In March 1519, Hernán Cortés took the first steps in the campaign to conquer Mexico. He was on the coast of Tabasco, where the Mayas lived.

After winning a battle in Centla, the local chiefs went one morning to the Spanish camp to give Cortés gold, blankets and food. They also brought him twenty maidens. The Spanish conqueror did not imagine at that moment that one of those young women, called Malinalli, Malintzín or Malinche (doña Marina for the Spaniards) would be the most important person in his fight against the Aztecs.

It is believed that Malinalli was born around 1500, possibly near Coatzacoalcos, in the region of present-day Veracruz. He belonged to a noble family - his father was the ruler of the city of Painala - and in his childhood he seemed to have a great future ahead of him. But everything changed when his father died and his mother remarried a local gentleman. The couple had a son, whom they made their heir while they got rid of Malinalli.
Their mother and stepfather handed Malinalli over to merchants. They sold her as a slave at the Xicalanco market to other Mayan traders, who, in turn, ended up selling her to the Lord of Potonchán. It was he who finally delivered it to Hernán Cortés, in March 1519, with nineteen other maidens.
The next day, in front of an improvised altar, with an image of the Virgin and a cross, a friar baptized the 20 maidens and "named 'doña Marina' after that Indian and lady who was given to us there". Then Cortés distributed the "first Christians" among his captains. Doña Marina was handed over to a distant relative of hers, Alonso Hernández Portocarrero.
From Potonchán, Cortés embarked for San Juan de Ulúa, where he arrived after five days of sailing. It was Good Friday, and while they were organizing the camp, the ambassadors of Moctezuma arrived to find out what those travelers wanted. Cortés called Jerónimo de Aguilar, a Spaniard who knew Maya because he spent several years in Yucatán, after which he was saved from a shipwreck. But Aguilar did not understand the language of the Mexicans, Nahuatl. It was at that moment when it was discovered that Marina spoke that language, which was the language of her parents, in addition to Mayan, the language of her masters in Potonchán.
As one chronicler summed up, Marina "served as a language [interpreter] in this way: Cortés spoke to Aguilar and Aguilar to the Indian and the Indian to the Indians. This system of translation was decisive for Cortés' conquering advance, not only because it allowed him to communicate with the Indians, but also because he knew the internal situation of each group and was able to gain their loyalty to the common enemy, Moctezuma.
Interpreter and concubine
From then on, Marina's situation changed radically. In San Juan de Ulua, upon learning of the captive's knowledge, Cortés "told her to be a faithful interpreter, that he would make her great mercedes and marry her and set her free. The conqueror did not stop there. We don't know if Marina, at 19, was as "beautiful as a goddess," as a chronicler later claimed, since the portraits of the time are simple sketches. In any case, Cortés did not take long to make her his lover. Perhaps to make things easier, Cortés sent Portocarrero, whom he had given to Marina, to Spain to take a letter to the king.

The collaboration between Hernán Cortés and doña Marina was very close, to the point that the natives called Cortés Malinche himself.
Doña Marina's role as interpreter was often decisive. In Cholula he saved the Spaniards from certain death by revealing to them a plot by the Indians, which a local woman had confessed to him. In Tenochtitlán he made possible the conversations between Moctezuma and Cortés, in which Marina had to translate the complicated speeches of the Spanish on the foundations of Christianity and the vassalage that the Indians owed to Charles V. He also made possible the conversations between Moctezuma and Cortés, in which Marina had to translate the complicated speeches of the Spanish on the foundations of Christianity and the vassalage that the Indians owed to Charles V.
During the "Sad Night" (the flight of the Spaniards from the Aztec harassment), Doña Marina was in the rear; once they were saved, one of Cortés' first concerns was to know the state of the interpreters, "that Jerónimo de Aguilar ni Marina had not been lost". In the final campaign on Tenochtitlán, Marina's work was decisive in receiving massive support from the indigenous enemies of the Aztecs and, later, in transmitting the demands of the Spaniards against the defeated.
After the conquest of the Aztec capital (Tenochtitlán), Cortés settled in Coyoacán, a nearby town. Marina stayed with him and in 1522 they had a son called Martín, as the father of the conqueror. But in the meantime, Cortés's wife had arrived in Mexico from Cuba, so she organized Marina's wedding with another conqueror, a nobleman named Juan Jaramillo, who was a prosecutor in Mexico City, and who would become mayor two years later.
With this link, Hernán Cortés fulfilled the promise of freedom he made to Marina at the beginning.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator