isn't he? He can't just settle for something and go, this is fine. This is enough.

• 43:16Speaker 06

  No, he, yeah, well, he gets too big for his boots, basically.

• 43:21Speaker 05

  He's been big, too big for his boots for about two decades.

• 43:24Speaker 06

  So part of the thing, he, in one of his last letters, he promises the king that he's not going to use the encomienda system. Because they, back in Spain, that they're not liking it. They know that it's been responsible for the death of so many indigenous people, especially in the Caribbean. And he says, we won't do that. We won't do that here. Then he realizes that Moctezuma doesn't have quite as much treasure as he'd hoped in order to reward his men. So how does he reward his men? By using the encomienda system. So he basically tells the king, oh, you know that thing I said I wasn't going to do? Well, I did it anyway. And then the king says, don't do that. And if you've given any out, you take them back.

• 44:07Speaker 06

  And Cortez argues back again, and that doesn't go so well.

• 44:10Greg Jenner?

  So, yeah, so the king appoints investigator, Ponce de Leon, to come after him, strips him of his governorship in 1526. And Cortez does the classic apprentice candidate thing of banging on the boardroom doors, saying, let me in, come on, I've got a, you know, and then Cortez is accused of poisoning Ponce de Leon?

• 44:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, so Ponce de Leon dies quite soon after he arrives. The second guy who is sent to investigate him also dies within like eight months.

• 44:39Speaker 05

  What are they dying from?

• 44:40Greg Jenner?

  I think they're dying from Cortez, that's probably.

• 44:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, we don't know. I mean, some people have said it might have been Cortez, but we're not, we're not 100%. Percent sure about that. Um, but yeah, uh, in fifteen twenty eight, Cortez goes back to Spain to talk to the king. Um, he's well received. He's even given a title. He's, he's removed from being the governor of New Spain.

• 45:02Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 45:02Speaker 06

  But he's given, he's made, uh, the Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca, given a massive commi- encomienda.

• 45:10Speaker 05

  Wait a second, but that's, that doesn't make any sense. You just said, don't do it because that goes against our values. But when you come back, that'll be your reward, baby.

• 45:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's okay if the king gives them out, but nobody else.

• 45:21Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 45:21Speaker 05

  Also, it's not actually slavery they have a problem with. It's like who can give out slaves.

• 45:26Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 45:28Greg Jenner?

  And then obviously we mentioned Catalina very, very early in the episode, his lovely wife that he left behind, fifteen twenty two, he'd left her behind. She comes out to see him at last and they have a party and then she's found dead. There's reports of finger marks on her throat.

• 45:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 45:44Greg Jenner?

  As if, as if throttle, so.

• 45:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, basically, um, so she's brought out in August of fifteen twenty two, so a year after the conquest is complete. And she's not very happy because obviously he's been shagging everyone. At this point, Melinson is, is pregnant with Martin, um, and everyone knows who, who fathered that child.

• 46:06Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 46:06Speaker 06

  So it's a very uncomfortable situation for Catalina. She's not very happy with all his other women. They have a lot of rows about this apparently and one night, uh, in October, they have a party. And, um, people overhear them rowing and about midnight, he kind of runs out of the room and says, she's dead, she's dead. There are kind of, yeah, finger marks on her throat according to testimony. The guys who testify on his behalf say that she was a very sickly woman and she used to faint a lot. And Cortez says that the reason why there are finger marks around her throat is because she fainted and he tried to stop her from fainting.

• 46:48Greg Jenner?

  Catcher, throat first, as is traditional.

• 46:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, he also gets rid of her body very quickly, has a very quick funeral, which is not typical.

• 46:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:59Greg Jenner?

  I mean.

• 46:59Speaker 05

  Um, I mean, I'm not Miss Marple, but I can.

• 47:03Greg Jenner?

  I don't know, Jen.

• 47:04Speaker 05

  Do you know what I mean? I'm feeling that maybe we can pretty much guarantee he killed her.

• 47:10Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 47:10Speaker 05

  And his motive for killing her was like, oh, you're just wanging on too much. Or I just wanna, I haven't seen you for however many years and now I just wanna live my life.

• 47:18Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, bored.

• 47:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:19Greg Jenner?

  I don't want the old.

• 47:20Speaker 05

  You're dragging me back.

• 47:20Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:21Speaker 06

  By that point, he seems to think that she's not quite befitting his status. And he does end up marrying a woman of, a woman of much higher status. And it just so happens that her uncle testified in, on his behalf in this whole investigation.

• 47:37Greg Jenner?

