/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/LITERATURE-MEXICO: The Indigenous Word Endures

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Apr 30 2002 (IPS) - The first-ever academic course on the scant – but highly resilient – literature of Mexico’s indigenous cultures begins in May at the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM), with support from UNESCO.

The initiative is part of a series of strategies promoted by the government and civil society organisations to prevent the 62 indigenous languages and 30 dialect variations surviving in Mexico from disappearing, as has occurred with 130 others.

A diploma certified by UNAM, in Mexico City, and backed by UNESCO (United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) is granted after successfully completing 164 hours of related study.

Literary production in non-Spanish languages in Mexico currently represents less than one percent of the titles published here each year.

Mexico, with its population of 100 million, is the country with most Spanish speakers in the world. At least 10 percent of the population is Indian, but, according to various studies, some 130 indigenous languages have disappeared in the five centuries since the Spanish Conquest.

Nevertheless, there are still 6.2 million people in the country who speak both an indigenous tongue and Spanish, and 808,000 who speak only an indigenous language, according to official figures.

The number of Indian writers whose works are regularly published, however, is not more than 200.

Illiteracy among Mexico’s indigenous population is 44.2 percent, nearly five times the national average, and 75 percent who begin school do not complete the primary level.

Barely eight percent of indigenous children meet the official requirements for reading and writing at the fourth-grade level.

“It is essential to have available a diploma for studies in our languages because it contributes another grain of sand to the fight against their extinction,” said Fausto Guadarrama, president of the Association of Writers in Indigenous Languages.

The association has a roster of 70 Mexican authors who together write in 23 different languages.

The professors will teach the new course at UNAM beginning in May, and several Indian writers from Mexico and from other Latin American countries will make presentations, as will some Spanish-language authors, including Mexico’s Elena Poniatowska.

Of the surviving languages in Mexico, 24 are in grave danger of disappearing, according to various studies. In some cases, they are spoken today by fewer than 10 people.

“With the death of a language, a culture, a history, a way of seeing life disappears,” said Miguel León Portilla, a historian who for more than three decades has studied Mexico’s indigenous languages and dialects and has fought to prevent their extinction.

Formal indigenous literature emerged less than 30 years ago, when linguists adapted the phonetics of the different languages to the alphabet to be recorded in print.

Before that, the oral tradition kept the indigenous word alive, and in some cases the languages did have their own written version with their own unique characters.

The writers point out that literature in Indian languages will only survive if there are readers. The Association supports the initiatives of the government and of various organisations that promote bilingual education in Spanish and in the local native language.

Educational programmes of that type in Mexico, which are more than 20 years old, were relaunched in 2001 by the Vicente Fox government with more resources and promises of better training for teachers.

Today, less than half of the population that speaks an indigenous language has access to bilingual education and just 46 percent of the teachers in the system have adequate professional training to provide bilingual instruction.

Guadarrama, head of the Association of Writers in Indigenous Languages, maintains that the future of Mexico’s Indian languages and of their expression through literature is linked to the success or failure of the educational programmes, but also to the social conditions in which indigenous peoples live.

More than 90 percent of Mexico’s indigenous population is poor. And today, for most, literature in their own languages is a low priority compared to merely getting by.