Día de La Raza

Mexicans speak Spanish, right? But Mexico is also home to indigenous language speakers, six million of them speaking languages other than Spanish as you read this. How many languages? By one count, two hundred eighty-seven distinct languages. Four are extinct, and dozens are endangered, dying, soon to be silent and lost.What forces commit the linguicide? Globalization, cultural imperialism, neocolonialism. Speakers switch to a language with economic power, social power. Schools switch to the language of those in control. “When a language dies,” says Robin Wall Kimmerer, “so much more than words are lost. Language is the dwelling place of ideas that do not exist anywhere else. It is a prism through which to see the world.

Mexico calls this day, Día de la Raza in recognition of the mixed indigenous and European heritage of Mexico—the mestizo character of its population—and because many Mexicans object to paying homage to the controversial explorer and conqueror Christopher Columbus. Let’s recognize language as a cultural richness and a cultural right. For those of us from elsewhere who have settled here in Mexico, it’s time to become aware of the rich tapestry of Mexico’s Indigenous languages and peoples.

Here’s a poignant poem by Laurelyn Whitt about the loss of a language in India:

BUNAHAN (About Not To Speak)

When the last speaker of Boro
falls silent,
who will notice
the first-grown feather
of a bird’s wing? (gansuthi)
or feel how far pretending
to love (onsay) is
from loving
for the last time (onsra)?
Quiet and uneasy, in an
unfamiliar place (asusu)
no one sees her, or listens;
there is less of her
than there was.
The last speaker feels
Boro’s world fall apart,
knowledge unravels:
healing plants go
unseen; the bodies of animals
are unreadable.
With a last thought, onguboy
(to love it all, from the heart),
she leaves fragments
of the world she held in place.
We touch their husks,
about to speak and
about not to speak
(bunhan, bunahan);
awash in loss,
incomplete.