Words are among the most powerful things that exist and thanks to them we can communicate, understand what surrounds us and even create our own identity. However, we often forget that in Mexico we speak not only Spanish but also 68 indigenous languages (plus their variations).
Each one of them represents a different way of knowing and naming the world. Miriam Hernández, activist and translator of the Maya Ch’ol language, points out that each “language is life, it is a cosmovision, it is another way of living and another way of thinking”.
However, institutions such as Inali - which is currently facing its own demise - and civil organizations constantly warn of the dangers facing indigenous languages in Mexico and of all that is lost when one of them becomes extinct.
As the philosopher and historian Miguel León Portilla said in his poem “Cuando muere una lengua” (When a language dies):
When a language dies
everything in the world
seas and rivers,
animals and plants,
are neither thought nor pronounced
with glimpses and sounds
that no longer exist.
However, there are several people working every day to preserve these languages. We talked to some of them and we present some of their projects and efforts.
The current state of indigenous languages in Mexico
According to the Catalog of National Indigenous Languages, created by the National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI), 68 languages belonging to 11 linguistic families are spoken in Mexico, from which some 364 variants are derived.
Data from Inegi’s 2020 Population and Housing Census indicate that in our country there are just over 7,360,000 people aged three years and older who speak an indigenous language.
The same report mentions that as of 2020, the main indigenous languages spoken by this population are: Nahuatl (22.4%), Mayan (10.5%), Tzeltal (Tseltal) (8.0%), Tzotzil (Tsotsil) (7.5%), Mixteco (7.2%) and Zapoteco (6.7%).
Despite this linguistic wealth, 60% of these languages are at risk of disappearing.
Irma Pineda, Zapotec poet and defender of indigenous peoples, reflects that one of the greatest threats to these languages is the discrimination and exclusion that still exist.
“They push you aside because you speak differently, because you come from another culture,” she mentions, and she also clarifies that it is surprising that although she has been fighting against discrimination for years, she still has not been able to do much to reduce it.
To this day, many people associate those who speak an indigenous language with cultural backwardness and poverty. As a result, they exclude them or even these same speakers decide to stop expressing themselves in their native language for fear of being discriminated against.
So what can be done for these languages?
The work of preserving the intangible
Fortunately, there are more people who fight to spread and protect indigenous languages from their trenches. There are all those who sing or even rap in their native language.
There are also those who are more attached to technology and the digital world and decide to spread their own language through these media.
Irma Pineda, resistance through words
Originally from Juchitán, Oaxaca, Irma Pineda belongs to the Binni Záa or Zapotec culture, as she is also known, and is a speaker of the Diidxazá language. Since she was a child she has been in contact with her native language and also with the world of literature, but she never thought of combining both worlds.
“It wasn’t until I migrated,” Irma Pineda says and tells Animal MX that she moved from Juchitán to Toluca. She describes the experience as very difficult because of the loneliness. In addition to not having her family and friends nearby, she realized that all her thoughts, dreams and communication with the people around her had always been in her own language, Diidxazá.
She also felt limited with her Spanish, which was a very local and regional one, so she preferred to live in silence.
Irma was in a constant struggle to reconnect with her language and discovered that writing allowed her to have that connection with the words and with her own culture because then she “thought about it, reflected on it and wrote about it”.
Although she was aware of the discrimination she and others suffered for using her native language, she decided that she had to make it louder, especially in public spaces. From that moment on, her poetry became not only a literary issue, but also a weapon of resistance.
Recently, Irma Pineda participated in the creation of the book Intraducibles, together with Gabriela Lavalle, director of the Mexican Institute of Tourism in Houston. The book consists of gathering words from various indigenous languages that cannot be expressed with any other word in Spanish and explaining their meaning.