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I’m Mixtec, but I Don’t Speak Mixtec...but I Am Learning Verónica Aguilar (left) with women from the Vega and Galindo families in San Juan Mixtepec, Mexico. Photo courtesy of Verónica Aguilar.
Verónica Aguilar (Mixtec, CS Staff)
I
was born and raised in Abasolo del Valle, Mexico, a community that is rapidly losing its language. Few people my age speak Mixtec, and I don’t know any children who speak it. Many have only partial knowledge of Mixtec; they understand it and do not speak it, either because they cannot, or because they do not dare due to fear or shame. The Spanish language education system, together with Mexico’s war against Indigenous Peoples through systemic discrimination, is very effective in silencing our languages, as language is a very prominent cultural trait. When I was a child, Mixtec was not spoken in my house so I could not learn it. It was the language of our grandparents and we heard it at their home, if we visited them. From the brief time I lived with them, I could only learn a few words. It didn’t help that in my community, Mixtec was not used in public and is still reserved for households. This story, which I share with a large part of my generation, is explained by the very special context of Abasolo. We are a migrant community that breathes and grows in the humid heat of the southern Veracruz jungle. Mixtecos in Veracruz? Yes, we live outside of the historically Mixtec territory, now fragmented and distributed among the states of Oaxaca, Puebla, and Guerrero. Some 70 years ago, two Mixtec groups from Oaxaca met in the middle of the Veracruz jungle, machetes in hand, opening a gap where they had been promised a piece of land. They came together to establish a town. My grandparents were in one of those groups, the least numerous, made up of people from Santo Domingo Nuxaá, Oaxaca. In the harsh conditions of migration, we learned to face adversity with strength and community work, but we also stopped transmitting our language. Being outside our territory makes us more susceptible to losing it, because the number of people with whom one can speak and spaces of use decrease. In community spaces such as the assembly hall, we use Spanish because it is more practical, given the presence of families who speak other languages.
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At the age of 12, I recognized the value of our family language and I asked my grandfather, Telésforo Martínez, to teach me. A curious man with a passion for knowledge, he supported my initiative and began to teach me words, which I wrote down in a notebook. Back then we were unaware of the heated discussions surrounding Mixtec spelling, but it was enough that I understood my scribbles. Unfortunately, after a while, I also had to emigrate—that has always been our destiny—and I gave up my apprenticeship. “I am Mixtec, but I do not speak Mixtec” is a phrase that opens discussions in Mexico, where “Indigeneity” is evaluated based on the language. Many consider that if you don’t speak your Indigenous language, you are not Indigenous. Until recently, the Mexican State measured the number of Indigenous people in the country by counting the number of Indigenous language speakers. This is a tricky approach, since that same State has been openly fighting our languages and cultures to assimilate us. Although the method has changed in the official censuses, it has affected the way in which people evaluate us and in the way in which some of us evaluate ourselves. This is what happened to me: at 18, I still did not think I was Mixtec because I did not know the language. Mixtecos were my grandparents, maybe my mother, but not me. I returned to study Mixtec years later, living in a city far from my hometown. A teacher from my community taught me by video call once a week. However, I soon ran up against the limits faced by efforts to teach and learn minority languages like ours—lack of didactic materials, lack of linguistic studies, lack of advanced or long-term programs, among many other obstacles. I abandoned the dream of learning Mixtec for a while until one day, being already a majority language professional and with more economic autonomy, I decided that the best thing was to learn Mixtec in an immersive environment. I had three options: Abasolo, where I was born; Nuxaá, where my grandparents were born; or San Juan Mixtepec, the origin of the other founding group. I decided on the latter, mainly because of the strength that the language has among its people and because of the solid relationships it maintains with Abasolo.
