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A look at violence and conflict over Indigenous lands in nine Latin American countries

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A look at violence and conflict over Indigenous lands in nine Latin American countries

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A look at violence and conflict over Indigenous lands in nine Latin American countries

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For years, Ruth Alipaz has been fighting against the Chepete-El Bala hydroelectric project. The project involves the construction of two reservoirs that together would flood at least 66,200 hectares (163,500 acres) of land and displace more than 5,000 people, the majority of them Indigenous communities. “They came to my village to threaten me because of […]

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The Indigenous Population in Mexico Contributes the Least to Greenhouse Gas Emissions but They Are the Most Affected by Climate Change

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The Indigenous Population in Mexico Contributes the Least to Greenhouse Gas Emissions but They Are the Most Affected by Climate Change

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The Indigenous Population in Mexico Contributes the Least to Greenhouse Gas Emissions but They Are the Most Affected by Climate Change - Climate Scorecard

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In Mexico, the census of indigenous people is carried out through surveys in which each person, according to their criteria, identifies themselves or not as indigenous. In 2022, there were 23.2 million indigenous people in Mexico, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). This population belongs to 68 groups (contrary to what…

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Indigenous World 2020: Mexico - IWGIA - International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs

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There are 68 different Indigenous Peoples that inhabit Mexican territory, each of which speaks a native language of their own. These languages form 11 linguistic families, comprised by 364 dialectal variants. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), 25.7 million persons, that is 21.5% of the population, self-identify as Indigenous.

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Indigenous peoples in Mexico - Minority Rights Group

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Mexico has one of the largest and most diverse indigenous populations in Latin America. Although the country had recognized the existence of and contributions made by indigenous peoples in the construction of the country, it was only with the 1992 Constitution that the nation was deemed pluri-cultural. CONADI, the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples, estimates that Mexico has 68 indigenous communities. In July 2017 the Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas reported that – based on 2015 figures – there were 25.7 million Mexicans who self-identified as indigenous, equivalent to 21.5 per cent of the national population at the time, with another 1.6 per cent identifying as part-indigenous.

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Mexico's Indigenous Population Continues to Face High Rates of Poverty

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Mexico's Indigenous Population Continues to Face High Rates of Poverty

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Speaking to a crowd in the southern state of Chiapas in February, a region with the largest indigenous population in Mexico, Pope Francis condemned what he called "the systemic and organized way your people have been misunderstood and excluded from society" (Puella and Bernstein, 2016). These misunderstandings and exclusion have created in Mexico a situation in which indigenous communities face significantly higher rates of poverty, a problem that impacts their overall quality of life and access to basic resources for 12.6 percent of the population.

Chiapas is an important state for understanding indigenous history in Mexico. Since 1400 BCE, Chiapas has housed a sizable indigenous population. Today, one can still find the Mayan ruins of Palenque, Yaxchilán, Bonampak, and Chinkultic in the state. Chiapas was the state that produced Emiliano Zapata, a famous revolt by the Zapatista army in 1994, as well as the occasional indigenous rebellion. Currently, "the state has one of the largest and most diverse indigenous populations in Mexico, with approximately 959,000 native language speakers over the age of five, which represents one quarter of the state's population" (History Channel).

Yet, despite a rich history, Chiapas, as compared to the rest of Mexico, has historically faced higher levels of poverty and economic insecurity. This poverty and insecurity has roots in what Pope Francis labeled the "systemic and organized" exclusion of the indigenous communities from Mexican society. Chiapas is not the only state with a rich history of indigenous communities, and as such, it is not the only state with a troubled history of the marginalization of the indigenous. Indigenous communities in Mexico live on the margins of Mexican society, living in communities with higher levels of poverty, poorer health outcomes, lower life expectancies, and poor academic performance (Sevran-Mori et al, 2014).

Levels of Poverty: According to the United Nations' 2015 report on the status of the world's indigenous peoples, 80.6 percent of Mexico's indigenous population lives in extreme poverty (United Nations, 2015). These high rates of poverty correlate with high rates of food insecurity among children. In the three states with the most concentrated indigenous populations, the vast majority of children live under the poverty line on less than two dollars a day. In Chiapas, 81.7 percent of children live below the poverty line; 77.1 percent in Guerrero; and 66.9 percent in Oaxaca. This means that the majority of children in these indigenous communities go to bed hungry (Yucatan Times, 2014). Furthermore, these high rates of poverty equate to low levels of adequate infrastructure, with indigenous communities lacking widespread access to durable flooring material, clean water and sanitation, schools, health clinics, or medical insurance. All of these factors of poverty combine together to create a situation of poor health, lowered life expectancy, and decreased education rates in these indigenous communities.

Health Indicators: Due to extreme poverty, the indigenous population of Mexico faces poorer health indicators compared to the non-indigenous population. In the states of Guerrero, Chiapas, and Oaxaca, where indigenous populations are concentrated, maternal mortality rates are significantly higher than the national rate. The maternal mortality rate of Guerrero is 103.2; Chiapas is 82.7; and Oaxaca is 80.6, compared to a national rate of 38 deaths per 100,000 live births. Additionally, the prevalence of preventable diseases in considerably higher in the rural areas where the indigenous communities are concentrated. In these states, the probability of death due to preventable death is 181 percent higher in rural areas with concentrated indigenous populations than it is in the urban centers of the same states with low numbers of indigenous peoples (United Nations, 2015). The infant mortality rate is 50 percent higher among indigenous children than it is among the non-indigenous. Children who survive this increased infant mortality rate have higher levels of malnutrition. Notably, 44 percent of indigenous children are malnourished, compared to only 17 percent of non-indigenous children (Sevran-Mori et al, 2014). Due to these decreased health indicators, the indigenous population in Mexico has a lower life expectancy than the non-indigenous, with a 5 year gap in life expectancy (United Nations, 2015).

Academic Performance: As of 2014, in Mexico's indigenous communities, only 27 percent of children graduated from high school. While the national illiteracy rate in Mexico is 8.4 percent, among the indigenous populations the illiteracy rate is raised to 44 percent (PressTV News, 2014). Higher education attendance is extremely low, with only 3 percent of indigenous peoples attending institutions of higher education, compared to 15 percent of the national population. These lower rates of education can be equated to a lack of schools in rural areas; lower quality teachers in indigenous areas; and poorer test scores and academic achievement due to language barriers, as Spanish is a second language for most indigenous children.

Oportunidades, a social cash transfer program in Mexico, has been instrumental in helping poor communities in Mexico. Despite this, many rural indigenous communities in Mexico have been excluded from the program. These communities do not meet the basic requirement for inclusion in the program, as they do not have a school or health center that would be necessary for the inclusion in the program. The result of these requirements is that those most need of aid are excluded, perpetuating a cycle of marginalization and poverty. While Mexico has written the protection of indigenous rights into their constitution, and has signed international treaties on the issue, the continued marginalization and exclusion of these groups has created widespread poverty and chronic health and education problems, problems that the Mexican government has largely failed to address.
References:
"Chiapas." History Channel. http://www.history.com/topics/mexico/chiapas

"Mexico." CIA World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mx.html

"More than 20 Million Mexican Children and Adolescents Live in Poverty (More than 4 Million in Extreme Poverty)." Yucatan Times. May 26, 2014. http://www.theyucatantimes.com/2014/05/more-than-20-million-mexican-children-and-adolescents-live-in-poverty-more-than-4-million-in-extreme-poverty/

"Only 27 Percent of Indigenous Mexicans Finish High School." PressTV News Videos. Jun. 28, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_w4uUGfvGc

Pullella, Phillip and Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein. "Pope Courts Indigenous Mexicans as Catholic Fervor Fades." Reuters. Feb. 15, 2016. https://news.yahoo.com/pope-heads-mexicos-indigenous-south-catholic-fervor-fades-140618064.html;_ylt=A0LEVvDWR8NW7h0AYlQnnIlQ;_ylu=X3oDMTEyaHRvazA2BGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMzBHZ0aWQDQjE2MzhfMQRzZWMDc3I-

Servan-Mori, E., Torres-Pereda, P., Orozco, E., & Sosa-Rubí, S. G. (2014). "An Explanatory Analysis of Economic and Health Inequality Changes Among Mexican Indigenous People." 2000-2010. International Journal for Equity in Health, 13(1), 21-21. http://equityhealthj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-9276-13-21#CR36

"State of the World's Indigenous Peoples." 2nd Volume. United Nations. 2015. http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/2015/sowip2volume-ac.pdf

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Mexico's Indigenous Population Continues to Face High Rates of Poverty

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Speaking to a crowd in the southern state of Chiapas in February, a region with the largest indigenous population in Mexico, Pope Francis condemned what he called "the systemic and organized way your people have been misunderstood and excluded from society" (Puella and Bernstein, 2016).

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Date admitted: 19 December 2004 Membership discontinued: 6 July 2013

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Mexico: Land, territory and environmental defenders are being criminalized for exercising their right to protest

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Mexico: Land, territory and environmental defenders are being criminalized for exercising their right to protest

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Mexico is criminalizing land, territory and environmental defenders

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For exercising their right to peaceful protest

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Indigenous Communities in Mexico Fight for Their Lives and Their Lands

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Indigenous Communities in Mexico Fight for Their Lives and Their Lands

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Indigenous Communities in Mexico Fight for Their Lives and Their Lands

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A confederation of Nahua pueblos vows to defend their ancestral homeland from a predatory cartel with alleged ties to extractive industries.

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Violence against indigenous groups defending the environment in Mexico

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Violence against indigenous groups defending the environment in Mexico

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Violence against indigenous groups defending the environment in Mexico

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CEESP News: José Luis Carpio Domínguez, Unidad Académica Multidisciplinaria Reynosa Aztlán, Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, México, Jesús Ignacio Castro Salazar, Tecnológico Nacional de México, Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Abasolo, México, e Inés Arroyo Quiroz, Centro Regional de Investigaciones Multidisciplinarias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. In Mexico, indigenous peoples have been marginalized from economic, political, social and cultural development (CNDH, 2020), excluded from environmental discourse, and victims of lack of legal protection by the State. As a result, they face serious violations of their rights and affectations due to the overexploitation of nature in their territories (Toledo, Garrido and Barrera-Bassols, 2014).

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From The Language That Brought Us Words Like Chocolate, Here's The History Of The Nahuatl Language

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From The Language That Brought Us Words Like Chocolate, Here's The History Of The Nahuatl Language

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At mitú we celebrate our Latinx culture every single day. This month we partnered with Amtrak to highlight the legacy of our past and where it's taking us in the future.
Aguacate, chocolate, birote, cacahuate, mole, and camote. These words are more than just delicious cultural foods, they are words from our ancestral language: Nahuatl.

Before Spanish was the dominant language spoken in Mexico, we had our mother language, Nahuatl, a language rich in history that has shaped not just our present-day languages like Spanish and English, but also our very own culture and Latinx pride.

Nahuatl, can also be called Aztec or Mexican (with a "sh" sound), is the most widely spoken Indigenous language of North America. It was spoken by the Aztec people, ancestors to present-day Mexicans, Salvadorans, and some Guatemalans. For centuries, it was one of the most widely known Indigenous languages and is still spoken by millions in Mexico and Central America to this day.

The Nahuatl language also has cousins as part of the greater Uto-Aztecan family, a linguistic tree spanning central and northeastern Mexico as well as the American Southwest. It comprises the Huichol language of Nayarit, the Yaqui and Raramuri (Tarahumara) of Chihuahua, the Hopi of Arizona, the Comanche of Texas, the Luiseno of California, the Paiute of Oklahoma, and the Shoshone of Wyoming.

Just like Hollywood had a Golden Age, the Nahuatl language's golden era was even more golden.

Nahuatl's Golden Age occurred during the Aztec Empire's prime power from the early 15th century to the early 16th century. It was during this period that the language expanded from central to western Mexico, the Gulf Coast, and Central America. The greatest empires of the Aztec people where the Nahuatl language flourished were located in Tetzcoco, Mexico-Tenochtitlan, and Tlacopan, also known as the capitals of the Nahuatl Empire.

Before the Spanish colonizers came to the Aztec land, Nahuatl was written in Indigenous pictographic script from it's beginning to the end of the 17th century.

When Spanish priests started converting the Nahuatl-speaking Mexicas in the 1520s, they began to write the Nahuatl language using the Spanish alphabet. During the 16th century, Spanish priests also collected word lists including grammatical treaties that documented the Nahuatl language, its sounds, and how the Aztecs conversed. The Nahuatl documented in all of these documents, called classical Nahuatl, which labels the formal style of the language. Nahuatl speakers in the pueblos of Mexico tend to speak the more informal Nahuatl.

Franciscan friars in the 16th century were the first to write the Nahuatl language using letters of the Roman (aka Latin) alphabet (which is what the English alphabet is written in). Over time, Nahuatl scholars modified this alphabet to fit Nahuatl sounds. Most Nahuatl words that we see written are written in the way it is spelled in current-day Mexico City. For example "coatl" the Nahuatl word for snake, can be written with both a "k" or "c" but in Mexico City is spelled with a "c" for "coatl."

That's not all. The Nahuatl language also played a huge role in Spanish Catholic music and Spanish culture.

According to Javier Marin Lopez in "Musical Cultures in the Reinos de Indias at the Time of Isabel and Ferdinand" music was utilized as the most powerful and influential tool in the shift in history from the early 1500s to the present day. It was also a source that united two completely different kinds of societies, from two different continents across the world, in two different eras during a time of great trauma, colonization, and dehumanization.

In order for Catholic missionaries to achieve full conversion of the Indigenous natives, they needed to reach a compromise by mixing both of their traditions and styles of music. An example of this is Psalmodia Christiana y sermonario de los santos en lengua Mexicana by the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagun published in 1583 which was a book containing over 333 hymns and songs translated into Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. In the Convent of Domingo de Guzman in present-day Mexico and San Juan Ixcoy in present-day Guatemala, a plethora of manuscripts also hold evidence of Mixtec (Mayan language), Nahuatl, and Spanish translations set polyphony, motets, and villancicos. In History of Western Music, towards the end of the 17 th century, many of these pieces used originally during mass were also being performed outside of the mission with double or triple choruses accompanied by small orchestras wind and string instruments, also stated in Music in the Andes.

Today, Nahuatl is spoken by millions of people in different dialects in both Mexico and Central America.

Some dialects vary by region in southern Mexico City, the region of Puebla, and Cholula, Tlaxcala, the Huasteca area and San Luis Potosi, Queretaro, Hidalgo and Veracruz, Jalisco and Michoacan, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and El Salvador.

A language that was attempted to be used as a tool of assimilation during colonization, is a language that shapes everything about our Spanish and even English language today. In recent years, we've even seen a comeback in the interest and pride of the Nahuatl language and Nahuatl literature both in Mexico and the United States. Mexican composer, Salvador Moreno, even wrote a Nahuatl song cycle entitled 4 Canciones en Nahua. Additionally, La Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural in Mexico became the first university to offer a Masters in Nahuatl called "La Maestría en Lengua y Cultura Nahua."

Nahuatl. More than a language. More than an Indigenous tongue that one could assume is a dead language. But it is not. It is alive and thriving. It is a language that speaks the Mestizo's very existence. The word "Nahuatl" actually translates to speak "beautiful, clear or intelligent." Ca ye! Ninahuatlahtoa. Oh yeah! I speak beautifully.
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From The Language That Brought Us Words Like Chocolate, Here's The History Of The Nahuatl Language

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At mitú we celebrate our Latinx culture every single day. This month we partnered with Amtrak to highlight the legacy of our past and where it's taking us in the future. Aguacate, chocolate, birote, cacahuate, mole, and camote. These words are more than just delicious cultural foods, they are wor

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With approximately 1.5 million speakers in central Mexico, Nahuatl is one of the most widely-spoken indigenous languages of the Americas.

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The Indigenous World 2021: Mexico - IWGIA - International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs

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Mexico is home to 68 Indigenous Peoples, each speaking their own native language and together accounting for 364 variants. The 2020 Census, produced by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), indicated that 6.1% of the national population aged three years and over was registered…

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Mexico's indigenous population is one of the two largest in the Americas (only Peru is comparable in size). More than one in ten Mexicans speaks an indigenous language.

The Mexican government's census asks whether citizens speak one of Mexico's 56 recognized indigenous languages. This data forms the basis for official estimates of the size and distribution of the national indigenous population. As recently as the 1990 census, the estimated size of the indigenous population by officially excluding children under five years of age. One demographic study included at least some of the children under five to produce an estimate of 6.4 million indigenous Mexicans in 1990, or 7.89% of the national population (1). The National Indigenous Institute (INI), however, attempted to take undercounting into account, producing a 1990 estimate of "no less than" 8.7 million, or 10.7% of the national population. (2).

The ten largest indigenous language groups are Náhuatl (22.7% of indigenous language speakers), Maya (13.5%), Zapoteco (7.6%), Mixteco (7.3%) Otomí (5.3%), Tzeltal (5.3%), Tztotzil (4.3%), Totonaca (3.9%), Mazateco (3.2%) and Chol (2.4%).(3). The larger languages include several very distinct variants.

Most of Mexico's indigenous population is geographically concentrated in about one third of Mexico's states (see map). More than half live in four states. The ten states with the largest share of the reported national indigenous population are Oaxaca (18.3%); Veracruz (13.5%), Chiapas (13%), Puebla (9.42%), Yucatán (8.2%), Hidalgo (5.7%), state of Mexico (5.6%), Guerrero (5.2%), San Luis Potosí (3.2%) and Michoacán (2.9%). In terms of relative presence, Mexico's most predominantly indigenous language-speaking states are: Oaxaca (with 52.7% of the state's population), Yucatán (52.5%); Quintana Roo (36.7%), Chiapas (35.2%), Hidalgo (26.4%), Campeche (25.4%), Puebla (19.9°), Veracruz (18.8%), Guerrero (17.2%), San Luis Potosí (13.8%). (4). Not only should this data be interpreted in light of a significant undercount, especially likely in the 1990 census, but informal estimates also suggest that as many as one million additional indigenous people reside in the Mexico City area.

Article copyright Cultural Survival, Inc.

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Mexico's indigenous population is one of the two largest in the Americas (only Peru is comparable in size). More than one in ten Mexicans speaks an indigenous language. The Mexican government's census asks whether citizens speak one of Mexico's 56 recognized indigenous languages.

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Wooden masks give life to "huehues" at indigenous Mexican carnivals

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Wooden masks give life to "huehues" at indigenous Mexican carnivals

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Fotografía del 16 de febrero de 2022 que muestra máscaras diseñadas por el escultor Adrián Becerra en su taller de madera artesanal, en la ciudad de Puebla. Agencia EFE

Adrián Becerra is an artisan who for decades has been creating wooden masks that are used in February during the carnivals of the " huehues " in the Mexican state of Puebla, a longstanding tradition that emphasizes the merging of the indigenous and Spanish cultures.

Cold faces, laughing or serious, gazes that seem to look all the way to infinity, inert but real - these are the characteristics of Becerra's carved wooden masks.

The artisan and sculptor began creating the wooden faces 30 years ago, taking for his main inspiration the masks that are used in the assorted pagan carnivals that are held nowadays in the region and which precede the religious festivals of Holy Week.

Becerra shared that his imagination takes wing when he begins to make the sketches and designs that will be basic elements in fashioning each of his creations.

Right from the start, he puts together the characteristics, the eye and hair color, along with features such as the size of the eyelashes and lips that will lure or frighten those who admire them in each of the carnival dances.

His masks have established a trend, given that for many years the traditional masks had been male and female faces featuring basic characteristics like a mustache of painted lips with rouged cheekes and simple, non-descript facial expressions.

"I've always been creative ... The masks that they made before were very basic. It was a simple average face looking human, but I began to put in different ideas and tried to make them look more realistic but at the same time more fantasy-like," he said.

With these features as the basis for the masks, they are designed to represent the " huehue," a Nahuatl word that translates into Spanish as "ancient" or "wise."

Adrián Becerra es un artesano que lleva décadas creando máscaras de madera que son utilizadas este febrero en los carnavales de los huehues del estado mexicano de Puebla, una tradición centenaria que reivindica el sincretismo indígena y español. Hilda Ríos Agencia EFE

Formerly, and in ancient times, the huehues were people with great clout in the organization of communities.

And during these carnivals, the indigenous peoples outfit themselves as these ancient personalities to celebrate and honor them, to dance, drink "pulque" (fermented agave juice), and also to make fun of the Spaniards after they conquered Ancient Mexico.

Becerra said that the cost of his masks ranges from 2,600 to 5,000 pesos (about $130 to $250), with the price depending on the type of work and the design that the customer requests as well as the number of days of labor it requires to make them.

Normally, one mask takes between three and seven days to create, but it's an arduous process during which the artisan fashions them from pieces of cedar wood.

First, he takes a piece of wood and cuts it to approximately the size of a human face. Then, he traces the image of the face he intends to create and makes the necessary cuts in the material to get it ready for further, and more detailed, work.

Finally, he puts the wood into a metallic press that helps to hold it steady so that he can begin using a hammer and chisel to carve out the detailed features that are needed.

After this process, he paints on each of the facial features, like the eyebrows and the hair, and he attaches the eyes, which are made from glass, with the aim of making the mask look as real as possible.

The sculptor said that he has made hundreds of traditional masks, but in recent years he has innovated with some of the most typical designs, such as the one of the devil.

In addition, he has created masks representing cartoon or comical characters and incorporated ideas suggested by the customers, such as the characters of Maleficent from the same-named film or Harley Quinn from 'The Suicide Squad' movie.

Capes or cloaks are also a fundamental part of a huehue costume because the full outfit includes the mask but also this garment, which can be bordered, painted with oil paints and adorned with sequins or fringes.

Artisan Verónica Méndez Hernández said that a cape might take between one and three months to make, depending on how many hours each day the artist spends on it.

"I'm devoted to keeping alive the tradition of the Barrio del Alto (one of the first settlements in the city of Puebla) since because of migration the original people have moved to other neighborhoods, but they're still fighting to keep the tradition of the huehues alive," she said.

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Wooden masks give life to "huehues" at indigenous Mexican carnivals

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The cost of his masks ranges from 2,600 to 5,000 pesos (about $130 to $250), with the price depending on the type of work and the design that the customer requests as well as the number of days of labor it requires to make them.

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Drawn by drums and incense, Pilsen residents are finding strength and joy through Aztec dance

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Drawn by drums and incense, Pilsen residents are finding strength and joy through Aztec dance

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On Thursday evenings, as long as the weather is warm, the playground at Harrison Park in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood becomes a stage for leaping dancers and the age-old sounds of drums. It's a unique event - the rehearsal of a traditional Aztec dance that's become a beloved gathering for the neighborhood. About 20 dancers, including children, rehearse wearing bandanas around their foreheads and rattles strapped to their ankles.

The dancers practice with a group called Huehuecoyotl, which means Ancient Coyote in Nahuatl, an indigenous language spoken in Mexico. The group started rehearsing at Harrison Park last summer, in part because many of its members live in or near Pilsen, a longtime Mexican community.

Ten-year-old Axel Becerril spotted the dancers on his way to swimming lessons one day last year. The rumbling of the drums and the sight of people moving to the beat made him want to join the dancers, he said. He's been dancing with them ever since.

"I got interested when I saw people dancing," Axel said. "I thought it was a type of tradition that people dance, but I didn't know at the time. I just thought it was about joy."

Axel, his sister and his mother are now all dancers with the group. Axel loves playing the drums.

Huehuecoyotl is one of several Aztec dance groups in the Chicagoland region. It's not about entertainment. As Axel found, the group's goal is something larger. They dance to reclaim and preserve the indigenous cultural identity of Mexicans in Chicago.

"The Danza Azteca is a Mexican tradition that has been kept alive for hundreds of years," Ana Patiño said in Spanish. She's one of the group's leaders. "It creates harmony in the community and with nature. It also teaches you discipline and promotes strength."

The dancers picked Harrison Park because it was a safe and open space to practice, especially during the pandemic.

"Pilsen is in the heart of Chicago, that's why we chose to come here," said Sergio Abrajan Flores, who leads rehearsals each week. He and Patiño, his partner, live in East Chicago, Indiana and are long-time Aztec dancers. "For me, discovering Pilsen was like going back to Mexico. Ever since, we've been coming just to visit or whenever we can, to dance."

More than a rehearsal, their dance or danza is a ritual, a ceremony, he and other dancers said. It's an offering, a prayer in motion used to meditate, heal and connect with nature and everything around.

"La danza is a representation of the universe - a small version of it here on earth," Flores said. He points to a red cloth that is topped with fruit, burning incense, salt and a seashell instrument known as the Atecocoli. Those items, he explains, represent the four elements - earth, wind, water and fire. "And that's the heart," Flores said of the red cloth. It's traditionally placed at the center near the drums and people follow a step routine around it in a big circle.

Axel is not the only resident captivated by the rhythmic beating of drums resonating in the distance, the smell of the incense and the sound of the seashell instrument. Many children, their parents and others walking by slow down to witness the dance ritual.

The sight of dancers at the playground adjusting their bandanas and strapping rattles to their ankles is a familiar one for many locals who frequent the park. Most members of the dance group live nearby; some are teachers, artists or students. A few of them dance with different Aztec dance groups but they come to practice with Flores in Pilsen.

"Everyone is welcome to join la danza," Flores said.

Flores pointed to Maria Teresa Llanito, an older woman with a cane who is there most weeks trying to follow the steps.

"It relaxes me," said Llanito, who comes from Guanajuato, Mexico. "I forget about problems. My daughter sits me here, but I just want to move my feet and dance."

At the end of the outdoor rehearsals last year, the dancers moved to a community center in the neighborhood. Axel lost track of the dancers for some time.

Flores recalled when Axel and his mom found them again.

"I came to practice one day, and [Axel] came running, saw me and said from afar 'You!' He runs and he gives me a hug," Flores said. "Like if he was my kid."

But Flores knew Axel wasn't hugging only him, he said. He understood that Axel was excited to find la danza, the drums and to be back in his circle.

That's why practicing at Harrison Park is so important to Flores. Many children and parents who come are originally from Mexico, he said. They are drawn by the smell of the incense, the drums, the dance. To Flores these rehearsals serve to preserve their links to the past and to offer residents a relaxing evening in the summer.
Thank you to Monica Garza who asked the question that inspired this story at one of our tabling events in Pilsen.
Adriana Cardona-Maguigad is Curious City's reporter. Follow her @AdrianaCardMag.

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Drawn by drums and incense, Pilsen residents are finding strength and joy through Aztec dance

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On Thursday evenings, as long as the weather is warm, the playground at Harrison Park in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood becomes a stage for leaping dancers and the age-old sounds of drums. It's a unique event - the rehearsal of a traditional Aztec dance that's become a beloved gathering for the neighborhood.

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Telling the Entire Story of Mexico's Indigenous People - Indigenous Mexico

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Telling the Entire Story of Mexico's Indigenous People - Indigenous Mexico

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When most people think about the Indigenous people of Mexico, they think of the Aztecs and Mayans. But the Aztec Empire only ruled over eight of the current 32 states of Mexico and the Mayans inhabited only five states of present-day Mexico.

We believe that EVERY MEXICAN STATE HAS A STORY TO TELL.

And every one of Mexico's 64 ethnolinguistic groups has a story to tell. And we hope to give them a voice by telling their stories.

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Telling the Entire Story of Mexico's Indigenous People - Indigenous Mexico

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Indigenous Mexico is a One-Stop Resource for Information on Mexico's Indigenous People. EVERY MEXICAN STATE HAS A STORY TO TELL. When most people think about the Indigenous people of Mexico, they think of the Aztecs and Mayans. But the Aztec Empire only ruled over eight of the current 32 states of Mexico and the Mayans inhabited only five states of present-day Mexico.

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5 Latinx Artists Using Abstraction to Address Precolonial Histories 

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5 Latinx Artists Using Abstraction to Address Precolonial Histories 

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In her article "Witnessing the In-visibility of Inca Architecture in Colonial Peru" (2007), Stella Nair describes how 16th-century Spanish colonists razed Incan art and architecture, replacing Indigenous culture with their own. Across the Americas and the Caribbean, the pattern persisted: Europeans destroyed artifacts of native creativity as they asserted their dominance over the people themselves. Nair writes about how contemporary Latinx artists are reclaiming their aesthetic past by embracing fragmentation and the partial histories they've received. The open-ended nature of abstraction appeals to many of them.

These painters, sculptors, photographers, and weavers are slowly reviving Indigenous forms of knowledge as they connect to their roots. Last year, Elizabeth Ferrer curated the revelatory exhibition "Latinx Abstract" at BRIC with the contemporary Latinx artists Candida Alvarez, Karlos Cárcamo, Maria Chávez, Alejandro Guzmán, Glendalys Medina, Freddy Rodríguez, Fanny Sanín, Mary Valverde, Vargas-Suarez Universal, and Sarah Zapata. The show featured paintings and sculptures that were outstanding in their own right-and reinvigorated the American canon of abstraction that has, for too long, been dominated by white Euro-American male artists.

In 2018, Marcela Guerrero curated "Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art" at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The exhibition suggested that European colonial culture did not destroy Indigenous culture at all-that precolonial forms live on as vibrantly as ever, through the work of contemporary Latinx artists such as William Cordova, Livia Corona Benjamin, Jorge González, Guadalupe Maravilla, Claudia Peña Salinas, Clarissa Tossin, and Ronny Quevedo. A special interest in precolonial architecture pervaded the show, and the focus on "Latinx" artists (a descriptor that eliminates markers of gender) also embraced the complex nature of identity for those who feel fragmented by a colonial past.

Contemporary Latinx abstraction doesn't just look towards repairing the past, though: It also helps envision Indigenous futures. Using oral histories and research as starting points, artists use shards of the past to reconfigure their cultures for future generations.

Artsy spoke with five contemporary Latinx artists working in abstraction- Sarah Zapata, Ronny Quevedo, Lisa Alvarado, Tanya Aguiñiga, and Blanka Amezkua -to understand how they use abstraction to keep precolonial indigeneity across the Americas and Caribbean alive.

B. 1978, San Diego. Lives and works in Los Angeles.

Tanya Aguiñiga's impressive rope and textile-based installations view craft as a form of easily accessible, embodied knowledge. The artist/activist invites members of marginalized groups-women of Mesoamerican heritage in particular-to weave with her "off-loom." In 2016, she founded the AMBOS (Art Made Between Opposite Sides) collaborative, for femme artists to make art documenting their relationship with the border.

Aguiñiga's own work features distinctive interlocking knots of rope, hair, wool, terracotta clay, and other materials. Altogether, they form exquisite abstractions that resemble grids overlaid with organic plant or fungal life.

Aguiñiga's practice was informed by her own childhood experience of crossing the border to attend K-12 schools in the United States; growing up, her family lived a few blocks from the border wall in Tijuana, Mexico. The artist draws craft-based practices from the region around her hometown, honoring the land politics and immigration issues that were so central to her youth.

Aguiñiga first encountered abstraction when, at age 19, she applied for a job at an art museum-the first time, too, that she'd ever entered that kind of institution. "I was hired two hours later," she remembered, "and upon entering the museum's galleries, I became obsessed with Josef Albers and Robert Irwin. Albers's Homage to the Square: On Dry Ground (1963) inspired me to pursue the study of art."

The grids and keen color studies of Josef and Anni Albers continue to undergird Aguiñiga's practice. The artist merges these elements with rope and interlocking weaving, effectively uniting Indigenous culture with modernist abstraction. "I think abstraction is a universal language rooted in emotional alchemy," she said. "I think that many of us are using abstraction as a way to reshape what is considered art, who art is for, and what art can do. As Latinx artists in the U.S., abstraction can act as a mirror for our often liminal experiences."

Aguiñiga's recent sculpture Matriarchal Womb (2022) features interlocking knots of hair and wool that form a womblike protuberance. Rendered in neutral tones of taupe, beige, copper, and brown, the sculpture is equally inviting and warm as it is alien in its textures and composition. The knots suggest a form of braiding weighed down by its materials, while the shape beckons individuals to come closer. Tensions between strangeness and familiarity extend across her practice, which she connects back to the cross-border experience.

"I think that as a colonized people living within a majority white culture on stolen land, most of us Chicanx, Latinx, Mexican American folx in the U.S. look to Mesoamerican culture and history as a way to ground ourselves on this continent and find a sense of belonging in the face of systemic oppression," the artist said. "Reconnecting to traditional ways of working with community, land, materials, form, and technique have helped me work through traumas and provided healing opportunities for collaborators as well. Objects our ancestors made still have lessons within them."

B. 1981, Guayaquil, Ecuador. Lives and works in New York.

Ronny Quevedo transforms personal memory and celestial imagery into abstract, geometric sculptures. Through his practice, he aims to repair the harms of historical forced migration of Latinx cultures across the Americas and Caribbean-his own family was forced to move from Ecuador to New York. His palette of gold, deep blues, and blacks creates an ethereal sensibility that suggests ideas of universal, personal, and cultural belonging.

Inspired by his mother's practice as a seamstress, Quevedo integrates sewing-related materials such as muslin and patterns into his work. "I also include linoleum tiles, copper, gold, and milk crates to represent a specific environment or an upbringing, as a type of imagined viewer or community that I have in mind," the artist said. "So my process is often directed and influenced by those materials and the audience I want to engage with."

The muslin scraps serve as a metaphor for an Andean culture that's been shredded and discarded. One sculpture, el guarda meta de los cosmos (from the abyss) (2022), from his latest solo exhibition "entre aquí y allá" at Alexander Gray Associates in New York, on view through October 15th, is emblematic of his practice. The sparse sculpture resembles a minimal soccer field with two opposing sides. The piece uses copper tubing to evoke both exploitative labor mining in South America and the goal posts of soccer games his father played when he was young.

Quevedo first interacted with abstraction via precolonial South American culture. The Wari Feathered Panel (600-900) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art enchanted him as a teenager. He recalled its simple design with yellow and blue tapestries made of bird feathers. "That, for me, was always really striking because it was my first encounter of representing geography and place through an abstract form," he said.

The Cubist paintings and sculptures of Uraguyan modern artist Joaquín Torres-García also left a mark on Quevedo's practice. "There is a tussle between the two-between defined imagery and undefined imagery. He is also someone looking at mapping as a site of play and challenge," Quevedo said. Torres-García's practice has helped the artist think through his personal history and the larger colonial past, fusing personal iconography with that of precolonial indigenous cultures.

Abstraction allows Quevedo to explore Andean culture without trying to resolve its fragments. The artist honors his personal experiences along the way. He believes that abstraction offers a forum "for discussing liminal spaces, temporality, and opacity. This multiplicity posits a redefinition of abstract work and what geographies and histories get included in that reimagining."

B. 1982, San Antonio, Texas. Lives and works in Chicago.

Installation view of "Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It's Kept" at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 2022. Photo by Ryan Lowry. Courtesy of Lisa Alvarado, Bridget Donahue, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Lisa Alvarado's colorful, free-hanging abstract paintings evoke both modernist canvases and handmade Tibetan and Mesoamerican textiles. Her piece Vibratory Cartography: Nepantla (2021-22), recently featured in this year's Whitney Biennial, uses the Nahuatl term for "in between" to indicate the convergence of styles that define her work. As a free-hanging installation, the piece resembles a stage backdrop and features an abstract image that vaguely resembles a map of a mountainous region. Alvarado makes her abstractions pop with her rich backgrounds of royal blue, crimsons, and purples.

Alvarado began developing her now-signature style around 2010, bridging her painting and music practices with her perspective as a Mexican American artist. She now weaves photography, sand, and sound installation into her exhibitions. "As a child growing up in San Antonio, Texas, I absorbed mural paintings and textiles before I had the opportunity to visit art museums," she said. "I later found that these visual traditions, as well as other art forms that relate to my culture, are often categorized within art institutions as 'artifacts' or 'folk art' rather than being recognized as fine art."

Rejecting the conditions of the Western Euro-American painting canon, Alvarado began making work about the in-between place of Mestizjae, "the 500 years of mixtures within the Americas (in the regions that Spain and Portugal colonized)." She intertwined her love of abstraction with cultural history and life experiences. "My works communicate in an abstract language of vibration that connects to the rhythms of the body, like the heartbeat and breath," she said.

Although she had a natural talent for painting realism, Alvarado realized over time that life's smallest, ineffable feelings and details are more impressionable to audiences than fully realized figures. Alvarado cited diverse influences: " Chelo González Amézcua, Moki Cherry, Huichol yarn paintings, Aymara weavings, Gutai, Milford Graves, Pacita Abad, Howardena Pindell, [and] Al Loving." She advocates for abstraction because, she said, it is "a powerful and poetic transmitter of the experience of multiplicity. Abstraction can build open forms for perspectives that exist within invisibility."

B. 1988, Corpus Christi, Texas. Lives and works in New York.

Drawing inspiration from her Peruvian ancestry, Sarah Zapata makes vibrant and arresting abstract textiles that document daily life. Her work is informed by the Paracas and Nazca cultures in Peru, which produced textiles for every stage of life, then buried the dead in their accumulated textiles.

"How could something be for the body and about the body that is not a garment?" Zapata said. That question is at the center of her work, which honors these traditions with abstract references. Like Guadalupe Maravilla and Cecilia Vicuña, whom Zapata cites as models for her work, the artist weaves communal care and accountability into her textiles.

Zapata's queer identity and her experience as a first-generation American living in a Christian household are integral to her practice. Using a large loom, she weaves together Peruvian textiles that honor her fragmented and mixed heritage. She finds liberation in her position as a first-generation American in the 21st century: She need not speak for any community as a whole, but may instead reference her heritage, the fractured nature of her upbringing, and postcolonial American culture at large.

Zapata-whose latest solo exhibition, "Existing with the Moon Under our Feet," opens at Deli Gallery on October 6th-specifically draws inspiration from precolonial Peru. She noted how textiles of that era rejected the singularity of the hero. Often woven by groups of women, these pieces stitched together mundane life stories.

"Rather than being diminutive, [my work] takes up space," Zapata said, noting how institutions have historically undermined women's textile work. "Lately, I've been thinking about architecture and how it shapes homogenization and how we think about ourselves. I'm always thinking about these invisible histories of [our] ancestors and how we can honor them and move forward with those ideas." She makes work at a grand scale, boldly taking space for herself and redefining the architecture in which she places it.

Zapata's first brush with abstraction occurred when, as a child, she saw Dorothea Tanning's large-scale sculpture Pincushion to Serve as Fetish (1979) at the Dallas Museum of Art. She loved how the fabric piece exuded softness and sensuality, challenging the building's rigid concrete walls. In her own practice, Zapata considers the assortment of handmade dolls from Peru and Mexico that occupied her childhood home. She viewed these fabric objects as "figurative, open-ended, and yet deeply precious."

She's preserved this preciousness in her abstraction. "There's this misconception that abstraction is easy but it is not. There's this delicate balance [between] this beautiful work that is evocative and yet to be sensitive [for others]," she concluded.

B. 1971, Mexico City. Lives and works in New York.

Blanka Amezkua's bright, abstract tissue-paper works take inspiration from her identity as a Mexico-born, Latinx American immigrant living in New York City. Amezkua has a formal background in painting, with a degree from Fresno State University. Over the past decade, her work has foregrounded elements of folk art, botany, and popular culture. She cites her encounters at Fresno State with abstract artists Mary Maughelli and Ara Dolarian as key influences on her practice. Amezkua's theoretical collaboration with conceptual abstract artist Charles Gaines pushed her to integrate sociopolitical commentary in her work via abstraction.

"My creative work is driven by my profound interest in traditional techniques and personal, cultural concerns," Amezkua said. Her current project takes as a starting point the research and illustrations from Codex de la Cruz-Badiano (1552), the first medical book created in the Americas to honor Indigenous forms of healing. Produced by colonialists, the volume features the healing ideas of the 16th-century Nahua knowledge keepers. The text is both an emblem of knowledge theft and an instruction manual for wellness. Today, Latinx people can use the centuries-old document to become reacquainted with their past.

Amezkua encountered the Codex de la Cruz-Badiano at the Hispanic Society in 2021, after a tough year battling long COVID-19. The book exposed her to herbal remedies that helped alleviate her own symptoms. Since then, Amezkua has been reillustrating the book. Her latest drawings and tissue-paper abstractions feature plants from the book. They resemble papel picado: colorful, perforated paper decorations that derive from Mexican craft practices.

By creating her own papel picado, Amezkua reminds us of the flora of the past, now extinct due to colonial mining. The work reintroduces us to forgotten knowledge and nature of the Americas. Amezkua is helping Mesoamerican culture survive as she shares it with others. "I am currently unearthing new ways to deepen this fascinating work," she said.

Amezkua cites Carmen Herrera, Beatriz Milhazes, and Xenobia Bailey as artists who inspired her work. She's also excited by the new generation of artists keeping their Indigenous heritage alive through abstraction. She concluded, "I believe that we are simply revealing what has always been there: ancestral knowledge and forms. And we are using new technologies and contemporary approaches to represent these ideas."

Ayanna Dozier is Artsy's Staff Writer.

Header image: Tanya Aguiñiga, "Croma Receptor ," 2022. Courtesy of the artist.

Jenna Gribbon, Luncheon on the grass, a recurring dream, 2020. Jenna Gribbon, April studio, parting glance, 2021. Jenna Gribbon, Silver Tongue, 2019

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5 Latinx Artists Using Abstraction to Address Precolonial Histories | Artsy

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In her article "Witnessing the In-visibility of Inca Architecture in Colonial Peru" (2007), Stella Nair describes how 16th-century Spanish colonists razed Incan art and architecture, replacing Indigenous culture with their own. Across the Americas and the Caribbean, the pattern persisted: Europeans destroyed artifacts of native creativity as they asserted their dominance over the people themselves.

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'The Codex Mendoza was used to legitimize Spanish conquest of the Aztecs'

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'The Codex Mendoza was used to legitimize Spanish conquest of the Aztecs'

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A new facsimile and study of the 16th century manuscript explores the document's political use at a time when Spain was debating the moral legitimacy of colonial subjugation in the Americas

A copy of the new facsimile version of the Codex Mendoza. Colegio Nacional

"The Codex Mendoza embodies an overwhelming tragedy: the dissolution of a civilization." Thus reads the foreword to a new analysis, accompanying a new facsimile, of the famous 16th century manuscript, one of the most celebrated documents of artistic collaboration between Indigenous artists and Spanish interpreters in the history of Mesoamerica, which was created sometime between 1542 and 1552. The codex's 71 folios feature a combination of Nahua painting and writing, accompanied by passages of Spanish text, which narrate the history of the Mexica people from the founding of Tenochtitlan (modern-day Mexico City) in 1325, to the death two centuries later of Moctezuma Xocoyotzin (Moctezuma II). Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, the colonial administrator who commissioned the book's creation, intended to produce a document that surveyed the economic, political and social life of Spain's recently conquered land. And, according to a new study, also to employ it as propaganda. "This codex was used to legitimize the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs," explains Jorge Gómez Tejada, professor of Art History at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador and the editor of a new facsimile edition of the manuscript, co-published by the Universidad San Francisco de Quito and Oxford University's Bodleian Library.

Detail from the new facsimile of the Codex Mendoza. COLEGIO NACIONAL

The new volume is the first interpretive reproduction of the Codex Mendoza, which analyzes the text from an artistic and literary perspective, and the first to be published simultaneously in both Spanish and English. In addition to the facsimile of the codex itself, the new volume includes a book of essays and articles divided into 14 chapters and composed by 13 researchers, who explore the codex's history, interpretation, and reception. The findings of this collaborative research project were presented at the Colegio Nacional, a prestigious honorary academy in Mexico City, where the director of the Proyecto Templo Mayor, archeologist Leonardo López Luján, hosted Gómez Tejada who delivered a lecture on the codex, which is an essential document in understanding the history of pre-Hispanic Mexico.

"The Codex Mendoza is one of the most beautiful examples of tlacuilolli, the Nahua art of painting and writing," says Gómez Tejada, highlighting one side of the contradiction suggested by his new thesis: "The document was created with the intention of sending it to Europe to influence an ongoing national debate in Spain, raised by Bartolomé de las Casas, among others, concerning the legitimacy of the conquest, which essentially boiled down to the question: does one nation have the right to dominate another simply because it considers it inferior? The original narrative of the codex shows that the Mexica were a sovereign nation with laws and a political system, that they possessed humanity - a revelation that the conquerors received with displeasure, considering that their justification for the occupation of Tenochtitlan was that the inhabitants were ungovernable," Gómez Tejada says.

The codex's juxtaposition of Nahua iconography and Spanish gloss, or marginal textual annotations, is not the only way the manuscript casts two systems of thought in contrast: rather than using deer skin or amate, a traditional Aztec paper made from tree bark, the Codex was painted by Mexica scribes using sheets of Spanish paper. It was also bound in the tradition of Spanish book-making. The original Codex Mendoza is currently housed at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library in England, where it has been kept for the last 363 years. Before it was gifted to the library by the executors of the estate of John Selden around 1659, the content of the manuscript was available for study through a series of woodcut reproductions, published in the third volume of Purchas his Pilgrimes, a collection of travel stories published by English cleric Samuel Purchas in 1625.

In 1831, the Codex Mendoza became the first manuscript to be reproduced entirely in color, as part of the first volume of Antiquities of Mexico, a collection of lithographic facsimiles compiled and published by Lord Kingsborough, an Irish antiquarian. This publication, like that of later photographic facsimiles published in the 20th century, would prove too costly to enjoy wide circulation. But in recent years, new technology has made it possible to reproduce its pages digitally and online, in addition to enabling more accurate studies of the original colors using non-destructive instrumental analysis and multispectral imaging. Thus, the new version of the codex features more accurate images and coloring, in addition to a closer approximation of the true size of the pages, which measure roughly 31 by 21 centimeters in the original.

"There is a part of the codex that shows the sort of education Mexica society provided to its children, that shows how this society had the capacity to administer public policy," Gómez Tejada explains. " The debate at the time centered around whether the people of Tenochtitlan had any humanity, were able to love, to live in a society; this book shows us the argument for Mexica sovereignty, and it shows that the Mexica were a civilized society." The most complete edition and study of the codex prior to this most recent one was published by the University of California in 1992. It's authors, Frances Berdan and Patricia Rieff Anawalt, produced an extensive facsimile edition with translations and accompanying analysis. In 1997, they published a summary edition titled Essential Codex Mendoza. Until now, they had yet to use the new cameras, printing presses, and digital media available today to create a new version of the original Oxford edition. "The approach we took to the manuscript is of the sort we might take to a work of art in attempting to understand its materiality, its internal dynamics; the analysis of its narrative priorities and the way in which images function as rhetorical tools to convey an idea and to persuade," Gómez Tejada told EL PAÍS.

A copy of the new facsimile of the Codex Mendoza. Colegio Nacional

Ultimately, however, the narrative of the codex reveals the prejudices and ignorance of the colonial world view, according to López Luján, a Mexican archologist and the director of the Colegio Nacional. "It references tributes to be paid in objects of gold, but in all of the offerings we've encountered in our research, we've found hardly any gold," López Luján says. "To date, over the course of 44 years of excavations, we've encountered less than one kilogram of gold objects in Mexico. In countries like Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia or Costa Rica, there are large museums of gold, associated with the Central Bank. What we did find in our excavations, and what also appear in the codex, are live eagles. Our findings indicate that live eagles were brought to Moctezuma's vivarium, which was located where Mexico City's Palacio Nacional is today. They were held in cages and served as amusement for the king and his court, but also as raw materials [for making garments and other items]." Most of these animals were used for rituals and sacrifices at the Templo Mayor.

The history of the Codex Mendoza is as rich as it is controversial. Throughout the 16th century, the manuscript is cited in the works of André Thevet, cosmographer to the French Court, and in the writings of English geographers Richard Hakluyt and Purchas, historians of exploration whose works were reproduced throughout the 17th and 18th centuries in texts on American history and treatises on ancient writing. In the 19th century, the codex served as an important source for Mexican historians and geographers, and as the basis for Antiquities of Mexico, Lord Kingsborough's extravagant attempt to prove a connection between the original inhabitants of the Americas and the lost tribes of Israel. In the 20th century, the Codex Mendoza stood out as an important source of historical knowledge about the Mexica people beyond just the biographies of the civilization's great rulers. And now, with an analysis that focuses on the manuscript as a work of art, the codex's materiality, iconography, and narratives, both explicit and implicit, allow us to appreciate the document in a new light, and to create new contexts for understanding it, and new lines of inquiry.

From the time of its creation, the Codex Mendoza has garnered widespread international importance, as evidenced by its early voyages across the Atlantic. The European paper on which it was created must have crossed the Atlantic back and forth in rapid succession in the early 1540s. On its final folio, the Spanish commentator notes that the manuscript, upon completion, remained in Mexico for less than ten days before the fleet that would transport it to Europe set sail. After a period in Renaissance France, it arrived in Oxford. Throughout almost five hundred years of history, the codex has had many faces, each complementing the other, representing different angles of interpretation, reflecting and celebrating a culture in collapse through the recording and interpretation not only of its history, geography and daily life, but also of its art, language and pictorial writing. "The Codex Mendoza is a text that is in a state of constant change; thinking about it from the perspective of art and storytelling can help us understand it better," says Gómez Tejada.

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'The Codex Mendoza was used to legitimize Spanish conquest of the Aztecs'

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A new facsimile and study of the 16th century manuscript explores the document's political use at a time when Spain was debating the moral legitimacy of colonial subjugation in the Americas "The Codex Mendoza embodies an overwhelming tragedy: the dissolution of a civilization."

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How Nahua Indigenous communities in Mexico took on Danone in defence of water and life

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How Nahua Indigenous communities in Mexico took on Danone in defence of water and life

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Grandmothers, mothers and children are gathered, shovel in hand, digging up a patch of soil. They are planting a small flower bed, with roses and orange cempasúchil flowers. Behind them, written on a wall, are the words: 'ni las mujeres, ni la tierra somos territorio de conquista': . Murals cover many of the walls here now, at what once was one of the main water bottling plants owned by the extractivist transnational company neither women nor the Earth are territories of conquest Bonafont. Since 8th August, it has been occupied by local Indigenous communities and renamed Altepelmecalli: the House of the People.

Just over seven months ago, when Altepelmecalli looked vastly different, 20 Nahua Indigenous communities from the volcanic region in Puebla, Mexico, came together in response to the depletion of water in their wells, rivers and streams, united in defence of water and life. Together they formed (the United Peoples) to resist the colonisation and depletion of their waters by Bonafont.

Bonafont, which forms part of the Danone group, is the leading water bottling company in Mexico. In the Juan C. Bonilla municipality of Puebla, alone, they extracted 1,641,000 litres of water - approximately two-thirds of an Olympic sized swimming pool a day for 29 years - before its closure on the 22nd March by Pueblos Unidos.

A key researcher from the National Autonomous University of Mexico recently exposed that in the last five years, the flow of surface currents in rivers and streams has in the volcanic region where the Bonafont plant operated. It also exposed the exploitation of water resources by bottling plants as one of the main causes. The study proved that if bottling plants continue to carry on as they are now, there will be no water in the region by 2040.

Local communities became increasingly frustrated as they witnessed their own wells running dry whilst truckloads of water were leaving the bottling plant to be sold.

Doña Chayo*, a member of Pueblos Unidos, explained:

Our artisanal wells are very important in our communities. They are part of our Indigenous traditions and ways of life, as the way in which we administer our water. We take from the Earth but we always make sure that we are not being excessive, that we respect her. For us, water is the essence of life; she is like a sister to us.

I am an old woman now, and in my whole life I had never heard of or experienced water running out until Bonafont and other industries came to our territories. We have our ancestral ways of preserving life that our grandparents taught us. They have worked for our communities for generations. These companies just think about extracting our water so they can make money; and yet our communities pay the price.

It became essential for us to organise ourselves. We have a long history of resistance in these lands precisely because so many companies come here to take our water, so we knew that our strength was in our unity. We went from community to community, and found those far away that were also living the same problem. Through assemblies we decided collectively to close down the Bonafont plant, which is what we did on 22nd March this year. Since then water has started returning to our wells. It can be said that our mother Earth is healing herself."

On 22nd March, on World Water Day, tents were set up outside the plant and large rocks were placed alongside the road so that distribution vans could not leave the site. Communities had successfully halted the company's production, but felt that this was not enough.

Again, Pueblos Unidos began to visit communities and collect signatures. 6,000 families signed the petition, unanimously in favour of removing Bonafont definitively from their territories. They too were experiencing water shortages, and had seen that the groundwater in the region was being affected.

"We held many assemblies to think about what to do next. Assemblies allow us to hear the voices of everyone in our community, so that no one is prioritised. We listened, debated, and put our heads together until we came to an agreement. Collectively we decided that we would put Bonafont and the three levels of Government (the National Commission of Water, the Environmental Secretary, and the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples), on trial in our courts for their complicity in the destruction of our lands and waters. Here the Law of the People is respected, we build our own justice, we do not demand it." Explained Ofelia, a member of Pueblos Unidos.

On 8th August, on the anniversary of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, Pueblos Unidos held the trial. 20 communities came to give their testimonies. They spoke of the neglect, persecution and criminalisation that they have and continue to experience in their communities. Some cried about the death that they have borne witness to in their lands and waters. Some discussed the contamination of their rivers and streams, the formation of a massive sinkhole due to excessive water extraction and the violation of their territorial limits. And some denounced the manipulation that had been used to give concessions to industries like Bonafont, and the negative health impacts these industries and development projects were having on their lives.

Members of Pueblos Unidos stood at the stand, dressed in black, wearing balaclavas and red bandanas. Once each community had said their piece, a verdict was read.

"Before the facts stated, the bloodshed, the imprisonment and the destruction of our mother Earth, how are the accused declared?"

With left fists punching the air, everyone shouted "CULPABLES!",

"Those of us who hold this trial, based on the principles of autonomy, self-determination and the preservation of our mother earth, decree: the territory that the Bonafont company seized over 29 years ago from our communities must be reappropriated, and that the facilities and all the goods found therein will be used to build Altepelmecalli, The House of the People. This space will be for the integral reconstruction of our peoples: for health, education, food, shelter, land, work, independence, information, equality, freedom, democracy, justice and peace."

The gate that barred the plant was forced open, communities entered and the industrial well was destroyed.

A member of Pueblos Unidos explained; "We wanted to make sure that never again would anyone steal another drop of water from our lands. We didn't want to take over the modes of production; we wanted to destroy them. For us, extraction only means death. Here we fight for life."

It's been three months now since the Altepelmecalli was won. A library, a small autonomous school, a health facility with both traditional and 'conventional' forms of medicine, a garden of herbal medicines and a women's centre have been set up. At the back end of the space there are now sheep and rabbits grazing. There are rumours that soon the concrete will be lifted to start planting maize and other crops to ensure the community keeps building autonomy.

"It's been beautiful to see life spring on the ruins of death," remarks Rosa, an elderly woman from within the compound "All generations are here, putting in effort to build this space, especially women. Us women are linked to our mother earth, the earth gives life, it is the uterus that births our maize, we as women also give life. It's beautiful. Here we plant, paint, eat, sing, dance, party, listen and learn together. We know that repression can come at any minute; we have lived it before in our fight in defence of the Metlapanapa river. We have heard that Bonafont and the local government are already trying to criminalise us. But for now with our land and water we are happy and we will keep building autonomy and fighting in defence of our water, come what may."

The salmon pink colour of the Danone brand is slowly being covered up, and the brutal metal structure that once extracted water from these lands now looks more and more like a community centre as flowers begin to bloom.
*All names have been changed in this piece to protect their identity

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How Nahua Indigenous communities in Mexico took on Danone in defence of water and life

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The author tells the story of the 20 Nahua Indigenous communities who took on the Danone company extracting and ruining their water supply.

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Modern-Day Conquistadors: The Decline of Nahuatl, and the Status of Mexican Bilingual Education

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Modern-Day Conquistadors: The Decline of Nahuatl, and the Status of Mexican Bilingual Education

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The Nahuatl Language

The Aztec Empire fell to Hernán Cortés and the Spanish conquistadors by 1521, leading to its sharp decline and subjugation to Spanish rule. Although the conquest physically occurred hundreds of years ago, it continues on a different front today-in modern-day Mexico, Spanish, the language of the civilization's conquerors, is effacing Nahuatl, once the language of the Aztecs. Though many English speakers may know little of Nahuatl, many use words each day that originally stem from it, for example, "chocolate," "avocado," and "tomato"-an infinitesimally small example of the value that the culture and language have brought to the world. Unfortunately, the language and identity of Nahuatl speakers is endangered by a lasting discrimination that is damaging on human, linguistic, and cultural levels.

Decline of Nahuatl

Despite currently being spoken by over one million people in Mexico, Nahuatl is still very much on the decline. Several factors have contributed to this decline, which has its roots in the colonization and oppression of indigenous peoples. After 1821, following the Mexican Revolution, indigenous groups were minimized, seen as getting in the way of progress. Leaders desired to form a Mexican identity that included both European and Aztec roots, all the while denigrating indigenous peoples. The discrepancy in education was already evident, with Mexican education following the principle of " direct teaching," meaning that, regardless of one's native language, school was taught in Spanish. For most of the 1900s in a time known as the Indigenismo period, the main intent of bilingual education was not to preserve indigenous languages, or even to establish competency in Spanish without abandoning one's native language, but instead to assimilate native peoples at the cost of their own languages and cultures.

Over time, bilingual education in Mexico experienced some improvements. Some factors in that improvement included pressure from the Zapatista Army of National Liberation ( EZLN), a guerrilla organization in support of indigenous peoples, and the international community increasingly frowning upon assimilation. However, in modern Mexican society, indigenous peoples are still subjected to prejudice and unequal opportunities that make the preservation of languages like Nahuatl more difficult.

The challenges of passing on the language within Nahuatl-speaking communities have also contributed to its decline, continually leading to fewer speakers. Spelling is not always standardized, literature in the language is hard to come by, and the resources that do exist are often to facilitate switching to and promoting Spanish, rather than protecting Nahuatl.

Challenges to Bilingual Education

Nahuatl bilingual education faces several challenges, which can also contribute to the decline of the language. Firstly, beliefs in the superiority of the Spanish language and culture stemming from a long history of discrimination can be damaging to the desire to spread or even just maintain the language. An example is diminishing Nahuatl by calling it a " dialecto" instead of a language in its own right. In reality, considering languages to hold a superior or inferior status in relation to one another has no linguistic basis. Spanish and Nahuatl are instead quite distinct and members of two completely separate language families, the former Indo-European and the latter Uto-Aztecan. In addition, to those who do not speak Nahuatl, the language possesses characteristics that may seem unfamiliar and complicated. For example, it is an agglutinating language, conveying a good deal of meaning in one word by adding to that word; "I am a woman" is " nicihuatl" in Nahuatl. Since many Mexicans are mestizos, or mixed-race, speaking an indigenous language is often used as a discriminatory factor; this distinction based on language is purely societal, and is not supported linguistically.

Furthermore, in some cases, indigenous people may not even want to participate in bilingual education, again often because of the negative associations society has placed upon indigenous languages. Often education has been premised on the idea that students are held back by their native language and way of life, adding to this perception. Maintaining indigenous languages also may not seem useful to those in the community; as Mexico's majority language, Spanish is the most practical language for work.

Other challenges include finding a way to avoid possible detrimental impacts to the indigenous communities in question, while still providing sufficient education. A study of a school in Brazil teaching in the indigenous language, Tapirape, as well as the majority language, Portuguese, highlights some of these potential issues, which are universal to bilingual education in indigenous communities. For example, students might end up less connected and involved in their cultures due to the amount of time spent in the school. In addition, Portuguese words began to be more and more interspersed in Tapirape speech, leading to fears that the school was actually further endangering the language. Of course, similar fears exist outside of educational situations: constant exposure to the Spanish language has also resulted in some change to Nahuatl, both in vocabulary and structure, to more closely resemble Spanish. Although changes resulting from language contact are natural-and in Nahuatl's case, it has impacted Spanish as well though not to the same degree-this language mixing can breed resentment and a sense of loss of identity, due to the respective status of each language in society.

Efforts in Bilingual Education and Language Preservation

Providing education that incorporates Nahuatl to those that speak the language is absolutely crucial not only to general linguistic preservation, but also to the individual learner and each community. Education in indigenous communities is in need of drastic improvement; in 2010, the illiteracy rate for indigenous peoples was 27.2 percent, in comparison to 5.4 percent in Mexico in general. Indigenous women have particularly high illiteracy rates, at about 40 percent, partly because it could be viewed as more necessary to educate males since they would be working. A significant factor in this disparity is the lack of availability of quality education in indigenous languages.

Initiatives have been put in place within Mexico to support indigenous languages and improve education in indigenous communities. One example is the National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI); created in 2003, the organization seeks to advocate for indigenous languages and encourages the diversity of the many cultures within Mexico. One of its recent services is providing information on its website about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic in several indigenous languages, including Nahuatl. However, government support for it is not always guaranteed, and more widespread work remains to be done in targeting issues such as improving education in indigenous languages, and the issue of standardized tests requiring good knowledge of Spanish, which can be exclusionary.

Another example is the Bilingual Literacy for Life Programme/MEVyT (Modelo Educación para la Vida y el Trabajo) Indígena Bilingüe ( BLLP/MIB). The purpose of this initiative is to increase literacy in both Spanish and indigenous languages, teach useful skills, and encourage viewing one's culture as valuable. The initiative does suffer from lack of funding, and some potential students have no desire to join as Spanish is more useful for finding work. And involving Nahuatl specifically, at the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, students who speak it can participate directly in the preservation of their language, for example in helping make a dictionary of the language.

Moving Forward

The largest threat to Nahuatl today is not a material matter such as insufficient resources, nor can the solution be found in the expansion of any particular preservation effort. What poses the most danger to the Nahuatl language and the culture of those who speak it-what most thoroughly undermines the most genuine and dedicated efforts in bilingual education-is the pervasive prejudice that seeks to ingrain beliefs that the cultures and languages of indigenous peoples are inferior, not worth maintaining or appreciating, but best replaced by the way of life of the majority. The rise, fall, and evolution of languages is a constant theme in human history, but the decline of Nahuatl is far from a natural shift-instead, it is the slow destruction of a culture and history stretching back hundreds of years, a forced loss engineered by a history of colonialism and discrimination that remains today.

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Modern-Day Conquistadors: The Decline of Nahuatl, and the Status of Mexican Bilingual Education

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"Unfortunately, the language and identity of Nahuatl speakers is endangered by a lasting discrimination that is damaging on human, linguistic, and cultural levels."

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Source: Captivating History

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Source: Everyculture.com

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ETHNONYMS: none

Numbering 1,197,328 in the census of 1990, the Nahuatl-speaking peoples are the largest Indian group in Mexico, forming 22.67 percent of the native population of that country. "Nahua" or "Nahuatl" is a generic label for the peoples located mainly in central Mexico who speak dialects of the Aztec language. The Nahua usually refer to themselves and their language as "Mexicano." Today the Nahua are located around the periphery of what was once the core of the Aztec Empire. The Nahua live in four major regions: the Huasteca, the northern Sierra de Puebla, the southern Sierra de Puebla, and Morelos and Guerrero.

The Nahua of the Huasteca live to the north of Mexico City in thirty-three contiguous municipios, the populations of which are 30 percent or more indigenous. These municipios are located in the southeastern tip of the state of San Luis Potosí, in the northern part of Hidalgo, and in adjoining areas of Veracruz. The number of Nahua speakers age 5 or older in the Huasteca area was 385,032 in 1990. More Nahua live dispersed in other municipios of the Huasteca.

The Nahua of the northern Sierra de Puebla live in the northern part of the state of Puebla with the exception of one municipio, Acaxochitlán, in Hidalgo. In 1990, the speakers of Nahua over 5 years of age in the northern Sierra de Puebla numbered 194,739 in thirty-four municipios, each with an indigenous population of more than 30 percent. There is also a small group of Nahua, consisting of only 316 speakers over 5 years of age, living in the Jalapa area of Veracruz.

The Nahua of the southern Sierra de Puebla live in the mountains of west-central Veracruz, south of the municipio of Coatepec, in some adjoining municipios of Puebla, in the mountains of the southeastern tip of Puebla, and in a few municipios of Oaxaca, where they adjoin the Mazatec. A population of 203,785 speakers over 5 years of age lived in the region in fifty-six municipios in 1990, each with an indigenous population of more than 30 percent. The densest population of Nahua of the southern Sierra de Puebla is in the border region between Veracruz and Puebla around the Río Tonto and the Sierra de Zongolico, south of Orizaba and Córdoba.

The Nahua of Morelos and Guerrero are a more dispersed group, which numbered 98,254 speakers of 5 years of age or older in 1990. They are located in municipios extending east to west across southern Puebla into Morelos and from there south into the state of Guerrero, where the Nahua region borders the Tlapanec and Mixtec regions.

Bibliography

Arizpe S., Lourdes (1973). Parentesco y economía en una sociedad Nahua: Nican pehua Zacatipan. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional Indigenista.

Chamoux, Marie-Nöelle (1981). Indiens de la Sierra: La communauté paysanne au Mexique. Paris: L'Harmattan.

Chamoux, Marie-Nöelle (1987) Nahuas de Huachinango: Transformaciones sociales en una comunidad campesina. Serie de Antropología Social, no. 73. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional Indigenista.

Dehouve, Daniele (1974). Corvée des saints & luttes de marchands. Paris: Klincksieck.

Friedlander, Judith (1975). Being Indian in Hueyapan: A Study of Forced Identity in Contemporary Mexico. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Instituto Nacional de Estadística Geografía e Informática (1991). XI o censo general de población y vivienda, 1990. Resultados definitivos. Tablados básicos. Mexico City: INEGI.

Instituto Nacional Indigenista (1993). Indicadores socioeconómicos de los pueblos indígenas de México. Mexico City: INI.

Lewis, Oscar (1960). Tepoztlan: Village in Mexico. New York: Holt.

Lockhart, James (1992). The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

Madsen, William (1960). The Virgin's Children: Life in an Aztec Village Today. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Madsen, William (1969). "The Nahua." In Handbook of Middle American Indians, edited by Robert Wauchope. Vol. 8, Ethnology, Part Two, edited by Evon Z. Vogt, 602607. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Montoya Briones, José de Jesús (1964). Ada: Etnografía de un pueblo nahuatl. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Nutini, Hugo G. (1968). San Bernardino Contla. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Nutini, Hugo G., and Barry L. Isaac (1974). Los pueblos de habla nahuatl de la región de Tlaxcala y Puebla. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional Indigenista.

Reck, Gregory G. (1978). In the Shadow of Tlaloc: Life in a Mexican Village. Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin Books.

Redfield, Robert (1941). Tepoztlan, a Mexican Village: A Study of Folk Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sandstrom, Alan R. (1991). Corn Is Our Blood: Culture and Ethnic Identity in a Contemporary Aztec Indian Village. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Soustelle, Georgette (1958). Tequila: Un village nahuatl du Mexique oriental. Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie.

Taggart, James M. (1975). Estructura de los grupos domësticos de una comunidad nahuat de Puebla, Mexico. Colección SEP-INI, no. 41. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional Indigenista y Secretaria de Educación Publica.

Taggart, James M. (1983). Nahuat Myth and Social Structure. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Van Zantwijk, Rudolf A. M. (1969). Los indígenas de Milpa Alta: Herederos de los aztecas. Amsterdam: Instituto Real de los Trópicos.

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ETHNONYMS: none Numbering 1,197,328 in the census of 1990, the Nahuatl-speaking peoples are the largest Indian group in Mexico, forming 22.67 percent of the native population of that country. "Nahua" or "Nahuatl" is a generic label for the peoples located mainly in central Mexico who speak dialects of the Aztec language.

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'Defending life:' Indigenous way of life imperative to solving climate crisis

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'Defending life:' Indigenous way of life imperative to solving climate crisis

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'Defending life:' Indigenous way of life imperative to solving climate crisis

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Earth Day on April 22 spurred debates about how to tackle our global ecological crisis. Global Voices spoke with Miryam Vargas, a Nahuatl journalist from Choluteca, Mexico, to help us understand what we can learn from Indigenous communities. Vargas reports on environmental issues and has worked alongside her native community for more than a decade.

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Indigenous Mexicans denounce forced displacement, deaths in conflict

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Indigenous Mexicans denounce forced displacement, deaths in conflict

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Chenalhó, Mexico, Oct 5 (EFE).- Some 200 Tzotzil indigenous people, mostly women and children, denounced on Wednesday that they have been forcibly displaced due to conflict between two armed groups in Chenalhó, Mexico's Chiapas state, which have allegedly left several dead.

The conflict, which has lasted six days, has resulted in the burning of dozens of houses in the communities of Atzamilho, Bajoveltik and Manuel Utrilla, and the forced displacement of more than 32 families who are now hiding in the mountains. The same number is taking refuge with relatives in the surrounding municipalities.

The two groups dispute 22 hectares of land adjacent to the municipality of Chalchihuitán.

One of the groups does not accept the distribution of those hectares, which they were given after a peace agreement was reached on June 2022 and meant to solve a 40-year dispute with the municipality.

"The women victims of this confrontation fled with their children and parents through the mountains, taking the paths with the risk of being hit by projectiles," said Margarita Velasco Velasco, who lives in the Santa Martha community, in Chenalhó.

The woman told EFE that she and her sister-in-law ran away, leaving all their belongings.

"I was afraid of dying, that's why we left. Yesterday (Tuesday) they burned my house, they burned everything - my clothes, my corn and beans... that's why we want justice, it is what we want for women and children," she said.

She also said that the women in the area were alone, without their husbands, since they were expelled by order of the commissioner on June 25, 2022, the date on which the problem originated, but which worsened on Sep. 29.

Another Tzotzil inhabitant of Santa Martha, Agustín Pérez Álvarez, said that he and his wife "almost died."

"One of the wounded came to my house, he was offered shelter. About 100 people came to kill me - the shooting lasted almost three days. Thank God we have seen the miracle, I am alive, I thought I was going to die in the shooting," Agustín recounted.

He added that he witnessed the deaths of at least six people, including one he said was named Juan David.

"He died in my house. I witnessed four more there, and one there and also my father, I saw them personally."

The Chiapas Prosecutor's Office reported in a statement on the death of only one person named Alfredo "N", as a result of the confrontation on Sep. 29.

Almost a week into the conflict, municipal, state and federal authorities have not been able to enter the community of Santa Martha, nor have they been able to officially quantify the damage.

José Vázquez, an indigenous human rights defender, said that since the first 25 displaced men were known, the government was aware and did not bring humanitarian aid.

"The only thing that was seen on September 30 is that the authorities arrived: the army, the National Guard and the prosecutor's office, but they only stayed in the municipal seat - a town where the administrative authorities are concentrated," he said.

The municipal authorities reported that the army, National Guard, prosecutor's office and human rights officials will be touring the community of Santa Martha until Thursday. EFE

mmf/tw

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Indigenous Mexicans denounce forced displacement, deaths in conflict

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Chenalhó, Mexico, Oct 5 (EFE).- Some 200 Tzotzil indigenous people, mostly women and children, denounced on Wednesday that they have been forcibly displaced due to conflict between two armed groups in Chenalhó, Mexico's Chiapas state, which have allegedly left several dead. The conflict, which has lasted six days, has resulted in the burning of dozens ...

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The Náhuatl Language of Mexico: From Aztlán to the Present Day

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The Náhuatl Language of Mexico: From Aztlán to the Present Day

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Source: Indigenous Mexico

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Across the 761,606 square miles (1,972,550 square kilometers) that comprise Mexico you can find a great variety of landscapes and climates. While mountains and plateaus cover more than two-thirds of her landmass, the rest of Mexico's environment is made up of deserts, tropical forests, and fertile valleys. Mexico's many mountain ranges tend to split the country into countless smaller valleys, each forming a world of its own. Over the last few thousand years, this has been a factor in the differentiation of a wide range of indigenous Mexican languages.

Within these many little worlds, there are 11 linguistic families. And, according to the National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI ‒ Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas), within these linguistic families, 68 languages and 364 dialects are spoken. The number and percent of indigenous speakers in the Mexican census from 1900 to 2010 is shown in the following table:

As people living in indigenous communities sought employment in the large metropolitan areas and the rural agricultural regions of other states, they and their children usually assimilated and many of them lost their connection to their ancestral language and culture. Only in the traditional homelands did some indigenous speakers maintain their linguistic link to the past and to their ancestors.
The Most Common Languages of Mexico
The following table illustrates the number of speakers for the top seven indigenous language groups of Mexico in the 1970, 1990, 2000 and 2010 censuses. In addition, the last column shows the percentage of indigenous speakers for each language (out of the total number of indigenous speakers in the country) in 2010:

As clearly noted in the preceding table, the Náhuatl language has been the most commonly spoken tongue in Mexico since 1970, with Maya in second place by a wide margin.
The Aztec Empire
The widespread use of the Náhuatl language throughout Mexico today is primarily due to the incredible success of the magnificent Aztec Empire, which reached its pinnacle during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The multi-ethnic, multi-lingual realm stretched for more than 80,000 square miles through many parts of what are now central and southern Mexico. Fifteen million people, living in thirty-eight provinces and residing in 489 communities, paid tribute to the Emperor Moctezuma II.

The map on the following page shows the location of the Aztec Empire and its three major cities (The Triple Alliance: Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan) in 1521 [Source: Comandante, Wikipedia U. E. "Aztec Empire." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Online: https://www.ancient.eu/image/2321/ (Last modified February 26, 2014)].
What is an Aztec?
The popular term, , has been used as an all-inclusive term to describe both the Aztec Empire and its people. The noted anthropologist, Professor Michael E. Smith of the University of New York, uses the term Aztec Empire to describe "the empire of the Triple Alliance, in which Tenochtitlán played the dominant role." Mexico City now stands on the majestic city that was formerly known as Tenochtitlán.

Quoting the author Charles Gibson, Professor Smith observes that the Aztecs "were the inhabitants of the Valley of México at the time of the Spanish Conquest." These Aztecs were Náhuatl speakers belonging to " diverse polities and ethnic groups." In essence, it is important to recognize that the Aztec Indians were not one ethnic group, but a collection of many ethnicities, all sharing a common cultural and historical background (including the Náhuatl language). In contrast, the Mexica of Tenochtitlán were the Náhuatl people who eventually dominated the Aztec Empire, but they were only one of the original seven Náhuatl tribes that migrated to Central Mexico.
The Original Náhuatl People
According to Aztec legends, over a period of time, seven tribes that lived in Chicomoztoc, or "the place of the seven caves," left the legendary Aztlán to settle in the Valley of Mexico and surrounding areas. The seven Náhuatl-speaking tribes comprised the following:

1. The Xochimilca - The Xochimilca were the first Náhuatl tribe to arrive in the Valley of Mexico, settling around 900 A.D. in Cuahilama, near what is now Santa Cruz Acalpixca (in Mexico City). They were eventually subdued by the Mexica and became part of the Aztec Empire.

2. The Chalca of Chalco - The Chalca were the second tribe to arrive in the Valley. They established themselves east of the Xochimilca about 25 km (16 miles) east of Tenochtitlán. Chalco was conquered by the Aztecs around 1465.

3. The Tepaneca - The Tepanecs or Tepaneca were the third tribe to arrive in the Valley of Mexico in the late 12th or early 13th centuries. They settled in Azcapotzalco on the northwest shore of Lake Texcoco. In 1428, Tepaneca became part of the Aztec Empire.

4. The Acolhua of Texcoco - The fourth tribe to arrive in the area, the Acolhua, settled on the northeastern shore of the Lake Texcoco. They occupied most of the eastern Basin of the Valley of Mexico, with their capital in Texcoco. Today, Texcoco is a city and municipio located in the State of Mexico, about 25 km (15 miles) northeast of Mexico City.

5. The Tlahuica - The Tlahuica were the fifth Náhuatl people to arrive in central Mexico. They were organized into about 50 small city states located in what is now the state of Morelos; their largest cities were Cuauhnahuac (modern Cuernavaca), about 85 km (53 miles) south of Mexico City, and Huaxtepec (modern Oaxtepec), about 60 km (37 miles) south of Mexico City. The Tlahuica eventually became part of the Aztec Empire.

6. The Tlaxcaltecans (Tlaxcalans) - The Tlaxcalans settled to the east of the Valley of Mexico. Their major city, Tlaxcala, is 125 km (78 miles) to the east of Mexico City today. The Tlaxcalans opposed the Aztec Empire and their nation evolved into an independent enclave deep in the heart of the Aztec Empire. By 1519, Tlaxcala was a small, densely populated confederation of 200 settlements with a population of about 150,000, surrounded on all sides by the Aztec Empire.

7. The Mexica - The Mexica, according to Professor Smith, were "the inhabitants of the cities of Tenochtitlán and Tlatelolco." They were the last of the Náhuatl-speaking groups to arrive in the Valley of Mexico and they eventually became the masters of the Aztec Empire.

Successive Migrations over Time
In areas that had been conquered by the Aztecs, Náhuatl settlers came as traders, soldiers and emissaries. However, they had been preceded by other Náhuatl speakers who had settled in the same areas earlier. As a result of the successive migrations of people from different Aztec cultures over a period of three centuries, some of the Nahua languages became mutually unintelligible in areas such as Puebla, Veracruz and Guerrero.
The Conquest
After a two-year campaign, Spanish forces under Hernán Cortés ‒ assisted by a coalition of allied indigenous forces ‒ captured Tenochtitlán in August 1521. With the destruction of the Aztec Empire, the territories within it devolved to the control of the Spaniards.
The New Alliance
But the conquest gave way to a new alliance of the surviving Aztecs and the Spaniards. As Spanish military expeditions set out north, south and west of Tenochtitlán, they brought with them their newly converted indigenous allies who served as interpreters, scouts, emissaries, soldiers and settlers. Because of their previous trading and military relationships, the former subjects of the Aztec Empire became invaluable to the Spaniards because of their knowledge of the people living in other areas of Mexico. Thus, the Náhuatl tongue became the other "lingua franca" (besides Spanish) of Mexico. To this day, locations in every corner of Mexico have Náhuatl place names.
Náhuatl in Mexico (1895-1940)
At the time of Mexico's 1895 census, 659,865 Mexican citizens classified themselves as speakers of the Náhuatl language. This group represented 32.1% of the total indigenous-speaking population of 2,055,544. However, a total of 10,574,793 persons were classified as Spanish-speaking individuals five years of age and older, and it is possible that a number of these persons may have been bilingual Náhuatl speakers who did not claim an affiliation with an indigenous language.

In the next three decades, the numbers of indigenous speakers dropped steadily with the violence and bloodshed of the decade-long Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). However, by 1930, the Náhuatl language was still the most widely spoken language among monolingual indigenous speakers. The 1930 census classified 355,295 persons five years of age and over as monolingual speakers of Náhuatl, representing 30.0% of the 1,185,162 persons who exclusively spoke indigenous languages in the entire Mexican Republic. The states with the largest number of Náhuatl speakers in 1930 were:

1. Puebla (132,013)

2. Veracruz (70,993)

3. Hidalgo (66,823)

4. Guerrero (45,619)

5. San Luis Potosí (24,074)

In the 1940 census, Puebla continued to have the largest number of Náhuatl monolingual speakers in the Mexican Republic, with 117,917 persons five years of age and older, representing 32.7% of the total Náhuatl monolingual population of 360,071. The other states with significant numbers of Náhuatl monolingual speakers were: Hidalgo (77,664), Veracruz (76,765), Guerrero (41,164), and San Luis Potosí (32,251).

Náhuatl in the 1970 Census
By the time of the 1970 census, the number of Náhuatl speakers in Mexico had increased dramatically. In that year, 799,394 persons were classified as speakers of Náhuatl five years of age and older. These people represented 25.7% of the entire indigenous speaking population of 3,111,415. The distribution of the Náhuatl speakers in 1970 by the four leading states is indicated in the following table:
Náhuatl in the 2000 Census
The 2000 census registered Náhuatl speakers in every state of the Mexican Republic. The states containing the largest numbers and percentages of Náhuatl speakers in that census are illustrated in the following table:
Náhuatl in the 2010 Census
In the 2010 census, 1,586,884 persons three years of age or more were speaking Náhuatl throughout the Mexican Republic. They represented 23% of the 6,913,362 Mexicans three years of age and older who spoke dozens of indigenous languages. The Mayan speakers numbered 796,405, running a distant second to Náhuatl, with 11.9% of the indigenous-speaking population.

The table below shows the number of Náhuatl speakers in 12 states and the Mexican Republic, as well as other pertinent information:
The 30 Dialectal Variants of Náhuatl
Although the Mexican Government agency, Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI) treats Náhuatl as a single language for the purposes of the census, many localized dialects have evolved apart from one another in widely dispersed areas of central, southern, and eastern México. Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (INALI) refers to thirty variantes dialectales de la lengua Náhuatl (Dialectal Variants of the Náhuatl Language) spread throughout the various states of Mexico.

The current Nahuatl language group is spoken in 16 states of the Republic: San Luis Potosí, Hidalgo, Veracruz, Tabasco, Guerrero, Morelos, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Federal District, Estado de México, Nayarit, Colima, Jalisco, Michoacán, Durango, Oaxaca, in addition from other states, although with fewer speakers for the migration. The map on the following page shows the location of most of these language groups [Elisa Vivas Zúñiga et al., "Escribo Mi Lengua: Náhuatl de Guerrero." Mexico, D.F.: Instituto Nacional para de Educación de los Adultos (INEA), 2014].

The academic resource on the Náhuatl language Ethnologue.com has classified 28 Náhuatl languages in the country. Each of the Náhuatl languages and dialects has developed unique characteristics depending on its environmental conditions. As a result, some of these dialects have become mutually unintelligible to one another over time.
Náhuatl Clásico (Náhuatl Classic) The Náhuatl Languages of Puebla
Náhuatl Clásico (Náhuatl Classic) is the language that was spoken in Mexico City and the Valley of Mexico during the early colonial period, but was also spoken by people in adjacent areas, such as Morelos, Tlaxcala and Hidalgo. It is considered a more elegant and cultured Náhuatl. Over the last 500 years, this language has been gradually displaced by the Spanish language and has evolved into several of the modern Náhuatl languages discussed below.
The Náhuatl Languages of Veracruz
As indicated in the earlier table regarding 2010 census data, the Náhuatl people are the single largest indigenous group in the east central state of Puebla, with over 447,000 people speaking the language. In fact, Puebla contains 28% of all the Náhuatl speakers in the Mexican Republic and at least eleven Náhuatl languages are still spoken in various parts of Puebla today.

The most common Náhuatl languages in Puebla include the Central Náhuatl, the Eastern Huasteca and the Central Puebla. The Nahuas who live in the northern mountain ranges of Puebla are known as the Nahuas de la Sierra Norte de Puebla (they call themselves Macehuale). There are over 140,000 Sierra Náhuatl living in nineteen municipios that lie within triangle that is marked by Teziutlán, Cuetzalán del Progreso and Tetela de Ocampo. The Sierra Negra Náhuatl and Southern Puebla Náhuatl languages are spoken in southern Puebla.

More than half of Veracruz's 662,760 indigenous speakers 3 years and older in the 2010 census (53.7%) were Náhuatl speakers. And Veracruz contains more than one-fifth (22.4%) of the Náhuatl speakers in Mexico. Because Náhuatl was the language of the Aztec conquerors, its use dominated the area for the several decades before the arrival of the Spaniards. As a result, the Nahua speakers of Veracruz today actually consist of four separate groups living in different regions of the state:
The Náhuatl Languages of Guerrero

The Nahuas of Huasteca: The Huasteca region extends from northern Veracruz into eastern Hidalgo and southeastern San Luis Potosí (discussed in greater detail later in this report).

The Nahuas of Totonicapán: Totonicapán extends through both Veracruz and the Sierra Norte de Puebla region of Puebla State.

The Nahuas of the Sierra de Zongolica: Situated in the Grandes Montañas of the west central region of Veracruz, this area is comprised of 12 municipios. The Náhuatl speakers in this area speak theOrizaba Náhuatl dialect. In 1991, speakers of the Orizaba dialect through all states numbered 120,000. Orizaba Náhuatl has about 79% intelligibility withMorelos Náhuatl.

The Nahuas of Southern Veracruz: Náhuatl speakers inhabit some portions of the southern region of Veracruz. It is believed that over 27,000 people in southern Veracruz speak theIsthmus Náhuatl dialect.

With the expansion of the Aztec Empire, the Náhuatl language was introduced into and gradually dominated several regions of Guerrero, including the Sierra del Norte, the Central Valleys, a sliver of Costa Grande and the Tierra Caliente. Today, the Náhuatl-speaking enclaves that exist in some of the far-flung reaches of the former Aztec Empire represent the remnants of the early colonies established by the Mexica during their fifteenth century expansion into southern Mexico.

In the state of Guerrero, the Náhuatl speakers number more than 170,000 and represent more than one-third of the indigenous speaking population of the state and they are distributed through forty-five municipios in the mountainous interior of Guerrero. Náhuatl was the primary language spoken in seventeen of Guerrero's municipios in 2000. And Guerrero presently has over 15% of all Náhuatl speakers in Mexico. Ethnologue.com has classified the Náhuatl speakers in Guerrero by the four regions in which they exist:
The Náhuatl Languages of San Luis Potosí

Náhuatl de Ometepec

Náhuatl de Coatepec

Náhuatl de Guerrero

Náhuatl de Tlamacazapa

Náhuatl speakers live in almost every municipio of San Luis Potosí (SLP), but have a heavy concentration in several municipios in the southeastern portion of the state that border the states of Veracruz and Hidalgo. These municipios include Tamazunchale, Axtla, San Martín Chalchicuautla, Xilitla, Coxcatlán and Matlapa. According to Ethnologue.com, the two most widely spoken Náhuatl languages in SLP are:
Náhuatl de la Huasteca (Huasteca Náhuatl)

Central Huasteca: spoken by persons in the states of Hidalgo, Veracruz and SLP.

Western (Oeste) Huasteca: spoken in 1,500 villages by an estimated 400,000 persons (circa 1991) in both San Luis Potosí and Hidalgo.

Huasteca Náhuatl is spoken by over a million people in the Huasteca region, which is a huge and historically important region of northeastern Mexico once inhabited mainly by the Huastec Indians when their civilization was at its height in the Mesoamerican period. Today this topographically and climatically diverse area is considered a rich agricultural region which takes in parts of several states: southern Tamaulipas, southeast San Luis Potosí, northeast Querétaro, northeast Hidalgo, northern Veracruz and the extreme north of Puebla.

Ethnologue divides Huasteca Náhuatl into three languages - Eastern, Central and Western - and has noted that there is about 85% mutual intelligibility between the Eastern and Western dialects. Nearly half a million (450,000) people speak the Eastern Huasteca in Hidalgo, western Veracruz and northern Pueblo, while another 450,000 speak theWestern Huasteca dialect in San Luis Potosí and western Hidalgo.
Náhuatl in Morelos and Tlaxcala
As mentioned earlier in this report, the early Náhuatl tribes that took part in the migration from Chicomoztoc included the who settled in the present-day State of Morelos and the Tlaxcalans who settled in the present-day State of Tlaxcala. While many people in these states speak Spanish today, some 50,000 people living in Tlaxcala and nearby Puebla still speak the Central Náhuatl language, which still has a strong resemblance to the original Náhuatl Classic of Central Mexico.
Náhuatl de la Periferia Occidental
Another 15,000 are believed to speak the Náhuatl Morelos language in the region. These languages have changed their phonetic structure over time due to their contact with the Spanish language and the urban environment in which they have developed.

One of several sources on the current Náhuatl languages of Mexico can be accessed at:
Conclusion
The Náhuatl Languages of the Western Periphery include several Náhuatl variants spoken in the states of Michoacán, Colima, Jalisco, Nayarit and Durango. The dialect spoken in Jalisco is now extinct, while the dialect in Michoacán is only spoken by about 2,000 people in the state's coastal region. The Náhuatl de Durango dialect is also known as Náhuatl Mexicanero and is believed to be spoken by a thousand people in the towns of San Pedro de las Jícoras and San Juan de Buenaventura, as well as by some scattered populations of Zacatecas and northern Jalisco.

From the fifteenth century to the twenty-first century, the Náhuatl language has held a preeminent position within the Mexican Republic. Even with the Spanish domination of the country from 1521 to 1822, the Aztec tongue continued to play an important role in communicating through nearly all parts of the country. Now, in 2018, it is likely that the Náhuatl language will continue to be the most spoken indigenous language in Mexico for the foreseeable future.
Bibliography
Copyright © 2019 by John P. Schmal. All Rights Reserved.
https://rosyarango.com/2018/03/18/variantes-del-nahuatl/.
Arango, Rosy. "Variantes del Náhuatl," March 18, 2018. Online:

De la Cruz Cruz, Victoriano. "La Escritura Náhuatl y los Procesos de su Revitalización." Contribution in New World Archaeology (2014) 7: 187-197. Online: https://issuu.com/revitalization/docs/cruz [Published July 26, 2015].

Davis, Nigel. The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico. London: Penguin Books, 1990.

Departamento de la Estadística Nacional, Annuario de 1930. Tacubaya, D.F., México, 1932.

Hill, Jane H. and Kenneth C. Hill. Speaking Mexicano. Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 1986.

Instituto Nacional de Estadística Geografía e Informática (INEGI), Estados Unidos Mexicanos. XII Censo General de Población y Vivienda, 2000, Tabulados Básicos y por Entidad Federativa. Bases de Datos y Tabulados de la Muestra Censal.

INEGI, Censo de Población y Vivienda (2010): Panorama Sociodemográfico de México (March 2011).
http://lenguasmexicanas.blogspot.com/p/distribucion-y-dialectos-del-nahuatl.html.
"Lenguas Mexicanos: Distribución y Dialectos del Náhuatl." Online:

SIL International, "Familia Náhuatl." Online: http://www.mexico.sil.org/es/lengua_cultura/nahuatl.

Simons, Gary F. and Charles D. Fennig (eds.), Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Twenty-first edition (Dallas, Texas: SIL International, 2018). Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com.

Smith, Michael E., The Aztecs (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 1996).

Wikipedia, "Lectura No. 8: Náhuatl." Online: http://enp4.unam.mx/amc/libro_munioz_cota/libro/cap1/lec08_elnahuatl.pdf

(Published April 1, 2014).

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The Náhuatl Language of Mexico: From Aztlán to the Present Day - Indigenous Mexico

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Like! Share! Tweet! Share! Tweet! Share! Tweet! PrintAcross the 761,606 square miles (1,972,550 square kilometers) that comprise Mexico you can find a great variety of landscapes and climates. While mountains and plateaus cover more than two-thirds of her landmass, the rest of Mexico's environment is made up of deserts, tropical forests, and fertile valleys.

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Chicueyaco: Daily Life in a Nahua Village

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Chicueyaco: Daily Life in a Nahua Village

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Source: Cultural Survival

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Juanita Chepe wakes up early to make breakfast for Antonia, her 84-year-old mother, before beginning her 45-minute walk and bus ride to her job in the neighboring town of Cuetzalan. Along with 70 other Nahua families, Juanita and her mother live in Chicueyaco, a small, mountainous village three hours North of Peubla, Mexico.

The Nahua people's language-Nahuatl-is the language of the Aztecs, Toltcec, and others. (The words avocado, tomato, chili, coyote, and chocolate have Nahuatl roots.) Today Nahuatl-with approximately 1.4 million speakers-is the most widely spoken Indigenous language in Mexico. An estimated 190,000 of those people speak only Nahuatl. Here in the region of Cuetzalan, the Nahua remain the dominant ethnic group in terms of population and have been largely successful in both adapting to the modern economy and maintaining their culture.

