Marvel superhero and Indigenous actress holds fast to Maya roots

[Judi Lynn]

Guatemalan actress María Mercedes Coroy, who plays Princess Fen in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” in her hometown of Santa María De Jesús, Guatemala, Feb. 3, 2023. After filming her part in the film, in which she gives birth in a hazy ocean world to a winged serpent son, María Mercedes Coroy returned to her “normal” life of farming and trading in a Guatemalan town at the base of a volcano. (Daniele Volpe/The New York Times)

by Julia Lieblich

SANTA MARÍA DE JESÚS.- For her big underwater scene in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” Guatemalan actress María Mercedes Coroy had to hold her breath as her character, Princess Fen, gives birth in a hazy ocean world to a winged serpent son. She emerges from the watery depths as a rarity even in Marvel’s fantastical universe: a female Maya superhero.

The day after filming that scene in Los Angeles, Coroy, rather than hanging out in Hollywood, headed home to Santa María de Jesús, a Kaqchikel Maya town of about 22,000 at the base of a volcano in Guatemala. By nightfall, she was curled up in bed in her family’s bright-pink cinder-block house with vegetables growing in the backyard.

“I felt like my bed was hugging me,” said Coroy, 28, one of nine siblings in a family of farmers and vendors.

The next morning, she resumed her usual life. She and her mother put on their handwoven huipiles, or blouses, and cortes, or skirts, to catch the 5:30 a.m. bus to the small city of Escuintla to sell produce in the bustling market, a job she started after fifth grade when she had to drop out of school to help her parents.

. . .

Coroy represents a new generation of Maya actors determined to hone their craft while holding on to their customs and helping expose a legacy of discrimination against Guatemala’s Indigenous population.
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[SonofDonald]

1. She should be a star

Beautiful, strong, no hint of attitude, has helped her family when young and continues to do so

She should be a hero to her peers

And every woman