  Pure coincidence, Amy. What are you talking about?

• 47:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:40Speaker 05

  I mean, honest, honestly, I, the way, all of the men in this entire historical period.

• 47:46Greg Jenner?

  Jen, you're holding your eyes like you've got a migraine.

• 47:48Speaker 05

  Absolutely appalling human beings. And typically, once again, there is one woman and she's the one that is vilified. Malintzin.

• 47:59Greg Jenner?

  Well, two women, one of, one of whom's murdered and the other one.

• 48:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, one of the many Catalinas.

• 48:03Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 48:03Speaker 05

  It's, it's absolutely incredible. So despite us knowing all of this, Cortez is a hero.

• 48:12Greg Jenner?

  Well, I mean.

• 48:12Speaker 05

  Not now, but then.

• 48:13Greg Jenner?

  He's constantly investigated, isn't he? They're constantly, constantly trying to investigate him for murder, for embezzlement, for not following orders. He is ruthless, he is avaricious, even the Spanish think that, but he gets away with it.

• 48:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think it's partly because he manages to cement himself in the legacy of the conquest by publishing these letters. They can't really ignore him, but he also drags out this investigation for years and years and years.

• 48:38Greg Jenner?

  Cause he's, he's got the legal training, he knows how to slow down the court case.

• 48:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 48:42Greg Jenner?

  Okay, how does he, how does he die in the end? Does Moximac get his revenge as the famous idiom would have it?

• 48:48Speaker 06

  Well, so he dies of, we think, pleurisy, but just before that, he has a really bad case of dysentery.

• 48:56Greg Jenner?

  Good.

• 48:59Speaker 05

  I mean, what a way to go.

• 49:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, it sounds like a horrible death and, you know, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

• 49:06Speaker 05

  Truly, absolutely.

• 49:07Greg Jenner?

  He shat himself to death.

• 49:09Speaker 05

  I wasn't going to say it, Greg, but I'm glad you did.

• 49:12Greg Jenner?

  Because he was a shed and he deserved it. Okay, so pleurisy is probably what killed him, but dysentery probably didn't help. Okay, so there you go, Jen. Hernán Cortés and Malintzin. It's quite the story, isn't it?

• 49:23Speaker 05

  It is the story. It is quite the story. It's quite a sad story.

• 49:28Greg Jenner?

  It's tragic, really.

• 49:29Speaker 05

  There's no part of it that isn't, I mean, listen, comedy corner here, but it's pretty hard to find any light in that shade. He is genuinely one of the most unpleasant men in history, I would say. He's a truly awful human being.

• 49:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 49:45Speaker 05

  And I'm glad he shat himself to death. I heard it came out of both ends for hours. He's a horrible, horrible man.

• 49:54Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 49:54Speaker 05

  And sure, Malintzin, by proxy, you could say, yeah, but, you know, she was no saint either, and that is absolutely true. But the power dynamic there was so, you know, you can't compare the two. You're looking at a young girl who was enslaved and was trying to survive. And she wasn't to know how it was going to turn out, you know, that it was going to end up being some sort of genocidal mania. And then this Cortés guy was just like total narcissist psychopath. Good guy.

• 50:26Greg Jenner?

  Good guy.

• 50:26Speaker 05

  Good guy. The Nuance Window!

• 50:34Greg Jenner?

  Time now for The Nuance Window. This is the part of the show where Jen and I machete our way through the jungle for two minutes, while Amy tells us something we need to know about Malintzin. So my stopwatch is ready. You've got two minutes. Take it away, Dr. Amy.

• 50:47Speaker 06

  So sadly, after Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, Malintzin's public reputation went downhill. There was a desire to reclaim the history of the nation from the colonizer and to explain how the conquest happened. But unfortunately, this led to her becoming a scapegoat. She's often referred to as the Mexican Eve, a traitor and a whore who betrayed her people, despite the fact that she wasn't Aztec, nor did she have much agency of her own. Weirdly, the hundreds of thousands of indigenous allies do not get blamed. They're presented as being tricked by Cortés into fighting against Moctezuma the tyrant. Yet, she is not awarded the same dispensation.

• 51:30Speaker 06

  We know that the conquest was effectively an indigenous civil war that the Spanish took part in, so Malintzin could even be seen as a freedom fighter, maybe. But instead, she ends up being conflated with the tragic ghost story of La Llorona. However, as depressing as all that is, let's reflect on how she was viewed by her contemporaries, largely because it's quite annoying for Cortés and his fanboys. So, not only did the other conquistadors testify that she was absolutely fundamental to the conquest, so much so that they could not have achieved their victory without her, but the Tashcalleans, in their pictorial sources, present her in every scene that Cortés features, even in amongst the fighting, like a real badass.