Juanita walks up a rocky path through the coffee trees and underbrush with occasional vistas of the green mountains and valleys beyond. Many days the clouds fill in the valleys, obscuring the view and providing a misty rain. Juanita walks past the schoolyard and Chicueyaco's stone church to the road that stops at the edge of her village and continues her climb. At the top of the hill, she waits for the white combi, or minivan, for the 15-minute ride into town.

Juanita manages an eco-lodge called Hotel Taselotzin on a hill overlooking Cuetzalan. When she and 44 other women from five Nahua communities near Cuetzalan were having difficulty supporting their families by selling their traditional weaving and stitching, they managed to get funding from the Mexican government and international and national organizations to build the hotel. The women each invested their own money and labor in the hotel as well. In exchange for their work at the hotel, they receive food, clothing, and soap for their families.

The women take what they need and share the rest as necessary with the community: Nahua society maintains a strong sense of cooperation. Most of the men tend to each family's farm plots, growing crops like potatoes, mushrooms, and peppers. Each family also harvests coffee from its own trees both for home use and for sale in town or to a coffee cooperative. Although agriculture remains the primary source of income, the in-kind earnings from the hotel have a significant impact on a family's well-being, even more so for unmarried women like Juanita. In this still-lightly touristed region, manufacturing and sales of stitched crafts have not displaced agriculture.

Hotel Taselotzin caters primarily to urban Mexican clientele seeking an escape from city life, who enjoy the packed market days on Cuetzalan's cobblestone streets and nearby caves, Totonac ruins, a waterfall, and a swimming hole. The lush gardens on the hotel grounds grow herbs for the restaurant's menu, rose petals for the soap made on site, and orange blossoms for tea. A Nahua woman elder runs the sweat lodge. Antonio, the husband of the soap-maker, runs the spa and doubles as watchman and gardener. Staff are careful to recycle goods and separate organic and inorganic waste, to lessen their impact on the land. Each semester the lodge receives University of Mexico interns who are studying Indigenous Peoples, sustainable tourism, and economic development.

Today Juanita leaves the hotel early, since there is work to do in Chicueyaco at the health center that enables people to get some health care directly in their own community. The white health center, which was built by the community, stands in a clearing on land donated by one villager. For a number of years, the clinic has provided prenatal care, vaccinations, screenings, and other minor procedures with some funding and support from the Global Citizens Network, an NGO from the United States. This week, the work focuses on building a bathroom and a patio.

The patio will double both as a waiting room and a needed community gathering space. The bathroom will make the health center more attractive to potential nurses and doctors-and their patients. Everyone does their part moving piles of sand and gravel down the steep path to the health center, one bag-full at a time. They also mix concrete and build the patio and bathroom walls. This self-sufficient community works together to provide a practical service that makes it easier for people to stay in their village-and preserve their Nahua way of life.

At the end of the day, Juanita hurries home so she can catch a soap opera with her mother, Antonia. Although Antonia speaks only Nahuatl, not Spanish, she loves the Mexican soap operas anyway. Tonight, Juanita and Antonia can laugh together at the crazy soap opera fights.

Jennifer Larson is a graphic designer, photographer, and children's book author who lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and two kids. She traveled to Chicueyaco, Mexico, with Global Citizens Network, a nonprofit organization that, since 1992, has been advocating for Indigenous communities and providing cultural immersion experiences.

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Chicueyaco: Daily Life in a Nahua Village

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Juanita Chepe wakes up early to make breakfast for Antonia, her 84-year-old mother, before beginning her 45-minute walk and bus ride to her job in the neighboring town of Cuetzalan. Along with 70 other Nahua families, Juanita and her mother live in Chicueyaco, a small, mountainous village three hours North of Peubla, Mexico.

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Estado de Mexico's Indigenous Past and Present

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Estado de Mexico's Indigenous Past and Present

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The State of México is located in the center-south section of the Mexican Republic. This landlocked state has common boundaries with Querétaro de Arteaga and Hidalgo on the north, Puebla and Tlaxcala on the east, Distrito Federal, Guerrero and Morelos on the south and Michoacán de Ocampo on the west. The capital of México is Toluca de Lerdo, which had a population of 819,561 in 2010, making it the fifth largest city in the entire Republic of México.

With a population of 16,187,608 in the 2010 census, México contains 13.5% of the total population of the Mexican Republic and has the largest population of all the states. However, with an area of only 22,351 square kilometers, México has only 1.1% of the national territory and is the sixth smallest state in the Republic, with only Hidalgo, Querétaro, Colima, Aguascalientes, Morelos and Tlaxcala containing a small area.

In contrast, Mexico's largest state, Chihuahua, contains a total of 247,455 square kilometers, occupying 12.6% of the national territory, but contains only 3.17% of the national population. Politically, the state of México is divided into 125 municipios. The capital of the Estado de México is Toluca de Lerdo, which had a population of 489,333 in 2010.
Physical Description
Physically, mountains cover over 42% of the surface of the State of Mexico, while plains, low hills and valleys cover almost 57% of the state. The following four major mountain systems cross the state:

1. The Sierra Nevada on the border with the state of Puebla, where the Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl volcanoes are present, which are the second and third highest peaks in Mexico.

2. The mountain ranges of Monte Alto and Monte Bajo, which border on the Federal District.

3. The Xinantécatl mountain range is near the center of the entity where the Nevado de Toluca volcano - the fourth highest peak in Mexico - is located.

4. The Sierra de San Andrés Timilpan is located in the northwest of the state.

Physiographic Provinces
The state belongs to three physiographic provinces. The Eje Neovolcánico (Neovolcanic Axis) is a mountainous volcanic region that occupies more than three-quarters (76%) of the state's northern, central and eastern territory. This province is made up of large volcanic mountains with interspersed plains and lake basins. This feature - also known as the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt - is a volcanic belt that crosses central Mexico from Colima and Jalisco in the west to central Veracruz in the east. Several of its highest peaks have snow all year long.

The Sierra Madre del Sur covers almost one-quarter of the state territory exclusively in the southwestern portion of the state. Also in the southern part of the state is the Depresíon de Balsas, which takes its name from the major river draining the region, which is made up of small, irregular basins interrupted by hilly outcrops. The state's physiographic provinces are illustrated in the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI) map below:
The Valley of México
Today - as in the past - México City, the Distrito Federal (Federal District), and the State of México represent the economic, cultural and political center of the Mexican Republic. The Valley of México is a large internally drained basin that is surrounded by towering mountain ranges, including the Popocatépetl (Smoking Mountain) and Iztaccíhuatl (Mountain of White Woman) volcanoes. The Valley had been the heartland of Aztec civilization and center of the Aztec Empire of the early Sixteenth Century.

The Valley of Mexico is actually part of the Mesa Central, which covers large parts of Michoacán, Guanajuato, Querétaro, Hidalgo, and México states and the Federal District (Mexico City). This plateau in the vicinity of Mexico City rises 7,000-9,000 feet (2,100-2,700 meters) and its intermontane basins are separated by eroded volcanic peaks.

The following map shows the location of the Valley of Mexico within the nation of Mexico and places its location at the higher elevation of the Central Mesa that runs through the central part of Mexico [Newebcreations, "Valley of Mexico Map." Online: https://maps-mexico-city.com/valley-of-mexico-map].

México City itself was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlán, which was the capital of the Aztec Empire. Over the millennia the Valley of México's inhabitants have included the ancient Aztec (Mexica), Toltec and Chichimeca tribes, cultures which left a wealth of relics and ruins in the area that continue to attract and amaze tourists.
The Meaning of the Word "Aztec"
Several terms have been used to designate the various indigenous groups that lived in the Valley of México. The popular term, , has been used as an all-inclusive term to describe both the people and the empire. The noted anthropologist, Professor Michael E. Smith of the University of New York, uses the term Aztec Empire to describe "the empire of the Triple Alliance, in which Tenochtitlán played the dominant role." In short, the reader should recognize that the Aztec Indians were not one ethnic group, but a collection of many ethnicities, all sharing a common cultural and historical background.
The Náhuatl People
Today, the Náhuatl people are the single largest indigenous group of central Mexico. It is believed that the earliest Nahua speakers arrived in the Valley of Mexico as early as 900 A.D. According to Aztec legends, over a period of time, seven tribes that lived in the northwest in a place called Aztlán-Chicomoztoc (or "the place of the seven caves") journeyed to and settled in the Valley of Mexico and surrounding areas. The Náhuatl-speaking tribes who inhabited the area now considered the State of Mexico and the Distrito Federal are described as follows:

1. The Xochimilca - The Xochimilca were the first Náhuatl tribe to arrive in the Valley of Mexico, settling around 900 A.D. in Cuahilama, near what is now Santa Cruz Acalpixca (in Mexico City). They were eventually subdued by the Mexica and became part of the Aztec Empire.

2. The Chalca of Chalco - The Chalca were the second tribe to arrive in the Valley. They established themselves east of the Xochimilca about 25 km (16 miles) east of Tenochtitlán. Chalco was conquered by the Aztecs around 1465 and is now in the eastern part of Mexico State.

3. The Tepaneca - The Tepanecs or Tepaneca were the third tribe to arrive in the Valley of Mexico in the late 12th or early 13th centuries. They settled in Azcapotzalco on the northwest shore of Lake Texcoco in the present-day Distrito Federal. In 1428, Tepaneca became part of the Aztec Empire.

4. The Acolhua of Texcoco - The fourth tribe to arrive in the area, the Acolhua, settled on the northeastern shore of the Lake Texcoco. They occupied most of the eastern Basin of the Valley of Mexico, with their capital in Texcoco. Today, Texcoco is a city and municipio located in the State of Mexico, about 25 km (15 miles) northeast of Mexico City.

5. The Mexica - The Mexica, according to Professor Smith, were "the inhabitants of the cities of Tenochtitlán and Tlatelolco." They were the last of the Náhuatl-speaking groups to arrive in the Valley of Mexico and they eventually became the masters of the Aztec Empire.

Emperor Moctezuma II Xocoyotl
In 1502, Moctezuma II Xocoyotl (the Younger) ascended to the throne of Tenochtitlán as the newly elected tlatoani (ruler). It was about this time when the Mexica of Tenochtitlán began to suffer various disasters. While tribute peoples in several parts of the empire started to rebel against Aztecs, troubling omens took place, which led the Mexica to believe that their days were numbered. Seventeen years after Moctezuma's rise to power, the Aztec Empire would be faced with its greatest challenge and a huge coalition of indigenous and alien forces, which would bring an end to the Triple Alliance.
The Aztec Empire of 1519
The Aztec Empire of 1519 was one of the most powerful Mesoamerican kingdoms of all time. By this time, the island city of Tenochtitlán had become a city of about 300,000 citizens. And the Aztec Empire itself ruled over about 80,000 square miles of territory extending from the Gulf of México to the Pacific Ocean, and southward to Oaxaca. This empire contained some 15 million people, living in thirty-eight provinces. In all, the Emperor received the tribute of 489 communities.

The map on the following page shows the Aztec Empire in 1519, including the empire's three major cities (The Triple Alliance: Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan) [Source: Comandante, Wikipedia U. E. "Aztec Empire." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Online: https://www.ancient.eu/image/2321/ (Last modified February 26, 2014)].
The Otomí Indians (The Sierra Nahñu)
At the time of the Spanish contact, the Otomíes (who call themselves Nahñu, or Hñahñu) occupied the greater part of Querétaro and smaller parts of Guanajuato, the northwestern portion of Hidalgo and parts of the state of México. At one time, the Otomí held a great deal of power and prestige throughout east central Mexico. However, the rise of the Aztec Empire caused a decline of the Otomíes during the fourteenth Century. Nahñu belongs to the Otopamean language family, a subfamily of the very large Otomanguean Linguistic Group. (Most of the Oaxacan indigenous groups - including the Zapotecs and Mixtecs - belong to this language family.)

It is believed that the Otomí may have been the earliest inhabitants of the Valley of México. They were the only major indigenous group in the Valley of México who spoke a language other than Náhuatl. They had probably arrived in the Valley from the west after the destruction of Tula (circa 1170). Xaltocan, in the northern part of the Valley, was the capital of Otomí Empire during its prime in the mid-Thirteenth Century. However, the Otomí declined in power and prestige during the Fourteenth Century, after having lost wars with the Mexica.
Mazahua
The Mazahua - a principal tribe of the Otomian linguistic family - live in the western portion of the State of México, as well as some adjoining territory in Michoacán, Querétaro and southwestern Hidalgo.

The Mazahua are believed to have been among the original tribes who migrated to central México during the Thirteenth Century. In 1521, Hernán Cortés - after subduing the Mexica - consolidated his power by sending Gonzalo de Sandoval to subdue all resistance among the Aztec neighbors: the Mazahuas, Matlatzincas and Otomies. Very quickly, Gonzalo de Sandoval brought the Mazahua Indians under Spanish control, and the Franciscan missionaries played a prominent role in bringing Christianity to their people.
Matlatzinca
The Matlatzinca Indians inhabited the broad valley that extends from México-Tenochtitlan to the western border of the state of México and today encompasses significant portions of Michoacán, Guerrero and México. The Matlatzinca probably arrived in the Valley around the Sixth Century, but were conquered and incorporated in the Aztec Empire in 1474. The Matlatzinca speak an Otopamean language that is related to Otomí and Mazahua.
The Conquest
After a two-year campaign, Spanish forces under Hernán Cortés ‒ assisted by a coalition of allied indigenous forces ‒ captured Tenochtitlán in August 1521. With the destruction of the Aztec Empire, the territories within it devolved to the control of the Spaniards.
The New Alliance
But the conquest gave way to a new alliance of the surviving Aztecs and the Spaniards. As Spanish military expeditions set out north, south and west of Tenochtitlán, they brought with them their newly converted indigenous allies who served as interpreters, scouts, emissaries, soldiers and settlers. Because of their previous trading and military relationships, the former subjects of the Aztec Empire became invaluable to the Spaniards because of their knowledge of the people living in other areas of Mexico. Thus, the Náhuatl tongue became the other "lingua franca" (besides Spanish) of Mexico. To this day, locations in every corner of Mexico have Náhuatl place names.

The Colonial Period
For three full centuries (1521-1821), México City and the surrounding jurisdiction underwent a period of integration, assimilation, and Hispanization. This period - which is not the focus of this work - has been discussed in many books. One particularly informative source about the cultural and social development of central México is James Lockhart's The Náhuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central México, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries (published in 1992 by the Stanford University Press). Another useful source to consult on this topic would be Charles Gibson's The Aztecs under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of México 1519-1810 (published by the Stanford University Press in 1964).

Political Developments

Mexico became a state on October 3, 1824 by the General Congress. However, Mexico would later be apportioned and fragmented successively for the creation of the Federal District in 1823, Guerrero in 1849, as well as Hidalgo and Morelos in 1869.

The 1895 Census

The first national Mexican Census took place on October 20, 1895. The Mexican Census of 1895 provides us with our first window into the prevalence of indigenous languages in the State of Mexico. Out of a population of 842,873 people in 1895, 158,335 spoke an indigenous language, representing 18.8% of the total population of the State. As noted in the table below, Otomí and Mazahua were spoken by seven in ten (70.3%) of the indigenous language speakers.

Although the State of Mexico represented the center of Aztec / Náhuatl culture for several centuries, the language of the Aztecs was consigned to third place in the list of indigenous languages spoken in Mexico in 1895. In fact, as revealed in the following graphic, only 6.8% of Náhuatl speakers in the entire country lived in the State of Mexico. However, more than one-quarter (28.1%) of the indigenous speakers in the entire state were Náhuatl speakers.

It is also noteworthy that four states in 1895 - Puebla, Veracruz, Hidalgo and Guerrero - were the home to 76.4% of all Mexican Náhuatl speakers. Estado de Mexico had the fifth largest number of Náhuatl speakers.
The Otomí Language in 1895
The Mexican Census of 1895 also provides us with an early window into the usage of the Otomí language in the entire Mexican Republic. As revealed in the following graphic, the State of Mexico had the second largest number of Otomí speakers in the entire country, accounting for nearly one-third (30.6%) of those living in the Mexican Republic.
The 1921 Census
The 1921 census asked citizens of each state to classify themselves in several categories, including "indígena pura" (pure indigenous), "indígena mezclada con blanca" (indigenous mixed with white) and "blanca" (white). The table below illustrates the contrast in the census classifications between the State of México and the Mexican Republic as a whole.

In the 1921 Mexican census, the state of México boasted a population of 884,617, of which 372,703 persons claimed to be of pure indigenous background, representing 42.1% of the total. An even larger number - 422,001, or 47.7% - classified themselves as being mixed, while only 88,660 (10%) considered themselves to be white. While 42.1% of the inhabitants of this state considered themselves to be of pure indigenous descent, less than half - 172,863, or 46.4% - actually spoke an indigenous language.
Indigenous Growth (1930-2000)
The number of indigenous speakers recorded in each Mexican census and their growth trends can be influenced by many factors, including fecundity, mortality and migration, which have a direct impact on any population. However, another important factor is an indigenous person's self-awareness in relation to their community. While some indigenous speakers have a great deal of pride in their spoken language, for others the declaration of speaking another tongue to a census taker may be inappropriate and stigmatizing. And, over time, the transmission of an indigenous language is difficult to maintain in the face of the dominant Spanish tongue, especially for those who migrate to other areas.

In the following table, the indigenous speaking population of the State of Mexico for four selected census years are shown. Over this period of 70 years, there was a very slow increase in the total number of indigenous speakers in the state, but a significant decline in the percentage of indigenous speakers from 22.38% in 1930 to only 3.26% in 2000.

Estado de Mexico in the 2000 Census

According to the 2000 census, the population of persons five years and more who spoke indigenous languages in the State of México totaled 361,972 individuals. A large range of languages is spoken in the state of México, many of them imported from southern or eastern Mexican states. The most common indigenous languages spoken was the Mazahua tongue, with a total of 113,424 indigenous speakers, representing 31.3% of all the indigenous speakers five years of age and over in the state.

The second most common language was the Otomí, spoken by 104,357 indigenous speakers, and representing 28.8% of the total indigenous speaking population. The most common languages spoken in the 2000 census in the State of Mexico were:
Mazahua
The Mazahua Indians - representing the most populous indigenous-speaking group in México - primarily occupy thirteen municipios in the northwestern portion of the state of México. Mazahuas also inhabit some municipios in the center of the state, as well as parts of eastern Michoacán. They are a division of the Oto-Manguean linguistic group and are related by both culture and language to the Otomí, from whom they are descended.

Today, most of the Mazahua are engaged in agricultural pursuits, specifically the growing of maize, pumpkin, maguey and frijol. In the years since the Conquest, the Mazahua population has evolved and its cultural elements, social organization, and religion have developed into a hybrid culture drawing from several cultural elements. No one is certain about the origin of the word Mazahua, but some have suggested that it is derived from the Náhuatl term, mázatl, meaning "deer."

The Mazahua make up a significant portion of the population of several municipios in the state. In the municipio of Atlacomulco, the population of Mazahua speakers five years of age and over in 2000 consisted of 10,709 individuals, making up 17.1% of the population of the municipio. In the municipio of Donato Guerra, 5,419 Mazahuas represented 24% of the population of the municipio. In Ixtlahuaca, 19,203 Mazahuas represented 19.8% of the total population.

Otomí

The Otomí are the second largest linguistic group in México state. They call themselves "Hñahñu," the word Otomí having been given to them by the Spanish. Otomí are a very diverse indigenous group, living in many communities throughout Central México and speaking a great variety of dialects, some of which are not mutually intelligible. Like the Mazahuas, they belong to the Oto-Manguean linguistic group. Significant numbers of Otomies occupied 14 of the 121 municipios in the state of México, most of these municipios being located in the northwest (Atlacomulco-Timilpan) and in the center (Toluca-Lerma).

Náhuatl

Although the Náhuatl-speaking population is the most populous group in the entire Mexican Republic, they are ranked third place in the state of México, with more than 15% of the total indigenous-speaking population.

Migrant Labor in Estado de Mexico

The influence of migrant labor is particularly significant to the state of Mexico. Out a total population of 13,096,686 (of all ages) in the 2000 census, 5,059,089 individuals - or 38.6% - were born in another political entity than the state of México. The primary states contributing to México's migrant population were - in numerical order - the Federal District (more than 3 million people), Puebla (295,889 migrants), Oaxaca (256,786), Hidalgo (256,718), and Michoacán (231,811). Oaxaca's significant contribution amounted to 5.1% of the migrant pool, which explains why the Mixteco and Zapoteco languages from Oaxaca are the fourth and fifth most common indigenous groups in the state.

Estado de Mexico in the 2010 Census

Nearly two-thirds (72.8 percent) of México State's 379,075 indigenous speakers 3 years and older in the 2010 census spoke three languages: Mazahua, Otomi and Náhuatl. The following table shows the most spoken language in the state:
Otomí Speakers in Mexico (2010)
In the 2010 Mexican census, 284,992 Otomí speakers 5 years of age and more lived throughout the Mexican Republic, and 74% lived in either Hidalgo or Mexico State. As noted in the following table, only 4% of the Otomí speakers in the entire Mexican Republic were monolingual (not speaking Spanish), but the Otomies in Veracruz and Puebla had higher levels of monolingualism (16% in both states):
Mexico's 2015 Intercensal Survey
In 2016, the Mexican government agency, Instituto Nacional de Estadística Geografía e Informática (INEGI), published the 2015 Intercensal Survey, which upgraded Mexico's socio-demographic information to the midpoint between the 2010 census and the census to be carried out in 2020. With a sample size of over 6 million homes, this survey provides information on the national, state and municipio level, as of March 15th, 2015.

The government map below shows the location of indigenous pueblos within the State of Mexico as of 2015 [Atlas de los pueblos indígenas de México. - Instituto Nacional de los Pueblos Indígenas / INALI. Estado de Mexico: Distribución por Entidad Federativa: Pueblos Indígenas con Mayor Presencia en la Entidad. 2018. Online: http://atlas.cdi.gob.mx/?page_id=7211].
The Enduring Legacy of Central Mexico's Indigenous People
Nearly five hundred years after the conquest and destruction of the Aztec Empire, the culture, language and spirit of the Náhuatl, Otomí, Mazahua and other indigenous peoples remains intact within the central Hispanic culture to which most of them also belong. It is worth noting that, although the Mexica capital Tenochtitlán was occupied after an eighty-day siege, many of the indigenous peoples of Central México quietly submitted to Spanish tutelage. In this way, they were given an opportunity to continue speaking their languages and to retain some elements of their original culture, while becoming an integral and important part of a new society. The legacy of Central Mexico's indigenous people lives on.
Bibliography
Arango, Rosy. "Variantes del Náhuatl," March 18, 2018. Online:

De la Cruz, Victoriano. "La Escritura Náhuatl y los Procesos de su Revitalización." Contribution in New World Archaeology (2014) 7: 187-197. Online: https://issuu.com/revitalization/docs/cruz [Published July 26, 2015].

Campillo Cuautli, Héctor. Distrito Federal: Monografía Histórica y Geográfica. México: D.F.: Fernández Editores, 1992.

Davis, Nigel. The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico. London: Penguin Books, 1990.

Davies, Nigel. The Aztecs: A History. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma, 1980.

Departamento de la Estadística Nacional. Annuario de 1930. Tacubaya, D.F., México, 1932.

