Captain Alonso López de Ávila captured a young Indian girl, a well-disposed and gentle woman, during the war in Bacalar. She promised her husband, fearing that he would not be killed in the war, not to meet any other man but him, and so persuasion was not enough to keep her from taking her own life so as not to be in danger of being soiled by another man, so which they made her pound.” Diego de Landa, Relacion de las cosas de Yucatán, 32. I write this book so that this story, nor thousands of others of the same tenor, do not fall into oblivion. I can't find any other way to answer the question about how to behave towards others than by telling an exemplary story: that of the discovery and conquest of America. At the same time, this ethical investigation is a reflection on signs, interpretation and communication: since semiotics cannot be thought outside of the relationship with the other. Tzvetan Todorov