Meanwhile, on another part of the planet...

You can’t walk a single block in this city without stubbing your toe on History. I pass a bakery and spot an Aztec calendar hanging on the wall of the shop. It displays an image of a five-hundred-year-old Aztec prince holding a dying woman in his arms. History. Whenever I encounter a person or a street named after a Famous Indigenous, you know, a name with too many X’s or C’s or U’s, like Cuauhtémoc (kwou-TAY-mahk), Cuitláhuac(kwit-LA-wahk), Xiuhcoatl (ZAYA-ka-whatl), it's as if the person or street were introducing themselves to me, “Hi, I’m History.” Indigenous tribes are really good at thinking up hard-to-say and hard-to-spell names with the letter X. It can sound like an “s” or “sh,” or “j” or even “k,” and your guess is as good as mine. If I try to pronounce the name of this sort, my tongue tangles in my throat like I'm choking on a chicken bone. A purplish tint washes over my face in an attempt to let the name out but it never gets even close to the tip of my tong...