Hassig, Ron. Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.

Hill, Jane H. and Kenneth C. Hill. Speaking Mexicano. Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 1986.

Instituto Nacional de Estadística Geografía e Informática (INEGI). Estados Unidos Mexicanos. XII Censo General de Población y Vivienda, 2000, Tabulados Básicos y por Entidad Federativa. Bases de Datos y Tabulados de la Muestra Censal.

INEGI, Censo de Población y Vivienda (2010): Panorama Sociodemográfico de México (March 2011).

"Lenguas Mexicanos: Distribución y Dialectos del Náhuatl." Online:
http://lenguasmexicanas.blogspot.com/p/distribucion-y-dialectos-del-nahuatl.html
Marks, Richard Lee. Cortés: The Great Adventurer and the Fate of Aztec México. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.

Meier, Matt S. and Feliciano Rivera. The Chicanos: A History of Mexican Americans. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972.

Meier, Matt S. and Feliciano Ribera. Mexican Americans, American Mexicans: From Conquistadors to Chicanos. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993.

Meyer, Michael C. and Sherman, William L. The Course of Mexican History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Wikipedia, "Lectura No. 8: Náhuatl." Online: http://enp4.unam.mx/amc/libro_munioz_cota/libro/cap1/lec08_elnahuatl.pdf

(Published April 1, 2014).

Smith, Michael E. "The Strategic Provinces," in Frances F. Berdan et al., Aztec Imperial Strategies. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1996, pp. 137-150.

Smith, Michael E. The Aztecs. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 1996.

Secretaríat de Economía, ProMéxico Trade and Investment: Estado de Mexico. Online:
http://mim.promexico.gob.mx/work/models/mim/Documentos/PDF/mim/FE_EDO_MEX_vf.pdf

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Estado de Mexico's Indigenous Past and Present - Indigenous Mexico

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Like! Share! Tweet! Share! Tweet! Share! Tweet! PrintLocation and Physical Description The State of México is located in the center-south section of the Mexican Republic. This landlocked state has common boundaries with Querétaro de Arteaga and Hidalgo on the north, Puebla and Tlaxcala on the east, Distrito Federal, Guerrero and Morelos on the south and [...]

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The Náhuatl language is slowly disappearing in this Puebla town

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The Náhuatl language is slowly disappearing in this Puebla town

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Náhuatl - the language spoken by the inhabitants of the Mexica capital Tenochtitlán - is dying out in San Lucas Atzala, a small town about 30 kilometers west of Puebla city.

Before 1940, everyone in Atzala communicated in Náhuatl, the newspaper El Sol de Puebla reported. But today only an estimated 1,100 of the town's approximately 2,500 residents - 44% of the total - continue to use the language. Almost half of its speakers are over 60, according to a former local official, and most of the others are in their 40s and 50s.

Some speakers of the ancient indigenous language, including ones who had never spoken Spanish, lost their lives to COVID-19 during the past two years.

Atzala residents who spoke with El Sol agreed that Náhuatl - which is still spoken by more than 1.5 million residents of central Mexico - is dying a slow death in the town. They cited a range of reasons for the language's seemingly inevitable demise, including discrimination against Náhuatl speakers, a lack of Náhuatl teachers in schools, the migration of residents to the United States, scant interest to learn Náhuatl among young people and a failure of municipal authorities to guarantee its preservation.

"My grandchildren and great-grandchildren don't want to speak Náhuatl. When I speak to them in Náhuatl they tell me they don't know what I'm saying or what I mean," said Maximiliana Joaquina Morales Ramos, a 73-year-old housewife.

She doesn't know how to read or write Náhuatl, but uses the language to speak with her husband and other Atzala residents of a similar age.

"My [six] children didn't learn because they were spoken to in Spanish at school and the same thing happens with a lot of children and young people now," Morales said. "They no longer [want to speak Náhuatl], they're embarrassed or they prefer to be on their phones."

Pascuala Palillero, who is also in her early 70s, declared bluntly that "we're losing our language." She said that she speaks Náhuatl with her husband but has to use Spanish with her five children.

"We want to rescue our language and traditions because it's sad that only a few of us speak [Náhuatl]," said 71-year-old Rogelia Ventura Ramos. "Even though we taught our children when they were little they forgot when they went to school and now they don't want to speak it," she said.

Ventura said she's not at all embarrassed about her roots and being a Náhuatl speaker, but added that there are some people who look down on indigenous languages and customs. She also said she would be happy to offer classes to young people if it meant Náhuatl would be preserved.

"I would stop washing dishes and sweeping in order to teach what my parents taught me," Ventura said. "I would like to see children and young people speaking Náhuatl and to put an end to what we see now, which is seeing them on their phones. "

Agustín Medina Pérez, a former local official and one of just two expert writers of Náhuatl in Atzala, warned that the language could die out within 30 or 40 years from now because it's older people who are currently keeping it alive.

He said he started learning the 4,000-year-old language from the day he was born. "I learned Spanish at school because the teachers discriminated against us if we used the ancient language. They said everything had to be in Spanish because ... [Náhuatl] was no longer useful," Medina said.

"I do hold a grudge because a lot of people wan't to kill off our language," he said, adding that efforts should be made to preserve what is truly Mexican.

"Náhuatl is a nice language to tell jokes and stories. It brightens the soul," remarked Medina, who also writes poetry in the pre-Hispanic language.

"It enhances, respects and shows reverence to things and it's very different to the Spanish language because ... it has 20 consonants, four vowels and there are no words with the letters ñ, r, b and v because x, z and tl dominate," he said.
With reports from El Sol de Puebla

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The Náhuatl language is slowly disappearing in this Puebla town

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Náhuatl - the language spoken by the inhabitants of the Mexica capital Tenochtitlán - is dying out in San Lucas Atzala, a small town about 30 kilometers west of Puebla city. Before 1940, everyone in Atzala communicated in Náhuatl, the newspaper El Sol de Puebla reported.

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Revitalizing an Endangered Indigenous Language

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Getty: Resources for Visual Art and Cultural Heritage

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Visit our Los Angeles museums and library, interact with art, and access free research tools.

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Competing Narratives about the Conquest of Mexico and the Fall of the Aztec Empire

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Competing Narratives about the Conquest of Mexico and the Fall of the Aztec Empire

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Competing Narratives about the Conquest of Mexico and the Fall of the Aztec Empire | Getty News

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A Getty Initiative to provide greater access to the Florentine Codex, the first Indigenous encyclopedia of the New World

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Centuries-old Aztec language speaks to the present

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Centuries-old Aztec language speaks to the present

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Many Indigenous languages are endangered, and few are taught in universities. For Rebecca Mendoza Nunziato, a master's of divinity student who hails from Colorado, the study group represents an important step in dismantling colonial narratives and an effort to reconnect with her cultural roots. Her father is of Mexican descent and her grandparents were farm workers in Texas and Colorado.

"It's partly to honor my ancestors, and to reclaim Spanish, and something that existed before Spanish," she said. "I also wanted to reconnect with the wisdom and knowledge that have been lost, colonized, and erased."

Reading antique manuscripts in the original language is a thrill, said Mendoza Nunziato, who was surprised to learn from the documents the origin of the name Aztecs - that they hailed from mythical Aztlan. The Aztecs also called themselves Mexicas.

"It was an 'aha' moment for me," she said. "I had been taught that they didn't call themselves Aztecs, that that was a name that others gave them later on. It was so cool to learn from their own words what they called themselves in a primary document from 400 years ago."

The ability to read primary sources was no less a draw for Quinn Matos, a master's candidate in theological studies who is studying medical and ritual traditions in the Americas and the African Diaspora. Matos, who will head to NYU Long Island School of Medicine in the fall, said he's gained from the group a greater understanding of ancient medicinal practices and a deeper appreciation of Indigenous languages - especially Nahuatl, which is made up of strung-together morphemes that tend to build long words.

"It's a poetically gorgeous language," said Matos, "and it sounds beautiful."

According to Leeming, the longest word in Nahuatl comes from a Nahuatl drama titled "The Three Kings," which was probably written in the 17th century: itlaçomahuizÇenquiscatlaçomahuizqualtilispepetlaquilisXayacatzin. The ethnohistorian and anthropologist Louise Burkhart translates it as "[his] precious, wondrous, utterly precious, wondrous, good, and shining face," and refers to the face of baby Jesus.

"I studied Nahuatl because I became fascinated with the language," said Leeming. "It's beautiful, poetic, and full of metaphors."

As for Contreras, she would like to use her Nahuatl knowledge in the classroom to help younger generations preserve a cultural heritage that is often overlooked and underappreciated.

"When we speak our Indigenous language, we are breathing life into a past that others tried to erase," she said. "By remembering the past, we can co-create a new future that includes Indigenous languages. The future includes Indigenous peoples and language is one way to make sure we are not forgotten or forget ourselves."

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Centuries-old Aztec language speaks to the present

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Many Indigenous languages are endangered, and few are taught in universities. For Rebecca Mendoza Nunziato, a master's of divinity student who hails from Colorado, the study group represents an important step in dismantling colonial narratives and an effort to reconnect with her cultural roots.

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Writers, historians react to Mexico's demand for an apology from Spain

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Writers, historians react to Mexico's demand for an apology from Spain

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Hernán Cortés' troops conquering Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital. Getty

A request from Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to Spain's King Felipe VI for an apology over the Spanish conquest has prompted responses from a range of figures in both countries.

One of the bluntest messages came from the Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte, known for his Alatriste series of novels. "He's the one who should apologize, since he has Spanish surnames and is living there. If this individual really believes what he's saying, he's an idiot. If he doesn't believe it, he has no shame," the writer and former war correspondent wrote on Twitter in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

He sent out another, more generic, tweet later this morning. "One gets sick and tired of seeing the history of Spain, with as much light and shade as that of any other country, keep being turned into a target for all demagogues."

Que se disculpe él, que tiene apellidos españoles y vive allí. Si este individuo se cree de verdad lo que dice, es un imbécil. Si no se lo cree, es un sinvergüenza. - Arturo Pérez-Reverte (@perezreverte)

Meanwhile, in Mexico, Diego Fernández de Cevallos, a presidential candidate in 1994, told Milenio Televisión that it was "as if we called on the Mexican president to demand that Trump apologize because they stole half our land from us."

Ifigenia Martínez, a former leader of the Mexican left, burst out laughing when asked about López Obrador's request. "From the point of view of history, the scars are still there, but they can't be fixed. We already overcame that stage, and are proud of that. There's no room for an apology," she said.

The Mexican academic Martín Ríos, an expert in colonial history, said that he thought the request was "very logical and coherent coming from López Obrador. In the end it reflects what he learned in the public education system. But it's a distortion of the processes. The way in which the president expressed himself is a reflection of a very traditional education, promoted by the state after the revolution, and it has a marked indigenist slant. It's a deformation of the historical reality, a manipulation and a political use of history."

The request is very logical and coherent coming from López Obrador. In the end it reflects what he learned in the public education system

Mexican academic Martín Ríos

From Spain, Carlos Martínez Shaw, a senior fellow in Modern History at the National University of Distance Learning (UNED), says that "asking for an apology from a head of state for actions that took place 500 years ago, pitting societies that had little to do with ours against each other, is extemporaneous and anachronistic. It was a military conquest, with all of the damage that this entails, but in the three centuries of subjugation there were moments of coexistence and resistence."

Martínez Shaw, who is also a member of Spain's Royal Academy of History, adds: "If some of the affected communities themselves had asked for this, it might make some sense, but between states it borders on the ridiculous, it's a qualitative leap in this brand of revisionism, and it could end up affecting relations between both countries."

English version by Simon Hunter.

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Writers, historians react to Mexico's demand for an apology from Spain

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A request from Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to Spain's King Felipe VI for an apology over the Spanish conquest has prompted responses from a range of figures in both countries. One of the bluntest messages came from the Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte, known for his Alatriste series of novels.

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Indigenous peoples - Minority Rights Group

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Indigenous peoples - Minority Rights Group

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Mexico has one of the largest and most diverse indigenous populations in Latin America. Although the country had recognized the existence of and contributions made by indigenous peoples in the construction of the country, it was only with the 1992 Constitution that the nation was deemed pluri-cultural. CONADI, the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples, estimate s that Mexico has 68 indigenous communities. In July 2017 the Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas reported that - based on 2015 figures - there were 25.7 million Mexicans who self-identified as indigenous, equivalent to 21.5 per cent of the national population at the time , with another 1.6 per cent identifying as part-indigenous.

Official statistics had traditionally defined the indigenous population using criteria based on language, which many have argued largely underestimated this increasingly urban ised population: for example, an estimated 1.2 million indigenous people live in the capital Mexico City .

I ndigenous peoples' organizations were successful in pressuring the government to include a question based on self-identification in the 2000 Census. In that year, only half of those who identified as indigenous actually spoke an indigenous language and of those who did, 84 per cent also spoke Spanish. Data from 2005 also show ed that only a small fracti on of indigenous peoples remained monolingual.

Historical context

Mexico's indigenous communities, like indigenous populations elsewhere in the Americas, still contend with the violent legacy of colonialism and their decimation by disease, conflict and exploitation after the territory of present-day Mexico, then largely dominated by the Aztec Empire, was brought under Spanish rule in the early 16 th century. In the ensuing years, continuing long after Mexico's independence in 1810, discrimination and abuse of the country's indigenous peoples by the dominant white elite persisted. While their situation has improved, with greater formal recognition of their rights, many underlying inequalities remain in place to this day.

Nevertheless, indigenous culture is considered to be at the heart of Mexican society. Mexico is proud of its ancient Maya and Aztec monuments, and its indigenous dances, crafts and markets, which contribute significantly to the country's appeal to tourists. Since the revolution of 1910-20, successive governments have professed a desire to integrate indigenous people s into Mexican society. The Independent Department of Native Affairs, set up in 1946 under the Ministry of Education, began a programme of teaching Spanish to indigenous children. However, the negative result of such programmes has been a promotion of an assimilatory model for indigenous peoples, which has devalued indigenous languages, cultures and autonomy.

Despite legislative reforms and the signing of treaties and accords, indigenous people s in Mexico experienced a double form of discrimination - both because of their low economic standing and poor levels of formal education, and also on grounds of language, dress and other cultural manifestations. What little land they owned was generally insufficient to support them, so many sought waged work from mestizo employers, who generally treated them disrespectfully.

Generally, indigenous peoples retained local forms of organization to defend their culture and livelihoods. Others witnessed the collapse of their traditions under the burden of poverty and believed that they must reject their ethnic identity and integrate into society if they were to improve their living conditions.

The situation of Mexico's indigenous communities gained worldwide attention in January 1994 when indigenous peasants representing a number of different ethnic groups, taking the name of Emiliano Zapata, a popular leader murdered by the military in 1919, launched an armed uprising on the day that the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect. Occupying four towns in Chiapas - where the situation of indigenous people has long been worse than in other states - the National Zapatista Liberation Army (EZLN) stated its opposition to indignities faced by indigenous people s and others in Mexico. They called for better conditions for indigenous peoples, protection of communal land s and an end to government corruption and human rights abuses. After the initial fighting, the government declared a ceasefire, promised to address rebel concerns and released prisoners. Negotiations were started between a government-appointed mediator and the rebels but broke down when the government proved unwilling to accept most of the rebel demands.

The EZLN and indigenous organizations represented by the National Plural Indigenous Assembly for Autonomy had been demanding constitutional reforms to allow for the creation of pluri-ethnic autonomous regions in areas of significant indigenous population. In effect, this would have established a fourth level of government at a regional level, which would coexist with the existing municipal, state and federal government authorities. Regional autonomy would also have allowed indigenous peoples greater control over their land and resources in accordance with ILO Convention No. 169. In 1996 the EZLN and Mexican government officials negotiated and signed the San Andres Accords, which guarantee land rights, regional autonomy and cultural rights for indigenous peoples. The Mexican government later refused to implement these agreements.

At the height of the uprising government forces shot, execution-style, eight suspected members of the EZLN, and, according to human rights observers, dozens of critics of the regime were killed or 'disappeared', reportedly at the hands of death squads organized by government forces working in collusion with private interests. The brutal torture and rape of indigenous women in Chiapas is also documented; perpetrators are rarely brought to trial.

In the elections of August 1994 the Institutional Revolutionary Party ( PRI ) candidate, Eduardo Robledo Rincón , officially won the governor's race in Chiapas, but the EZLN and opposition leaders insisted that progressive candidate Amado Avendado was the rightful winner. They created a parallel government, seized government offices, took over radio stations, mounted roadblocks and the EZLN eventually took over 38 towns in the state. The parallel authority permitted peasants to expropriate large estates, liquidated existing state structures and instituted new laws favouring indigenous people and the poor. Large demonstrations were held in cities across Mexico in support of the rebels.

The Mexican government was forced to devalue the peso by 50 per cent in the last two weeks of December 1994, precipitating a loss of business confidence in the new administration of President Ernesto Zedillo. In an attempt to regain investors' support, Zedillo implemented harsh austerity measures designed to control government spending and inflation. In February 1995 he also ordered a military offensive against the EZLN bases, forcing the rebels to retreat into the mountains.

After the 2000 election, the dismantling the 71-year reign of the PRI presented a political opportunity in which EZLN leaders demanded that the new Fox administration implement the San Andres Accords and withdraw troops from Chiapas. On 11 March 2000, over 250,000 people gathered in Mexico City in what was the largest ever march of indigenous people in Mexico, to pressure the Fox administration to comply with the San Andres Accords. Although Fox did dismantle a number of military encampments in Chiapas, the government's 2001 constitutional reforms fell short of what the EZLN and other indigenous groups wanted. The demands for autonomy, the right to territory, access to natural resources and the election of municipal authorities were all ignored, leading the EZLN and other important indigenous groups to refuse to recognize the new constitution.

Although the EZLN by no means represents Mexico's diverse indigenous population, this pan-indigenous movement has been considered the voice of indigenous peoples since the uprisings of 1994. The tenth anniversary of the Zapatista uprising highlighted some of the gains of the movement, including the effective governing of a number of autonomous indigenous communities. Throughout the late 1990s the EZLN mobilized large numbers of indigenous people and sympathizers in a series of marches and other actions that were met by hostility and sometimes violent repression by Mexican authorities. In an attack in Chiapas by the Peace and Justice paramilitary group, 45 people were killed. Although the Zedillo administration denied the existence of such paramilitary groups, these massacres led to an increase in the number of foreign human rights observers in Chiapas. Many of these observers were later expelled by the Zedillo government.

Many of the issues that had driven the uprising remained unresolved . I ndigenous farmers continued to be harassed or attacked by paramilitary groups as they work their land. Police brutality and mistreatment by the justice system were commonly reported. Some indigenous communities were prevented from electing their customary representatives. Attempts by communities to defend their lands against illegal loggers or to campaign for their rights met with violence on the part of armed groups who appeared to operate with impunity. Leaders who spoke out for political change were singled out for persecution by powerful landowners who wielded inordinate influence over the local police, political and judicial systems. The repression ranged from incarceration and expulsion from communities to torture and murder. 'Disappearances' and massacres of unarmed peasants were reported.

Indigenous people were also over-represented in the country's prison system, languishing in jail as proceedings stagnate and often spending more time behind bars than a sentence would require were they actually convicted and sentenced. In many cases, they were not provided with interpreters, even though a considerable percentage of indigenous people do not speak Spanish and despite guarantees of such basic protection under the law. Courts often accepted confessions extracted under duress as the main evidence for sentencing.

Indigenous women were particularly marginalized in many communities. This pattern could be seen across a broad range of socio-economic indicators, including education, employment, earnings and income. In addition to persistent poverty and lack of access to health services, which more markedly affected indigenous women, they also suffered domestic violence. Alcoholism, child abuse and incest were also reported as significant problems affecting indigenous families. Women were also more vulnerable to exploitation by their employers, government officials and the judicial system. According to the 2005 National Household Survey, indigenous women had about half as much education and were less likely to speak Spanish than indigenous men.

Conditions were exacerbated by a structural economic crisis that has left indigenous people, who had traditionally sustained themselves mainly in the agricultural sector, subject to increasing privation. The government moved to erode the rights of indigenous peoples to communal lands, further exacerbated by the implementation of NAFTA. This , together with failing agriculture and the impact of climate change, also contributed to increased migration by indigenous peoples to Mexico's urban centres. This often resulted in new forms of deprivation as indigenous residents of cities found themselves pushed to the social margins, often in very poor living conditions: a 2010 study by UN-Habitat found that in Mexico City, while 16.4 per cent of all houses had only one room, 34.3 per cent of indigenous households fell into this category. Although indigenous women were increasingly migrating themselves, males who migrated to cities in search of work sometimes left women abandoned and with increased economic hardship.

In light of these challenges, there were signs that indigenous people s were reorganizing themselves. Possible fraud in the 2006 presidential election led to something of a resurgence of the Zapatistas as well as other indigenous and rural movements in Mexico. Despite immense support by the indigenous population, leftist candidate Andrés López Obrador lost to conservative candidate Felipe Calderón by less than 1 per cent of the vote. The day after the election, Sub-Commandant Marcos, leader of the EZLN, gave an interview on a community-based radio station denouncing the election results as fraudulent; however, the interview was censured by the Mexican government. Following the election, the Popular Assembly of Oaxacan Communities invited Obrador and Sub-Commandant Marcos to join an alternative government symbolized by the creation of the Popular Assembly of Mexican Communities (APPOM). After the election of Calderón, the EZLN issued public statements asserting that the government was on the offensive and that paramilitary groups were encroaching on Zapatista territory.

However, m any indigenous organizations, ranging from small community-based groups to national bodies, also formed to fight for better living conditions for this population. They have campaigned for access to education, health services, potable water, credits, fair wages, political representation, consultation, the protection of local environments, and official recognition of their languages and traditional skills as healers. Some of these groups work ed in collaboration with other local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and human rights bodies and others have partnered with local governments.

Many community activists were vulnerable to intimidation and targeted killings. In July 2013, the body of Heron Luciano Sixto López, an indigenous rights activist, was found after he was abducted from his office. In May 2013, eight members of the indigenous rights group Unidad Popular were kidnapped: three of them were tortured and executed, while the rest escaped and went into hiding. Both crimes highlighted the real challenges that indigenous peoples face in advocating for their rights.

In addition to inadequate implementation of laws protecting victims of crime, indigenous rights and human rights defenders, indigenous peoples remained hampered in their search for access to justice by language barriers and limited translation services. They faced ongoing violations of their land and consultation rights by large-scale development or resource exploitation projects in their territories. This included continued resistance to the aborted (in 2012) La Parota hydroelectric dam project in Guerrero State which would have, if implemented, resulted in land expropriation and the displacement of indigenous communities. Other indigenous protests included the opposition of Nahua and Totonaca indigenous groups in Zautla , Puebla to a mining project and the movement of Yaqui against the construction of an aqueduct in Sonora without prior consultation that could threaten their water access.

