Mexicans today generally consider Marina to have been a traitor to Native American people. But at the time, if anyone had asked her if she should perhaps show more loyalty to her fellow Indians, she would have been genuinely confused. In her language, there was no word that was the equivalent of “Indians.” Mesoamerica was the entire known world; the only term for “people native to the Americas” would have been “human beings.” And in her experience, human beings most definitely were not all on the same side. The Mexica were her people’s enemies. It was they who had seen to it that she was torn
...more
