When I was 20 years old, I travelled to the mountain Sierra de Zongolica, in Veracruz, to get to know nahua children from that place. That autumn my friends and I camped on a mountain, which was located near to the village, with people who used to tell us stories about holy and bewitching hills. For the first time, I could listen fluently to stories told in a millenial native language, which came from Spanish and which still has its roots in the living legends of the place. Then I did not know that the first word that my grandmother ever spoke in the world belonged to an indigenous language, different to mine, and pronounce softly: that was the sweet náhuatl language.
The days spent at that place were lit by the faces of the children- most of them had grown without having learnt their mother tongue. The language inherent to their identity, which built their way of thinking, was refused to them by their parents, as for centuries it has been thought that being indigenous is a synonym for poverty and contempt.
It was at that moment when I had a clear idea of devoting my job as a writer to the native cultures, as the acknowledgement of the náhuatl people where I come from. It would also mean promoting the use of these languages by the creative sense of artists, from the little ones to the eldest ones. Due to the risk of disappearance of many indigenous languages in Mexico and America, I set up an association which is inspiring for other indigenous youngsters in my country regarding the matter of preserving our native identity. It also creates a space where young artists can get involved in rescuing the 65 or more native languages of my country, using different subjects for that purpose.
Iguanazul: literature in native languages
The project Iguanazul: literatura en lenguas originarias (Iguanazul: literatura in native languages) was created in 2005 to encourage the native speakers (indigenous writers, artists, etc.) to preserve the indigenous languages. It is a result of the need of promoting and preserving the native languages in Mexico, inside the indigenous communities and outside them – after considering that enjoying human rights of the indigenous peoples must start with the effective cultural and language rights.
Thanks to Iguanazul the invisible language resources to which more than 364 dialects in Mexico belong are spread to other parts, as shown in the International Convention for the Preservation of Cultural Resources (in Spanish, Convención Internacional para la Salvaguardia del Patrimonio Cultural Inmaterial). This cultural association was created due to the poor presence in our country of spaces for the use and preservation of indigenous languages, in addition to the bad consideration of the more than 364 dialects as intangible resources, and the low acknowledgement of the rich cultural and language assets of our peoples. Its mission is to strengthen a cultural process between artists and public, encourage the consideration towards indigenous languages and art- in general, regarding the intangible cultural assets of native peoples in Mexico.
The cultural association Iguanazul has three aspects: the magazine (Revista), the radio (Radio Nómada) and the publishing house (Editorial Cartonera), which carried out activities in different states in the Mexican Republic, such as Morelos, Puebla, Oaxaca, Veracruz, San Luis Potosí, Yucatán, Chiapas, and in other countries such as Bolivia, Peru, Spain, Colombia, UK and India- many of them are based in an exchange of knowledge and experiences.
Revista Iguanazul (Iguanazul Magazine)
Iguanazul Magazine is a printed, multilingual publication. It is a creative space where its indigenous artists are able demonstrate their beliefs through poetry, essay, drama, narrative, oral tradition and visual arts. Its principal objective is to spread the word about the literature and indigenous languages of our country.
From the inception of Iguanazul, our aim was always to create a publication in which the priority would be the grammar of indigenous languages, accompanied by translations into Spanish by the authors, and indigenous art which would spread our culture in an urban context. We hoped to revolutionise the way our culture is seen and to end racism and discrimination. This process of raising awareness, in which the magazine’s contributors would be protagonists, was to build recognition for indigenous art and the mythological elements of their languages.
However, the editorial work of Iguanazul Magazine was based on Western editorial methods and there was no direct correspondence or intervention in community processes on the part of the writers. This is why we made an announcement with details of how to publish written and graphic work, which was received in indigenous languages and translated into Spanish (always respecting the grammar of the authors). Afterwards we submitted this to an Editorial Counsel in charge of selecting what they considered to be the most relevant work literarily and aesthetically. The selected work was then passed through rigorous editing, proofreading and design before being published in a print run of 1000.
From these beginnings we derived a multilingual collection of seven editions published in languages such as Ayuujk (Mixe), Nahuatl, Diidxazá (Zapoteco), O De Pöt (Zoque), Tutunakuj (Totonaco), Hñahñu (Otomí), Wirrárica (Huichol), Tu´un Ñu Savi (mixteco), Spanish and English. The collection tackles the themes of literature, art and oral tradition; and includes the participation of the following recognised Mexican writers through their written and self-recorded spoken word work: Irma Pineda, Jaime Chávez Marcos, Alberto Becerril Cipriano, Martín Barrios, Rubén de Leo, Inti Barrios, Francisco de la Cruz, Gabriel Pacheco Salvador, Celerina Partricia Sánchez Santiago, Manuel Espinosa Sainos, Macario Matus, Esteban Ríos Cruz, Martín Rodríguez Arellano, Víctor Terán, Karlos Tachisavi, Mikeas Sánchez, Dionosio Hernández Ramos, accompanied by the artists Francisco Javier Santiago Regalado “Puga”, Delfino Marcial, Cerqueda, Cristian Pineda, Uriel Marín y Daniel Acosta.