Current issues

Indigenous peoples' right to land continue s to be a major issue . In May 2018 the Mexican Commission on Defence and Promotion of Human Rights reported 25 incidents of forcible displacement of communities in 2017, affecting over 20,000 people. Sixty per cent of the displa ced were from indigenous peoples : in some cases - such as that of the M ixe community of San Juan Juquila Mixes, Oaxaca state and the Tzotzil communities of Chalchihuitán and Chenalhó , Chiapas state - they were forced from their homes in the contex t of unresolved territorial or political disputes aggravated by the presence of armed groups. In all, members of at least six indigenous groups - Nahua, Tzotzil, Mixe , Rarámuri ( Tarahumaras ), Purépechas and T epehuanes ( Ódami ) - were forcibly displaced in 2017.

In the case in Chalchihuitán , Chiapas, around 5,000 members of the Tzotzil ethnic group were forcibly displaced in October 2017 after one of their community members was killed; the violence was linked to an ongoing territorial dispute over land and forest resources with a neighbouring community, Chenalhó . In April 2018 an armed attack against some of the displaced Tzotzil resulted in several deaths, and a number of additional Tzotzil families were forcibly displaced from their ancestral lands in Aldama , Chiapas.

In May 2017, the National Indigenous Congress nominated María de Jesús Patricio as an independent candidate for the presidency, but she did not manage to gather the number of signatures necessary to register officially. Despite the fact that some indigenous communities of Michoacán, Chiapas and Guerrero states, advocating for self-rule, did not take part in the 2018 polls, the election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as P resident in July 2018 was seen as a potentially positive development for indigenous peoples' right s. I n his youth he worked for the National Indigenous Institute in his home state of Tabasco, and he campaigned on promises including the establishment of bilingual schools in regions with an indigenous majority.

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Indigenous peoples - Minority Rights Group

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Thanks for using our World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples! We hope you find it interesting. We have a small favour to ask: if you appreciate our work, would you mind considering making a donation to support our work? Mexico has one of the largest and most diverse indigenous populations in Latin America.

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15 minutes of fame | Caroline Dodds Pennock chooses Malintzin

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15 minutes of fame | Caroline Dodds Pennock chooses Malintzin

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Who was Malintzin?

Malintzin, also known as Doña Marina or La Malinche, was an Indigenous Nahua woman who lived in Mexico during the 16th century. She became the translator for Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés, who invaded Mexico in 1519, once she was given to him as a slave.

"She is someone who has become known in mythology and popular mythology," explains Dr Caroline Dodds Pennock, "but I don't think we know very much about her as a woman".

Historian Caroline Dodds Pennock

Malintzin's life

The information we have on Malintzin comes after she was enslaved by Hernando Cortés. She was a Nahuatl-speaking woman, possibly of noble descent, who was sold into slavery in a Maya community. Pennock explains that it's difficult to tell the details of this exchange but, at the age of perhaps no more than 16, she was enslaved by Cortés along with a group of women.

Malintzin was then enslaved to a man in Cortés's company, Alonso Hernández Puertocarrero. However, as Cortés's expedition progressed, he realised how useful Malintzin could be to him. She was capable of conversing in both Nahuatl and Maya with Indigenous peoples, and her talents as a linguist led to a position as Cortés's translator.

Pennock says that Malintzin's role as a translator was "absolutely vital" in the conquest of the Aztec empire as, although Cortés did use brutal force at times, he also built alliances with Indigenous peoples. The most famous of these alliances was with the Tlaxcalans, who became his principal allies; they formed tens of thousands in his company when he beseiged Tenochtitlan and defeated the Aztec capital city.

It is difficult to analyse Malintzin's part in the conquest because we don't hear much about her as an individual. Indigenous people began calling Cortés a version of Malintzin's name, and she appears either in front or beside him in pictographic texts. The two became almost as "one person" in the Indigenous mind and, if anything, Pennock adds, they viewed Malintzin as more important than Cortés. The problem with this, however, is the slight scapegoating of Malintzin in Spanish and Mexican histories over some of the events that occurred.

Pennock notes the complex nature of Malintzin's resultant legacy. She had a son with Cortés, and often appears in conflicting narratives. For instance, her alternate name 'Malinchista' is given to betrayers in Mexico, but she has also been claimed as an emblem of Indigenous femininity by the Chicana women's movement.

"She hasn't got one single history," Pennock says, on the difficulty of disentangling Malintzin as a human from the various accounts she exists within. "We often see her inside the stories, but her own agency is quite hidden". Pennock argues that Malintzin can be seen as a woman who made the best of her situation, and elevated herself from enslavement to being an influential figure.

Why does Malintzin deserve her 15 minutes of fame?

Malintzin deserves her 15 minutes of fame, Pennock explains, because she stands as an emblem for all the intermediaries and the, usually Indigenous, people who are part of this exchange but who often get lost and forgotten.

It is also Malintzin as a woman that Pennock argues for remembrance of: "she's often seen more as an emblem, as a figure for various movements or ideas than she is a person. She is viewed as someone who plays a critical role in a famous moment of history, but herself gets lost."
Dr Caroline Dodds Pennock is a lecturer in international history at the University of Sheffield. Her upcoming book Jon Bauckham spoke to Dr Caroline Dodds Pennock. Listen to the full interview and find more episodes in our 15 minutes of fame podcast series On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe will be released in January 2023 and is available to pre-order now

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15 minutes of fame | Caroline Dodds Pennock chooses Malintzin

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Malintzin, also known as Doña Marina or La Malinche, was an Indigenous Nahua woman who lived in Mexico during the 16th century. She became the translator for Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés, who invaded Mexico in 1519, once she was given to him as a slave.

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These women are defying tradition-by flying

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These women are defying tradition-by flying

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Source: National Geographic

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Cuetzalan, MexicoThe first time Jacinta Teresa prepared to launch herself from the towering pole, 34 years ago, it felt as though the entire world was shifting beneath her feet. At more than 150 feet above ground, the wind whipped hard and fast against her face.

"The trees were moving with me, the church too," Teresa, now 50, says of the experience. As the pole swayed, she thought she might slip. "I felt like I didn't have enough hands to keep me holding on."

Teresa had been put up to the task by her uncle, himself a volador (a flyer) who'd spent the past year or so encouraging her to join the d anza de los voladores (Dance of the Flyers) an Indigenous ritual in which four people throw themselves off of a high pole with ropes attached to their legs and waists, arms outstretched like birds, spinning around it until they reach the ground. Teresa was, at first, wary of the acrobatic feat. But she slowly grew more interested over time, until she decided to try it for herself. If indeed she jumped Teresa would join a small but growing group of women taking part in the centuries-old tradition, which had once been practiced only by men.

The voladoras, as these women have become known, live in Cuetzalan-a small mountain town-and the surrounding communities set among the rugged hills of the Sierra Norte, in eastern Mexico. Most come from families of flyers and learn from their older relatives, the kind of ancestral passing-down that is common to the many Indigenous traditions born in this region. Some fly alongside their male peers; others have created all-women troupes.

For a long time, the voladoras received a great deal of pushback, most often from men close to the practice. "There are prejudices," says Teresa, who considers herself to be among the first generation of female flyers. "People won't always say aloud that they're against it, but they just give you this look, as if to say, 'well, this is a dance for men, not women.'"

Such objections are most often rooted in more conservative gender stereotypes widespread in rural areas of Mexico and elsewhere across Latin America-the notion, for example, that women should make domestic duties their priority. Other opposition centers around more misogynistic conceptions of sex: flyers of any gender must be abstinent for at least a week before participating in the ritual, and some opponents have expressed concern that the very presence of women might "tempt" their male counterparts.

"Some people still believe that women contaminate the dance when they menstruate," adds Irene García, a 33-year-old flyer who met her now-husband atop a flying pole and is currently encouraging their 12-year-old daughter, Nikté, to continue in their footsteps. With each passing generation, things become a bit easier, she adds, crediting the women who came before her. "They left the door a bit more open for us."

Anthropologists who have extensively interviewed the women flyers and documented their experiences acknowledge that their emergence in the age-old tradition is not indicative of larger social trends in the region. "The mujeres voladoras of Cuetzalan don't represent the fights of women for gender equality," writes Eugenia Rodríguez Blanco, a social and cultural anthropologist at the Universidad Miguel Hernández in Elche, Spain.

In recent years, however, more men in Cuetzalan have become supportive of including women in the dance. In this way, it is the symbolic significance of the voladoras that is more striking: by successfully occupying previously inaccessible spaces, Rodríguez Blanco continues, the women flyers have exposed the needlessness of excluding women in those spaces-and within the ritual itself, they have laid paths for others to follow.

The origin of Dance of the Flyers

In many ways, Cuetzalan feels like a town pulled from the past. Older residents inch their way up near-vertical streets of slippery stones, while black crows return to their nightly roosts in the tall palms along the plaza, and an old clock tower quietly marks the slow passage of time with a few dull rings of its bell. Most of the people who live in the municipality of Cuetzalan identify as members of the Indigenous Nahua and Totonac communities, Aztec in origin. The region surrounding the town is widely considered to be the birthplace of several of the most sacred pre-Hispanic traditions still in practice today.

The most spectacular among them is the all-important Dance of the Flyers. "This is a ritual that came out of droughts, to ask for good harvests, to ask for rain," says Teresa. The four flyers, wearing handmade red-and-white sequined uniforms and feathered hats, represent the cardinal directions: north, south, east, and west. A fifth member of the group-the leading caporal, who stands atop the pole and plays a wooden flute and drum-represents the sun. They perform an act of beauty and grace for the gods, in the hope that the gods might return the favor.

The significance of the ritual is perhaps best marked by the sheer height of the towering kowpataninih -the Nahuatl name for the tree trunk, used for the ritual flying dance, that presides over the center of the main town square. Each year, around September, a new trunk is brought in from the forest and placed there, in an annual ceremony that involves the sacrifice of a turkey. Once secured, the flying pole stands tall, nearly matching the height of the cupola of the Iglesia San Francisco, Cuetzalan's main church.

"If we concentrate enough up there, the five of us have chemistry," Teresa explains. "We're going to make it rain in a place where it hasn't in a long time."

Community ties

Only a handful of voladoras are active at any given time in Cuetzalan, remaining a small but mighty group. As the ritual has gained wider prominence-now commonly performed at festivals across Mexico and around the world-they have become highly sought-after as trailblazers of the tradition. Some are excited by the chance to travel to new places-as close as the nearby Mexican states of Jalisco and Michoacán, and as far as the island of Madagascar off the southeastern coast of Africa. Others are grateful for the opportunities it affords them in a rural region otherwise rife with economic hardship. "This dance has given me so much," says Teresa. "It's given me so many new experiences, new opportunities for knowledge and learning, and above all, the chance to see the world."

The voladoras' fearlessness extends as much to the social aspect of breaking gender barriers as it does to the real physical risks of throwing oneself from a hundred-meter pole in the sky. "When it was time to jump, I felt profoundly afraid," says Nikté Díaz García, the 12-year-old currently learning the tradition from her parents. "You feel as though you're about to fall into an abyss. But at the same time, you know that you're tied to something."

This was, precisely, how Teresa had felt so many years earlier, atop the flying pole. Her uncle was with her that morning-far above Cuetzalan's near-vertical streets of stones, overlooking the church cupola and roosting crows in the swaying palms, and gazing down at the clock tower whose tolling bells had marked the passing of the days for so many generations before. " Tranquila," her uncle said, his voice steady and calm. "Everything is moving normally now."

Teresa took a deep breath. Then, with her arms outstretched, she leapt in flight.

Valeria Luongo is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, and anthropologist from Rome, Italy. Over the years, she has worked on different visual projects alongside the local communities of Cuetzalan del Progreso, Mexico. Her work about rituals, communities, and gender issues has been published in the Guardian, the BBC, and National Geographic. Follow her on Instagram.

Jordan Salama is a writer and the history reporting resident for National Geographic. His first book, Every Day the River Changes, was published in 2021. Follow him on Instagram.

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These women are defying tradition-by flying

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Cuetzalan, MexicoThe first time Jacinta Teresa prepared to launch herself from the towering pole, 34 years ago, it felt as though the entire world was shifting beneath her feet. At more than 150 feet above ground, the wind whipped hard and fast against her face.

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The Lasting Influence of La Malinche, the Nahua Translator

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The Lasting Influence of La Malinche, the Nahua Translator

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Sandy Rodriguez's painting "Mapa for My Malinche and our Stolen Sisters" (2021) welcomes visitors into the Albuquerque Museum's exhibition Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche. The show presents a reinterpretation of the turbulent story of La Malinche, the Indigenous woman who translated for Hernan Cortés during the Spanish invasion of Central Mexico. Some consider her the "Eve" of Mexico, while others criticize Malinche for her role in colonization. Yet, she continued to promote diplomacy during her negotiations.

Rodriguez paints her work on amate, a paper made since the Mesoamerican period. She traces crucial moments in Malinche's life across Mexico while painting handprints across the map in a bright red pigment, most noticeable at the border. These marks allude to Indigenous women who went missing or have been murdered throughout the country, an ongoing problem.

Alfredo Arreguín, "La Malinche (con Tlaloc) (Malinche [with Tlaloc])" (1993), oil paint on canvas, 48 × 36 inches (courtesy the Keller Family, © Alfredo Arreguín, image courtesy Rob Vinnedge Photo)

Rodriguez's work outlines historical and contemporary violence against Indigenous women, shedding light on the continual silencing of the topic. She draws tension between Malinche's story - one that men manipulated across history - and the stories of women removed from current history. The exhibition makes space to confront and critique the continued appropriation of Malinche and the cultural tensions established within it.

Originating at the Denver Art Museum (DAM), the exhibition unites Mexican and US artists and over 60 works in the first comprehensive exploration of La Malinche's historical and cultural significance. Born around 1500, Malinche was sold into slavery as an adolescent, gifted to Cortés, and baptized under the Christian name "Marina." Malinche spoke Maya and Nahuatl, a valuable resource for Cortés, and was his primary negotiator with Indigenous societies. Indigenous accounts of Malinche call her "Malintzin." The Nahuatl suffix "-tzin" was honorific, but many modern interpretations label Malinche as a traitor.

The exhibition presents a critical reading of La Malinche, showing how artists used her image to express reverence, betrayal, and resilience. The show explores these tensions by exhibiting historical works alongside contemporary ones, tracing her importance within Mexican and Mexican American communities.

Robert C. Buitrón, "Malinche y Pocahontas Chismeando con PowerBooks (Malinche and Pocahontas gossiping with PowerBooks)" from the series El Corrido de Happy Trails (Starring Pancho and Tonto) (1995), gelatin silver print (photo Nancy Zastudil/Hyperallergic)

Co-curator Terezita Romo proposed the exhibition design to Victoria Lyall, the Jan and Frederick Mayer Curator of Art of the Ancient Americas at the DAM, following the five archetypes outlined in her 2005 essay "Malinche as Metaphor": " La Lengua/The Interpreter," " La Indígena/The Indigenous Woman," " La Madre de Mestizaje/The Mother of a Mixed Race," " La Traidora/ The Traitor," and "Chicana: Contemporary Reclamations."

The "La Lengua" section underscores Malinche's role as Cortés' Lengua, his "tongue" during their chronicles, highlighting Malinche's essential role as translator and primary communicator. Robert C. Buitrón's "Malinche and Pocahontas gossiping with PowerBooks" (1995) focuses on this element from a contemporary perspective. His black and white photograph shows two sitters speaking in the foreground, asserting themselves as protagonists. Their communication is the point of contact for opinions and information, replicating Malinche's powerful position as the link between the two communities. Their dialogue prompts viewers to consider Malinche as an active agent rather than a passive figure.

Jesús Helguera, "La Malinche" (1941), oil paint on canvas, 6 feet 9 inches x 5 feet 7 inches (a collaboration between Carolina Performance, a socially responsible company whose mission is to preserve the cultural heritage of their country, and the Quintana Corral Family, in honor of the roots and mixed-race heritage of our Mexican people; © and courtesy Calendarios Landin)

The "La Indígena" section stresses Malinche's indigeneity and how people used it to foster nationalist rhetoric. Printed works like Biblioteca del Niño Mexicano (1899-1901), booklets illustrated by famed printmaker Guadalupe Posada, were a series of children's pamphlets about Mexican history with stories written by Mexican journalist and novelist Heriberto Frías. These pamphlets placed the moral burden of the nation onto children, ingraining the masses with historical narratives that emphasized Malinche's role of assisting Cortés with the violent process of colonization against the Indigenous people. The popularity of these booklets ensured Malinche's story was first conceivable within homes, where the nation could instill ideas of religious virtues, racial homogeneity, and gendered binaries.

In this section, Jesús Helguera's " La Malinche" (1941) hangs beside its inspired calendars. Helguera's romanticized paintings gained popularity as the government printed them onto calendars and ads, solidifying a Mexican identity that glorified Indigenous heritage. Yet they disregard violent acts against Malinche and Indigenous communities. Nonetheless, people brought these calendars across the border, filling Mexican American homes throughout the US, emphasizing people's accessibility to Malinche across time and space.

Jorge González Camarena, "La pareja (The couple)" (1964), oil paint on wood with polyester and fiberglass backing, 7 feet x 48 ¼ inches, private collection (© Fundación Cultural Jorge González Camarena, AC)

The gendered power structures that inform our understanding of La Malinche are most noticeable in the "La Madre de Mestizaje" and "La Traidora" sections. Mestizaje, or racial mixture, is the myth that all Mexicans carry Spanish and Indigenous ancestry. Paintings like Jorge González Camarena's " La Pareja " (1964) and an unattributed casta painting from 1775 (a genre that codified racial mixture in colonial Mexico) emphasize this duality. Although the works are nearly 200 years apart, they display the persisting narrative that Malinche formed the modern Mexican race as the "mother of all Mestizos," a striking curatorial element questioned across the exhibition. But this idea ignores the years of Spanish colonization before Malinche and restricts her role as a sexualized being.

The " La Traidora" portion reads further into this gendered dynamic by exploring how Malinche's name inspired the term Malinchista, someone who favors foreign people and customs to the detriment of their national identity. This ongoing ridiculing slanders La Malinche as the ultimate traitor.

Delilah Montoya's "Codex #2 Delilah: Six Deer: A Journey from Mechica to Chicana" (1992-95) moves the audience into the final section highlighting contemporary reclamations. Her work spans seven panels, telling the journey of a young healer named Six Deer. The second panel depicts a woman in 1521 called "Llora-Llora-Malinche," a combination of Malinche and La Llorona, a Mexican folktale. Llora-Llora-Malinche has gone mad searching for her children. She mentions "Men in metal clothes" who "destroy gods," and "kill men, and rape women." But also tells Six Deer to "love your child of mixed blood." The panel stresses tensions between traumatic colonial encounters and the love for children born from them, an experience not limited to Malinche.

Annie Lopez (left to right), "Sold as a Slave," "Interpreter and Companion," and "Survivor," (1995, reprinted in 2021), archival pigment print (photo by Hyperallergic/Nancy Zastudil)

Other artworks in the "Chicana" section shed light on the emotional strains caused by reclaiming Malinche's story. Themes such as the intersection of cross-cultural references in Cristina Cárdena's installation, "Malinche, Coatlicue, y Virgen de los Remedios" (1992), or challenging gendered politics through Annie Lopez's photographs, "Sold as a Slave," "Interpreter and Companion," and "Survivor" (1995), are standouts.

Head Curator Josie Lopez grounds the show locally with a selection of works by New Mexican artists and a performance of Matachines, a unique experience for the Albuquerque exhibit. The video rendition highlights how the community continues to consider Malinche's story and her lasting influence on their culture. Rather than spotlighting the tensions throughout the exhibition, the performance centers on ongoing healing community practices, finding hope and possibility within these violent discourses.

Cristina Cárdenas, "Malinche, Coatlicue y Virgen de los Remedios" (1992), ink on amate paper and cloth; 7 feet 10 inches x 47 inches (The Mexican Museum, San Francisco; © Cristina Cárdenas, photo by Mark Andrew Wilson)

While the exhibition finally holds space for critical inquiries and cultural self-reflection in its treatment of La Malinche, Mexicans and Mexican Americans have awaited this opportunity for years. The various contemporary works and Romo's essay demonstrate an eagerness for new conversations. Ultimately, the show is a starting point to re-negotiate how and why we tell Malinche's story and its everlasting relevance and, more importantly, how we can look beyond the binaries that silence her.

Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche continues through September 4 at the Albuquerque Museum (2000 Mountain Road NW, Albuquerque, New Mexico) and will travel to the San Antonio Museum of Art. The exhibition was curated by Victoria Lyall and Terezita Romo.

Related

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The Lasting Influence of La Malinche, the Nahua Translator

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Sandy Rodriguez's painting "Mapa for My Malinche and our Stolen Sisters" (2021) welcomes visitors into the Albuquerque Museum's exhibition Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche. The show presents a reinterpretation of the turbulent story of La Malinche, the Indigenous woman who translated for Hernan Cortés during the Spanish invasion of Central Mexico.

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Tenochtitlan: A Retelling of The Conquest : Throughline

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Tenochtitlan: A Retelling of The Conquest : Throughline

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subscribe to Throughline podcast

subscribe to Throughline podcast

In a sense, 1521 is Mexico's 1619. A foundational moment that has for a long time been shaped by just one perspective, a European one. The story of how Hernán Cortés and his small army of conquistadors conquered the mighty Aztec Empire, in the heart of what's now modern Mexico City, has become a foundational myth of European dominance in the Americas. This is the story that for centuries was largely accepted as the truth. But in recent decades researchers have pieced together a more nuanced, complicated version based on indigenous accounts, a version that challenges many of the bedrock assumptions about how European Christians came to control the Western Hemisphere. In this episode, the story of the fall of Tenochtitlán.

Aztecs and Mexicas

For centuries, we have referred to the ancient civilization of people who inhabited Tenochtitlán as the Aztecs. It's the more commonly known term, but it's not the most accurate. If you were living in Tenochtitlán 500 years ago, you would've probably thought of yourself as something else: Mexica. The term "Aztecs'' was popularized by a German explorer in the 19th century, and it's often used to describe people who migrated from the mythical homeland of Aztlán. In fact, the term Aztec refers to the broader Aztec civilization of Central Mexico, which broadly means all Mexicas were Aztec, but not all Aztecs were Mexica. The terms are not supposed to be interchangeable, although many use them as such. "This is the paradox, one of many but perhaps the biggest one, that accompanies a city, a nation, that only very recently has started to recognize it's multicultural and multilingual," writes Miguel de León-Portilla in his essay Los Aztecas: Disquisiciones de un Gentilicio (The Aztecs: Disquisitions Over a Demonym). So, in this episode, when referring to the people of Tenochtitlán, we used their word: Mexica.
Read more about the topic:

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Tenochtitlan: A Retelling of The Conquest : Throughline

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In a sense, 1521 is Mexico's 1619. A foundational moment that has for a long time been shaped by just one perspective, a European one. The story of how Hernán Cortés and his small army of conquistadors conquered the mighty Aztec Empire, in the heart of what's now modern Mexico City, has become a foundational myth of European dominance in the Americas.

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Nahuatl Family
Nahuatl (Aztec, Mexicano)

The Nahuatl (or Nahua) languages form the southernmost family of the Uto-Aztecan stock. Nahuatl has over a million and a half speakers, more than any other family of indigenous languages in Mexico today. The name "Nahuatl" (pronounced in two syllables, ) comes from the root ([]) which means 'clear sound' or 'command'.

