31
In the novel, as in Bernal Díaz del Castillo's account, an old woman confides in La Malinche that she should save herself, since the Cholulans intended to ambush the Spaniards. The conquistadors responded by preemptively attacking Cholula, opening the door for the conquest of Tenochtitlán. Because of this sequence of events, the name of La Malinche would later become synonymous with betrayal.
32
As in Spain, in Mexico the Inquisition did not itself burn those it convicted, but rather practiced relajación al brazo seglar, that is, it remanded them to the secular authorities, which proceeded to execute the convicts of the Holy Tribunal, burning them alive if they were unrepentant and mercifully garroting them first if they repented. The auto-da-fe was not the execution itself, but the procession leading to the stake. The case of don Carlos chief of Texcoco was one of the most notorious trials for indigenous heresy in New Spain and was the beginning of the downfall of Bishop Juan de Zumárraga, as the Texcocan cacique had been one of the brightest students of the Tlatelolco school for training the native priesthood but in 1539 was burned for being a recalcitrant idolater (Greenleaf 36; 67).
33
Menton identifies several characteristics of this narrative subgenre: new historical novels use famous historical characters as protagonists -or they revert to the more traditional pattern of inventing fictional characters whose lives are intertwined with those of famous historical figures-; they problematize the category of history; they distort the representation of history through exaggeration and anachronisms; they use historiographic metafiction, self-conscious narration, and intertextuality; and they employ Bakhtinian concepts such as the carnivalesque, parody, heteroglossia, and the dialogic, which significantly allow for the representation of multiple perspectives on historical events.
34
See López, Latin American Novels of the Conquest.