• 52:13Speaker 06

  And sometimes she's even depicted as bigger than him, basically insinuating that she was more important than him. And in fact, because she was always in Cortés's company, the indigenous people they spoke to referred to Cortés as the captain of Marina, or Malintzin. This not only demonstrates her importance to the native allies, but even better, it effectively demoted Cortés, because he was named in terms of his relationship with her.

• 52:42Speaker 05

  Good. It's really interesting that what you said, though, about her being scapegoated and that the indigenous allies weren't blamed, because it was a civil war. Why should she have any... Why would she support the Aztecs? They enslaved her. She's, you know, she... Couldn't possibly blame her, I don't think. I actually am Team Malintzin. I'm sure I didn't turn out great in the long term, but I think she did what she had to do to survive.

• 53:15Greg Jenner?

  Right, well, time now for the So What Do You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for Jen.

• 53:19Speaker 05

  Oh, God.

• 53:20Greg Jenner?

  To see how much she's learned. I was going to say, Jen, are you feeling confident?

• 53:24Speaker 05

  No, not really. No, I'm not feeling confident at all. There's so much detail.

• 53:28Greg Jenner?

  You have taken some fantastic notes.

• 53:30Speaker 05

  Look at this. Oh, I've missed a page. No, I've taken way too many notes and now I feel completely overwhelmed.

• 53:35Greg Jenner?

  Seven, eight, eight pages of notes, listener. Jen's written her own Cortez letter.

• 53:39Speaker 05

  I have. I have, and most of it, I can't read my own writing, but let's try. Let's see what we can do.

• 53:44Greg Jenner?

  All right, let's have a go. 10 questions. Question one: Where does the name Malintzin come from?

• 53:50Speaker 05

  I've already fallen at the first hurdle. Does it come from, what was the Spanish name?

• 53:57Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, it's from a Spanish name.

• 53:59Speaker 05

  Marina.

• 54:00Greg Jenner?

  That's right, well done, yeah. Plus the honorific suffix of sin at the end, so well done. Question two: On Cuba, why was Hernán Cortez thrown in jail by his boss Velázquez?

• 54:10Speaker 05

  Because he had slept with his fiancee and then ditched her.

• 54:17Greg Jenner?

  He had, absolutely, Catalina. He refused to marry her.

• 54:20Speaker 05

  Catalina, that's it.

• 54:21Greg Jenner?

  And then he was like, oh, right. Question three: What was legally very dodgy about Cortez leading his conquering expedition to the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico?

• 54:29Speaker 05

  What was?

• 54:30Greg Jenner?

  What had Velázquez said to him?

• 54:32Speaker 05

  Oh, hang on, just give me a second. I've got like 600 notes here, so we'll get there. Well, he's promoted, no, hang on. Cortez has gone without him, without his approval.

• 54:44Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, he's gone rogue, yeah.

• 54:45Speaker 05

  So he's gone rogue, so he hasn't got Velázquez's permission.

• 54:48Greg Jenner?

  That's right, he's on the run, basically.

• 54:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, so he's a fugitive. This is the start of his fugitive journey.

• 54:53Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, well done. Question four: How did Malintzin and Cortez first meet?

• 54:58Speaker 05

  He is, oh no, she is one of 20 girls that is given to the conquistadors as a gift from the Aztecs.

• 55:06Greg Jenner?

  From the Maya, yeah.

• 55:07Speaker 05

  Oh, from the Maya, big part from the Maya, yeah.

• 55:08Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, well done, excellent. Question five: The Tashkallans were crucial allies in the conquest of Tenochtitlan. Without them, how many Spanish soldiers would Cortez have had?

• 55:16Speaker 05

  600?

• 55:17Greg Jenner?

  It is 600, well done, yeah. Question six: What happened to Cortez's first wife Catalina in 1522?

• 55:23Speaker 05

  She was strangled to death by her husband.

• 55:26Greg Jenner?

  Or died of natural causes and was caught by the neck.

• 55:29Speaker 05

  Yes, she sneezed, he was worried about her, he caught her by the neck and she died.

• 55:33Greg Jenner?

  Ah, what a bastard. Question seven: What was the encomienda system?

• 55:38Speaker 05

  Slavery.

• 55:38Greg Jenner?

  It was, but technically not slavery.