During that first editorial stage, Iguanazul Magazine called upon all its cultural and literary promotion experience and prioritised presentations in cultural centres, libraries, community museums and book fairs. We took advantage of these presentations to publically use the languages through poetry recitals, dramatised readings and an educational introduction to the differences between dialect and language, to counter the erroneous classification of these languages to an incorrect linguistic category. They are as complex as any other language in the world, they have lexical heritage, semantics and many possess their own written grammar. Carlos Montemayor tells us in his book “The Modern Literature of Mexico’s Indigenous Languages” (“La Literature actual en las lenguas indígenas de México”): “Variation in dialect is a linguistic concept which is applied to the regional use of a language. Regional variations of the Spanish language are observed on lexical, phonetic and syntactic levels in, for example, Andalucía, Buenos Aires, Bogota, Yucatan or in Mexico City.”[1]
Nevertheless, during this process we felt that something was missing that would connect us to these dynamic communities, and make the project more relevant to our origins; therefore bridging the gap for new generations of indigenous artists.
As of edition 6 of Iguanazul Magazine, we decided to focus on oral tradition in indigenous languages and to create a monographic publication, with the aim of bringing the reader closer to the wider context of what the current issue’s cultural focus is founded on. This was the case for “Tradición Oral y Literatura O de pöt/ Zoque: Chiapas, Veracruz, Tabasco y Oaxaca,” “Oral and Literary Tradition of the O de Pot / Zoque People of Chiapas, Veracruz, Tabasco y Oaxaca”, the majority of which was based on a previous investigation by the author Rubén de Leo, who agreed to allow the release of this material to our magazine.
In the same way, the main theme of edition 7 is “Literatura y Tradición Oral Nawautlahtolli: Sierra de Zongolica, Veracruz,” “Literature and Oral Tradition of the Nawautlahtolli People of Sierra de Zongolica, Veracruz,” where the Nahuatl language or ‘Mexicano,’ as it is known by the zone’s eldest residents, shows us just one part of the complete range of linguistic varieties, of which there are thirty registered so far.
That is how we were able to get closer to the Nahuatl people who inhabit the central Veracruz area of Mexico. Since pre-Colombian times these people have been known for defending their cultural identity in the face of adversities such as the Spanish Conquista, independence and the Mexican Revolution. As a result of this cultural defence on the part of its inhabitants, the Nahuatl language has been kept alive throughout generations and, together with Spanish, is one of the two principal languages of the region. However, the influence of Spanish has permeated through the linguistic structures of Nahuatl, so that now the youngest generation of speakers have begun to use what is known as ‘nahuañol’ (a mix of Spanish and Nahuatl). The same is true for other indigenous languages, such as the Maya case detailed by Montemayor. When he had his first encounter with the language he described the situation in this way: “[…] likewise there is a powerful influence from the Spanish syntax in them, sometimes a strong influx of Spanish vocal order is present, which contributes to the diminishing of the indigenous linguistic sound.”[2]
Although Nahuatl is one of the languages which was present throughout the whole of Mesoamerica, due to its use by friars during the evangelisation of the XVI century, its use is in decline. The factors which have contributed to parents not passing their mother tongue on to their children, or children refusing to speak them, are strongly related to racism and discrimination towards the indigenous peoples of America, of Mexico in this case. The older people decided, on the whole, to distance themselves from this indigenous identity that the West sees as a stigma and we do not wish to repeat this nor exacerbate the loss of this knowledge.
Radio Nómada Iguanazul (Iguanazul Nomadic Radio)
This migratory radio format was born in 2008, as a result of several invitations from the communities of its creators; friends or collaborators from Iguanazul Magazine. Its main aim is to bring to life the work of indigenous artists through the medium of bilingual interviews, where the interlocutor details daily life in the community, his or her universal and local artistic influences and reads some of their work. It was our second beginning and we began by editing multilingual literary and oral tradition radio sound bites which were launched through the program Chiapas, National File, from the Boca de Polen Network, Radio UNAM. Poets Macario Matus and Alvaro Itzama Dominguez took part and the programs were later transmitted on university and community radio in Mexico, Peru and Bolivia with collaboration from Víctor Terán, Esteban Ríos Cruz, Víctor cata, Jaime Pérez González, Arystides Turpana, Gustavo Zapoteco Sideño, José Trinidad Cordero Jiménez, María del Rocío Pérez Caamal y Feliciano Sánchez Chan in the Diidxazá (Zapoteco), Tseltal, Dulegaya, Nahuatl, O De Pöt (Zoque), peninsular Maya and Spanish languages.
