WHEN TERESA ENTZÍN LÓPEZ fled from Leonardo Cifuentes’ house (the flight of an animal that has ceased to be useful and hides, seeking a place to die) she did not know where to go. Her first steps through the streets of the city that had ceased to belong to her now that she no longer had the backing of her masters were hesitant. She could not think about the possibility of looking for work with another Coleto family because, in her, servitude had taken the form of loyalty. Neither was she very certain of wanting to go back to the Indians. But for lack of a better alternative, she went to the market where, their day’s transactions completed, the Chamula vendors were preparing to return to their villages.

Teresa joined a group of women. She inserted herself among them in silence, humbly, in order to dispel the attitude of distrust with which they greeted her. Since she was carrying nothing she was able to ingratiate herself by helping the other women carry their loads. That first night she slept next to the fire of some strangers, and when she was asked who she was and where she came from she told a story about years of confinement in the house of some rich people in Jobel; she spoke of bad treatment and threats. The others believed her. What was unusual about the events she recounted? And in exchange for her work in the hut and the cornfield, she came to form part of the family of the former martoma, Rosendo Gómez Oso, in the village of Majomut.

These abrupt changes of perspective (from high to low in Jobel and now, suddenly, on an equal footing) made Teresa observant. She listened, first with curiosity and then with irritation, to the endless disputes between the martoma and his wife, Felipa. The reason for the argument was always insignificant at first. But then it would grow like a vortex, pulling the most diverse details into its center and building to a final catastrophe, a drunken binge and a beating, in which the name of a girl Teresa had not met— Marcela—was frequently mentioned, along with the disadvantageous circumstances of her marriage.