• 55:41Speaker 05

  Technically not slavery because you can't enslave Christians.

• 55:44Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 55:44Speaker 05

  But it turns out you can.

• 55:45Greg Jenner?

  But they did. Question eight, what was the name of both Cortes's dad and his son with Malintzin?

• 55:50Speaker 05

  Martin.

• 55:51Greg Jenner?

  It was Martin. Question nine, who was the Aztec emperor based at Tenochtitlan who ultimately died at the hands of Cortes?

• 55:58Speaker 05

  Is it Montezuma?

• 55:59Greg Jenner?

  It is, yeah, very good. And this for a perfect 10, how did Cortes die in 1547?

• 56:04Speaker 05

  He died from pooing out of his bumhole. Or hand or currency.

• 56:09Greg Jenner?

  He did, both of those two things. 10 out of 10, Jen Brister.

• 56:12Speaker 05

  Oh, come on.

• 56:12Greg Jenner?

  Never in doubt.

• 56:13Speaker 05

  Here we go. The prize is mine.

• 56:16Greg Jenner?

  Only consulted the notes once.

• 56:18Speaker 05

  I actually did only consult the notes once. I did really well.

• 56:20Greg Jenner?

  Well done, Jen, thank you. And of course, thank you, Amy, as well. Listener, if you're bursting for more Brister, check out our episode on Emma of Normandy with all the El Guevus for more Mexican history or famous interpreters. You can do the Aztecs episode, series one, the Sacagawea episode, or the Colombian Exchange episode, which is about Columbus and after that fact. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with friends, subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds, and also make sure to switch on your notifications so you never miss an episode. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In history corner, we had the amazing Dr Amy Fuller from Nottingham Trent University. Thank you, Amy.

• 56:57Speaker 06

  Thanks for having me, it was great fun.

• 56:59Greg Jenner?

  And in comedy corner, we had the brilliant Jen Brister. Thank you, Jen.

• 57:02Speaker 05

  Oh, what a delight. I've really enjoyed it and thank you, Amy, I've learned a lot.

• 57:05Greg Jenner?

  And to you lovely listener, join me next time as we translate another overlooked historical story. But for now, I'm off to write a long letter to the King of Spain blaming someone else for all of my failures. Bye.

• 57:18Greg Jenner?

  This episode of You're Dead to Me was researched by Ida Abashar. It was written by Emmyrose Price Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse and me. The audio producer was Steve Hankey and our production coordinator was Ben Hollands. It was produced by Emmyrose Price Goodfellow, me and senior producer Emma Nagouse, and our executive editor was James Cook. You're Dead to Me is a BBC Studios audio production for BBC Radio 4.

• 57:46Greg Jenner?

  From BBC Radio 4, this is What Seriously? I'm Dara Breen.

• 57:50Speaker 07

  And I'm Izzy Sutty. And in our new series, we're bringing you short stories and tall tales.

• 57:55Greg Jenner?

  What Seriously? is packed with real-life, strange-but-true stories that make you go, "What, seriously?", and provide you with excellent social ammo to impress your friends.

• 58:03Speaker 07

  The twist is, we don't know how each story unfolds. And we'll have to figure it out one fragment at a time with our special guests, who each have a mysterious connection to the tale.

• 58:12Greg Jenner?

  That's right.

• 58:12Speaker 03

  I am your spy expert.

• 58:14Speaker 07

  And I don't really want to bring you back to the real facts of the story, because you're making me laugh so much, but I feel like I should.

• 58:18Greg Jenner?

  We're the only country in the world that ate the animal on our crest. And I never know whether to feel terrible or brilliant about that.

• 58:24Speaker 07

  All these engineers trying desperately to reduce the amount of dust in space. And you get Izzy taking up a balloon full of glitz and...

• 58:30Greg Jenner?

  Wow.

• 58:31Speaker 02

  You're welcome. Had that one on the house.

• 58:32Greg Jenner?

  You've come up with all the stuff.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  I know, right? It's like I'm reading from a sheet or something, but never am.

• 58:39Greg Jenner?

  Join us for What Seriously? From BBC Radio 4. Available now on BBC Sounds.

• 58:51Speaker 00

  It's the film that convinced Americans the Second World War was worth fighting.

• 58:55Speaker 06

  A reason to be in Hollywood that is really quite a terrifying situation.

• 59:00Speaker 00

  And its production is an extraordinary story in itself. Ronald Reagan had been named as the potential lead. Join me, Mischa Glenny, and three expert guests for a special live edition of In Our Time, where we discuss Casablanca. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.