This is where our first encounter with compilation through community interviews and the creators’ urban spaces began. We wanted to record oral tradition and confirm the heritage which, together with Iguanazul Magazine, is available online and forms part of the World Oral Literature Project. Voices of Vanishing Worlds from the University of Cambridge[3] and in the library of the University of Los Angeles California (UCLA) [4].
We decided that to achieve the revitalisation of the language, it was appropriate to approach indigenous communities.
Editorial Cartonera Iguanazul (Publisher Cartonera Iguanazul)
Our third project was launched in the summer of 2010, in the Altas Montañas region of Veracruz, two years after our first contact with Yerba Mala Cartonera, Bolivia, and the anthropologist Johanna Kunin[5]. One day, we met with a group of young people interested in preserving native languages and respecting mother earth, and we decided to carry on working to revive indigenous languages, in particular that of our grandparents and ancestors : Náhuatl
The Publisher Cartonera Iguanazul comes out of collaboration with the Yolotekitl Collective : Working from the Heart, with whom we exchange ideas to come up with a community model by contributing ideas from all our different perspectives – some of us grew up in small cities, others woke up every morning surrounded by mountains, our numbers include arts administrators, artists and writers. With these connections and friendships, we have created an autonomous project of cardboard workshops for children and young adults from Zongolica, the majority of whom speak Náhautl, so that they can write and illustrate a book about their own cosmogony.
As well as emphasising the importance of using cardboard, which we convert into artisan paper, we also understand the important role that Mother Earth plays in the rituals of our home villages, so we have started a community recycling campaign. We go to the remote villages to record knowledge from peoples daily lives, we encourage the democratization of reading and writing using the grammar of our own languages and we recognise the indigenous creators of oral literature which is closer to art than to the written register. From these mountains, and through the universality of our knowledge, Iguanazul Cartonera has united with the editorial movement in general with the difference of being the only editorial in the world dedicated to indigenous languages.
Currently, we are starting a process of collaboration with the Pachamama Collective, to link new generations with their grandparents, the narrators of myths and legends, who know the oral tradition, who are custodians of culture, through information gathering exercises which awaken interest in preserving the ancestral race in a written form. We see these young people as Guardians of oral memory, as a corollary of new identities, who give a new perspective on what it means to be indigenous in rural, urban and semi urban contexts, where new technologies, and other languages, such as English, are also made use of. Our editorial challenge is to become proficient in different fields, for example cultural management, creative writing, visual art, use of technology, editing and collating.
We are interested in reclaiming the role of indigenous contemporary Nahuatl writers, whose social role is to narrate the mythical origins of a village and to pass on wisdom. In this way, the new generation of indigenous writers regain the elements with which they were in contact since childhood, so that they can recreate them in poetry, stories, essays, novels and theatre, and take them to an urban context or simply revive them locally.
This is why we believe that the challenge of editorial projects which are inter-cultural and in indigenous languages should also address the development and implementation of skills for new generations. We should not just focus on publishing material in those languages without prioritizing their oral and community characteristics, but also return the knowledge gathered to the villages, in order to encourage reflection around the loss of native languages. We must create publications which function as tools to safeguard the intangible patrimony through the participation of the villages, and through encouraging reading in native languages so that the wisdom is recognised in real terms. In this way, young indigenous people become guardians of their oral history and tradition. This is how, through Iguanazul, our ancestors remain present in this language tree. Contrary to popular belief, we are sure that oral tradition will remain in the villages’ collective memories, protected by young people who can reduce the risk of their languages disappearing, since they are the most important living treasure.
[1] Montemayor, Carlos, La literatura actual en las lenguas indígenas de México, Ed. Universidad Iberoamericana, México, 2001, p. 15
[2] Montemayor, Carlos, La literatura actual en las lenguas indígenas de México, op. cit., pp. 37 y 39.
[3]World Oral Literature Project, Voices of Vanishing Worlds, University of Cambridge, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, United Kingdom: http://oralliterature.org/research/collaborations.html http://www.oralliterature.org/collections/map.html
[4] Indigenous Literatures and Languages of America, Biblioteca de la Universidad de Los Ángeles California (UCLA)
http://guides.library.ucla.edu/content.php?pid=30599&sid=223759
[5] Johanna Kunin was an anthropologist at the Université Paris VIII, France, 2005 and a Journalist for the Escuela de Periodismo (School of Journalism), TEA, Argentina, 2001. She is currently employed as a lecturer and academic researcher. She has worked for international organisations and municipal administrations, in news agencies and for various magazines. She was a research scholar at the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO according to its Spanish acronym) and a research assistant at London University, UK. She carried out research for 48 ‘cartonera editorials’ in 19 countries in Latin America, Africa and Europe, and from March to September of 2009 she carried out field work in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador and Mexico.
by judiths