The areas marked in green on the map are the traditional Nahuatl homelands where the Nahuatl languages are still spoken today. They include parts of the Federal District (Mexico City) and of the states of Durango, México, Guerrero, Michoacán, Morelos, Oaxaca, Puebla, San Luis Potosí, Tabasco, Tlaxcala, and Veracruz. Although it does not appear on this map, the southernmost language in the family is Pipil, which is spoken in El Salvador.

Nahuatl is known world-wide because of the Aztecs, also called the "Mexica" (pronounced approximately "may-she-kah"). They lived in Mexico-Tenochtitlan (what is today the center of Mexico City) in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and were the dominant civilization in Mesoamerica at the time of the Spanish conquest. Because they spoke a particular kind of Nahuatl ( Classical Nahuatl), both the Nahuatl family and even some specific varieties in that family are sometimes called "Aztec" or "Mexicano". (The Uto-Aztecan stock is also sometimes called Uto-Nahuatl.) And of course, it is from their capital city, México [], that the country of Mexico took its name.

Featured Publications

Publications by SIL International and other publishers

Common questions about Nahuatl Linguistic structure of Nahuatl Information on specific varieties of languages in this family For more information

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Nahuatl Family Nahuatl (Aztec, Mexicano) The Nahuatl (or Nahua) languages form the southernmost family of the Uto-Aztecan stock. Nahuatl has over a million and a half speakers, more than any other family of indigenous languages in Mexico today. The name "Nahuatl" (pronounced in two syllables, ná-watl) comes from the root nahua ([nawa]) which means 'clear sound' or 'command'.

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Native American language, linguistic culture classes bring diverse perspectives to campus

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Native American language, linguistic culture classes bring diverse perspectives to campus

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Native American language and culture classes have not always been offered at Brown. But, through the recent work of community members, students have been given the opportunity to engage with Native culture and history in the classroom, bringing perspectives to the University that have long been excluded.

Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Iris Montero developed HISP 1331E: "Visions and Voices of Indigenous Mexico" in fall 2019. The course included one hour of weekly Nahuatl instruction. Nahuatl is an indigenous language spoken by 1.7 million native speakers living primarily in Mexico and Central America.

Because the course was so successful, Montero applied for funding to bring Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz, director of Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas, to Brown to teach Nahuatl. Montero had taken an intensive two-week Nahuatl language course with de la Cruz Cruz in January, and valued his experience in language instruction.

In her own family, Montero experienced Nahuatl language loss - her paternal grandmother spoke Nahuatl, which she only discovered recently through reconnecting with a cousin.

"It just made me very aware of how easy it is to lose a language, and how hard you have to fight to keep incentives for keeping a language alive," she said.

According to the United Nations, "linguistic diversity is being threatened around the world, and this threat is acutely felt by indigenous peoples."

The boarding school system for Native American children, first introduced in 1860 by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, also contributed to the loss of Indigenous language, as students were forced to speak and learn in English, according to the American Indian Relief Council.

Montero's application for funding was accepted and Cruz began teaching LANG 0100: "Beginning Nahuatl" at Brown in the fall 2020. Because he is not located in Providence, the twice weekly classes have always been virtual.

Alexa de la Fuente '23, who is currently enrolled in the course, said her grandmother convinced her to enroll. Her grandmother grew up in San Luis Potosi, and although her family is not Indigenous, she was exposed to the Nahuatl language from an early age.

"When I tell her of the certain words I am (learning in class)," de la Fuente said, her grandmother says many were "integrated" into day-to-day "language back when she lived in San Luis."

Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies Nitana Hicks Greendeer '03 teaches a course on Indigenous linguistic culture and history, ETHN 1750X: "Native American Language Loss, Revitalization, and Resiliency." Each week, students explore a different language revitalization initiative, often with guest speakers who are personally involved in the efforts.

While the class offers learning opportunities for Indigenous students, its content is also important for people who do not identify as Indigenous to learn about, Hicks Greendeer said.

"For the other students who are not part of (an Indigenous) language speaking community ... or who have not watched their tribes struggle to have federal recognition ... it's important to have some idea of what is going on in tribal communities," Hicks Greendeer said. "Even though we are very small in number in this country, percentage wise, we're here."

Hicks Greendeer is also involved with the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project, where she is the school language development director. She helped to create the Weetumuw School, an immersion school in Mashpee, Mass. dedicated to teaching students Wôpanâak language and culture from an early age.

Although Hicks Greendeer was raised in a tribal community in Mashpee, she did not start learning Wôpanâak until after college. She added that her work is influenced by a desire to help community members have a more natural experience learning Wôpanâak.

There are fewer than a dozen native Wôpanâak speakers remaining in the United States, Hicks Greendeer added, making it all the more important to revitalize the language's presence within her community.

Scott AnderBois, associate professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences, teaches CLPS 1390: "Linguistic Field Methods" each spring. Because COVID-19 restrictions would have made it difficult to conduct the class effectively, AnderBois designed a new class, CLPS 1392: "Modern Mayan Languages," offered for the first time this past spring. Students in the course delved into the linguistic structures of the nearly 30 Mayan languages and analyzed how differing linguistic and grammatical properties shape the perspectives of speakers.

This year, AnderBois is doing field work in Ecuador as part of the A'ingae Language Documentation Project, which he leads. He facilitates workshops in several communities in northeast Ecuador, where A'ingae is spoken, working with community members to create raw materials for local teachers' lesson plans. The project is also developing a database of videos and interviews with native speakers to allow for further research, and is collaborating with local native speakers to make a new A'ingae dictionary, as the most recent one was published in the 1980s.

Since AnderBois is not a native speaker of any Native language, his work is informed by conversations with native speakers.

For these language revitalization efforts to be effective, "language community members themselves need to be the ones who want the language to be preserved and maintained and used in different contexts," AnderBois said. "Linguists from the outside have a role to play in helping provide resources and training and knowledge."

According to Hicks Greendeer, Brown in particular has a role to play in the preservation of Native language and culture.

"Coming to a place like Brown, there's a lot of history there, at Brown specifically, because of slavery, because of what happened to Indigenous communities, so that Brown could exist," Hicks Greendeer said. "And that's the responsibility, I think, of the University: to make space for Indigenous storytelling, specifically southern New England Indigenous storytelling."

Ben Salinas GS, who is currently enrolled in NAHU 0300: "Intermediate Nahuatl," agreed that Brown has an obligation to increase Indigenous language course offerings.

"Why can I learn every language in Europe but not languages from Indigenous peoples in the Americas? What makes those less worthy of being taught in academic settings?" Salinas said. "Even just the fact that there is a Nahuatl class here is dismantling that hierarchy of what is deemed a sophisticated, important language to study."

"Language is history, language is culture. It's difficult to get outside language when talking about people's identities, who they are, where they come from, their histories," he added. "You can learn all about Indigenous peoples' history, but if you learn the languages as well, that is just a whole other dimension."

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Native American language, linguistic culture classes bring diverse perspectives to campus - The Brown Daily Herald

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Native American language and culture classes have not always been offered at Brown. But, through the recent work of community members, students have been given the opportunity to engage with Native culture and history in the classroom, bringing perspectives to the University that have long been excluded.

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Mexico for Indigenous Language Education 

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Mexico for Indigenous Language Education 

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Source: Language Magazine

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With governments across the world adopting new policies to support Indigenous and regional minority languages (for instance, see UN's International Decade of Indigenous Languages), it may seem like people in power are finally beginning to embrace linguistic diversity. But make no mistake-there's still a long way to go.

In Mexico, for example, speakers of Indigenous languages still face challenges that their Spanish-speaking counterparts may not-according to Mexico News Daily, speakers of Indigenous languages in the state of Chiapas are still subjected to Castilianization practices, which serve to convert these communities to primarily Spanish-speaking ones. Although Mexico is home to several dozen Indigenous languages, like Nahuatl and Mixtec, the vast majority of these languages have become endangered due to Spanish's predominance.

A recent survey published in Mexico News Daily and conducted by researchers at Western Kentucky University seeks to explore the public's attitudes toward Indigenous language education in the country. Although the Mexican government's efforts to preserve Indigenous languages have been somewhat lackluster, it appears that the Mexican public is generally quite supportive of efforts to preserve and revitalize Indigenous languages.

"For those fighting to preserve Mexico's Indigenous heritage, it is clear that they are still supported-at least in theory-by the majority of Mexicans," the report reads.

The vast majority-87%-of respondents to the survey said they agreed with the statement that "the presence of Indigenous people is important to Mexican culture." The researchers also asked respondents about their thoughts on teaching Indigenous languages and English in schools-the majority of respondents agreed that it was important to teach these as subjects in school, though Indigenous languages received a bit less overwhelming support than English (88.4% of respondents supported teaching English in school compared to 70.8% for Indigenous languages).

The researchers noted that the Mexican government has made some efforts in recent years to support Indigenous languages, such as the country's Inali, or the National Institute of Indigenous Languages, which made strides during the pandemic, providing people with a variety of online resources to learn Indigenous languages. Currently, Nahuatl is one of the few languages indigenous to Mexico that is not endangered-most of the country's Indigenous languages have less than 100,000 native speakers.
Andrew Warner

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Mexico for Indigenous Language Education - Language Magazine

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With governments across the world adopting new policies to support Indigenous and regional minority languages (for instance, see UN's International Decade of Indigenous Languages), it may seem like people in power are finally beginning to embrace linguistic diversity. But make no mistake-there's still a long way to go.

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Mixpantli Podcast from Los Angeles County Museum of Art

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Mixpantli Podcast from Los Angeles County Museum of Art

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Mixpantli showcases the creative resistance of Indigenous knowledge-keepers following the Spanish invasion of Mexico. In this podcast, LACMA curators talk with contemporary artists, activists, and scholars as they contemplate their legacies in today’s Los Angeles.

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Mixpantli showcases the creative resistance of Indigenous knowledge-keepers following the Spanish invasion of Mexico. Listen as contemporary artists, activists, and scholars contemplate their legacies in today’s Los Angeles.

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In Mexico City, a 700-year-old Aztec farming technique is giving a sustainable edge to modern agriculture.

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Mexico City revives Aztec 'floating farms' to boost food supply after COVID-19 disruption

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Mexico City revives Aztec 'floating farms' to boost food supply after COVID-19 disruption

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Mexico City revives Aztec 'floating farms' to boost food supply after COVID-19 disruption

With COVID-19 unsettling supply chains, Mexicans are reviving indigenous farming methods pioneered by their pre-Colombian forebears 700 years ago.

I n coronavirus-hit Mexico City, local growers are turning to an ancient Aztec farming technique to meet demand as ordinary supply chains falter. Chinampas - the picturesque water-based plots also known as "floating gardens" - were a mainstay of the region back when it was the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, described by Spanish settlers as the "Venice of the New World". Now, these time-honoured methods are enjoying a new lease of life as the pandemic complicates daily life for the city's 22 million-strong population.

A modern day Chinampas. Photo by Emmanuel Eslava - CC BY-SA 4.0

COVID-19 adds to a list of problems the nation was already facing thanks to climate change. In 2011, Mexico faced its worst drought in recorded history, which killed 1.7 million cattle, along with 2.2 million acres of crops. At current rates of global heating, Mexico could face a 40-70% decline in cropland by 2030. In a worst-case scenario, the entire country could be unfarmable by 2100.

Mexico City itself, meanwhile, swelters under a spiraling pollution problem. An arcane water system means that - despite having more rainy days than London - the capital suffers from chronic water shortages, with a fifth of residents having to wait days for just one or two hours of supply. Others in poorer districts are entirely dependent on delivery by truck. Many of these citizens also depend on the vast open-air produce market of La Central de Abasto - the largest in Latin America - which handles 30,000 tons of food and drink daily, representing 80% of consumption in the greater Mexico City area. But this mainstay for city's poor has been hit by pandemic problems of its own, with warehouse and road closures causing shortages and driving up prices.

A new solution with an old heritage

Step forward the chinampa farmers of Xochimilco. In this waterlogged region in the city's far south, farmers have clung on to indigenous farming methods that date back as far as the 14th century. Prior to the pandemic, the floating gardens mainly drew tourists, hoping to experience a whiff of the region's pre-Colombian past on its pretty painted barges. Thanks to the crisis, however, the chinampas are once more in demand for their original purpose: providing vital sustenance to the urban population. The chinamperos have adopted a community-supported agriculture model of selling direct to consumers, and seen demand soar by 100 -120% between February and May.

The word chinampa comes from the Nahuatl term chinámitl, meaning a hedge or fence made out of reeds. Despite their eye-catching name, the floating gardens don't actually float. They are created by scraping nitrogen-rich mud and vegetation from the bottom of a canal or swamp and piling it inside a border of reeds to create a new, usually rectangular, plot of farmable land. The corners are marked by ahuejotes, a local fast-growing willow that protects the chinampa from wind and acts as a trellis for vine plants.

Chinampa farmers have clung on to indigenous farming methods that date back as far as the 14th century. Photo by yeskefo/ Flickr

The capillary action of the root systems draws up water from the surrounding wetlands, which means the chinampas require minimal irrigation, and yet can yield as many as seven harvests a year - making them one of the most efficient farming systems on the planet. Xochimilco's chinampas grow greens, legumes, tomato, pepper, corns, beans and squash as well as herbs and flowers. They can even be used for small-scale animal husbandry. Farmers navigate between plots using trajineras - traditional, flat-bottomed river boats.

In 2018, the FAO recognised chinampas as an Agricultural Heritage System of Global Importance. Despite this, it was long thought that runaway urbanisation spelled the end for the chinampas, with only 3% of the original 5,000 acres still in use for farming. Now, according to research associate Roland Ebel of Montana State University, the historic floating gardens could have a value beyond mere curios for tourists - and even beyond Mexico itself, as the megacities of the future adapt to the triple challenges of soaring populations, scarce land and rising seas.

Floating parcels of arable land

"Today, many cities face very similar challenges as Mexico City did 700 years ago - a rapidly growing population, and less and less arable land available for food production," Ebel says. By 2050, the UN estimates that 68% of the Earth's 10bn-strong population will live in cities. Ebel points to the Rhone River Delta in France, the Elbe in Hamburg and the Gulf of Finland as sites that could benefit from chinampas' combination of sustainability, productivity, carbon capture and minimal resource requirements. "Wherever you have freshwater lakes near a big city, chinampa-like systems are conceivable - and this applies for many parts of the world," he says.

There are reports of chinampas - or "raised fields", as they are known elsewhere - being trialled as far away as Indonesia. But the world's growers have found other, equally ingenious ways to eke productivity out of waterlogged environments. In low-lying Bangladesh, farmers traditionally continue to plant during the monsoon floods by assembling rafts from water hyacinths and aquatic weeds, which they anchor with bamboo rods to stop them floating away. Soil and manure are placed on top of the raft, which can be used to grow tomatoes, aubergines, chillies, spinach, beans and pumpkins in an environment free of fertilisers or pesticides, before the remains of the raft are used as beds for winter crops.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands, the Dutch property company Beladon opened the world's first waterborne dairy farm in August 2018 in the teeming port of Rotterdam. The "Floating Farm" is designed to test whether small-scale dairy farming can flourish in one of Europe's busiest, most urbanised areas, reducing food miles and transport pollution for city consumers.

The split-level facility harvests rainwater on the roof and processes milk and manure on the lower deck, which also houses a visitor gallery and shop. Cows are fed with grass from local playing fields and golf courses, along with waste products from Rotterdam's food industry. They can take regular breaks from sea life on a quayside pasture. As of October 2019, the farm was home to 32 animals producing dairy items for sale on-site and in Lidl stores across the city.

The Floating Farm is a novel way of answering the same dilemma the Aztecs faced 700 years ago in their glittering New World Venice. How do we feed a growing population when land is at a premium? As the Floating Farm's Minke van Wingerden put it: "Seventy percent of the world is water, so why not use the water to produce fresh, healthy food near to the consumers?"

The ideas presented in this article aim to inspire adaptation action - they are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Global Center on Adaptation.

Related blog posts:

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Mexico City revives Aztec 'floating farms' to boost food supply after COVID-19 disruption - Global Center on Adaptation

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Mexico City revives Aztec 'floating farms' to boost food supply after COVID-19 disruption With COVID-19 unsettling supply chains, Mexicans are reviving indigenous farming methods pioneered by their pre-Colombian forebears 700 years ago. I n coronavirus-hit Mexico City, local growers are turning to an ancient Aztec farming technique to meet demand as ordinary supply chains falter.

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In Mexico, indigenous peoples and scientists race to save an iconic Aztec animal

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In Mexico, indigenous peoples and scientists race to save an iconic Aztec animal

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On the Southern edge of Mexico City, on a patch of land surrounded by water, a farmer and a scientist recently inspected rows of small cubes of mud that had sprouted seedlings. They were crouching on a chinampa, an island that appears to float in LakeXochimilco, part of a complex ecosystem where the Aztec Empire once flourished.

The farmer, Dionisio Eslava, expects a good harvest of the mix of crops he planted this year. On this spring day in May of last year, he showed the agricultural scientist, Carlos Sumano, the sowing cubes he created with mud he scooped up from the bottom of canals, a Mesoamerican farming technique called chapín.

"They're just about ready for transplanting," said Eslava, carefully pulling a single cube from the ground and, after a closer look, returning it to its place with other chili pepper plants.

Eslava and Sumano are working together to preserve the region's chinampas, remnants of the branch, and reed rafts that Mesoamerican farmers covered in nutrient-rich lake mud to grow fruits, vegetables, and flowers. They are part of a conservation partnership that is tapping Indigenous agricultural knowledge and scientific expertise to prevent the demise of Xochimilco, an ecosystem of more than 6,000 acres of protected wetlands that provides multiple environmental benefits, including food production, groundwater recharge, and carbon sequestration.

The traditional farmers, known as chinamperos, and scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, also known by its Spanish acronym UNAM, are seeking to encourage sustainable and pesticide-free ancient farming to restore areas degraded by rampant development, pollution, and over-exploitation of groundwater. Though they haven't always seen eye to eye over the years, the farmers and scientists agree that a healthier ecosystem will ensure not only continued food production but also the survival of the remarkable salamander called the axolotl, which is on the brink of extinction.

So far, the project involves some 30 farmers, including Eslava, who rely on ancient agricultural methods that include extracting a mix of rich soil and decaying vegetation from the marshy lakebed to grow crops. Among other things, they are digging narrow canals adjacent to chinampas to act as a refuge for the critically endangered axolotl and other threatened species. Rustic filters made from aquatic plants are placed in the canals to absorb contaminants and increase water transparency.

"We contribute what our ancestors taught us about the richness of the chinampas."

Chinamperos maintain the canals, irrigate crops with cleaner water from restored waterways, and replace pesticides with organic fertilizers. Scientists evaluate species development and changes in water quality. They collect samples of water and soil to test in the laboratory for the presence of bacteria, heavy metals, and other pollutants. When the canals are free of contaminants and have reduced salinity, the water quality is better prepared to sustain the axolotl and other native species. Sumano and his colleagues also hold workshops on organic fertilizers and water and soil quality.

The farmers, meanwhile, provide the project with a wealth of knowledge that has been passed down from generation to generation, Sumano maintains. "We're working with people who know how to get results on their chinampas," he said. "It's not like the institution is here to tell them what needs to be done."

Eslava views the exchange of knowledge as a boon for one of the last vestiges of a centuries-old lake culture facing major threats to its survival. For years, he has worked on his own and with other chinamperos to clean up garbage from the shallow waterways he has navigated in wooden canoes since he was a youngster.

"We contribute what our ancestors taught us about the richness of the chinampas," he said. "Scientists bring resources; they monitor the quality of the water and the nutrients in the soil."

Still, some farmers remain wary of scientists because, over the decades, researchers from various institutions have studied Xochimilco in isolation, neglecting to tap the deep local understanding of chinamperos.

"They didn't want to hear what we had to say, just like the authorities didn't want to hear what we had to say because we are farmers," Eslava said.

When he accepted Sumano's invitation to join the project in 2020, Eslava was already relying on traditional farming methods without pesticides. But he hoped that scientific expertise andresourcescould help expand Xochimilco's sustainable agriculture and improve habitat for the axolotl, or ajolote, and other native species like the freshwater crayfish acocil and the minnow-sized charal.

Eslava said he believes more farmers, as well as more people in the region, are coming to realize the importance of preserving Xochimilco (pronounced so-chee-meel-koh) and its biodiversity.

"If we all do our part," he added, "we can leave something much better here for future generations."

Xochimilco is an UNESCO world heritage site. Simon McGill/Moment/Getty Images

Despite the environmental pressures, the ecosystem remains a striking green space on the southern shore of Lake Xochimilco. Though it's technically part of a metropolitan area of 21 million people, it retains a tranquil atmosphere. Rows of its most emblematic tree - the ahuejote, or willow - border chinampas in showy formation, its intertwined roots anchoring the plots. Xochimilco's name in the Nahuatl language, "field of flowers," is reflected in a landscape bursting with flowers like purple bougainvilleas and yellow floripondios, or angel trumpets, and rich with birds like white pelicans and egrets.

Xochimilco, which UNESCO recognized as a World Heritage site in 1987, was once part of a vast network of lakes and canals that stretched through the Valley of Mexico, wherevarious Nahuatl-speaking Indigenous communities thrived long before Spanish colonizers arrived in the 16th century. The Spanish eventually drained the waterways as a new city replaced the conquered Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, and urbanization over the centuries has further degraded the chinampas, despite multiple efforts to protect the area.

As the deterioration has worsened, concern has grown over the fate of the axolotl, which has profound cultural significance in Mexico as a symbol of the country's pre-Hispanic history. A grinning image of the creature in the waters of Xochimilco graces Mexico's new 50-peso bill.

Luis Zambrano, a biologist at UNAM who oversees the chinampas project with the farmers, arrived in Xochimilco in the early 2000s to research the axolotl or Ambystoma mexicanum. Researchers have long studied the small salamander's extraordinary regenerative abilities in hopes of uncovering biological secrets that could one day help renew human tissue. The axolotl, which retains its juvenile characteristics throughout its life cycle, can grow new limbs and other missing organs.

When Zambrano began to study the animal, with its unusual flat head and crown-like gills, it was under siege in the canals where it had lived for centuries. Poor water quality and invasive carp and tilapia were introduced in the 1970s and '80s to promote fishing, devour axolotl eggs, and feed on the insects, small fish, and crustaceans crucial for the salamander's survival.

Wild axolotl sightings are rare, but Zambrano says a survey of the population is pending. The last count conducted by the university in 2014 estimated the presence of axolotls at 36 per square kilometer or about .386 square miles. A survey conducted by the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) in 1998 put that number at 6,000 per square kilometer.

The race is on to save the axolotl, which is critically endangered. picture alliance/picture alliance/Getty Images

Zambrano's initial research has gradually expanded to include exploring the mutually beneficial union of salamander and chinampa. In 2017, his team received about 7 million pesos, or more than $370,000, for the project. The federal funding, made available for UNESCO-designated sites, kicked the project into high gear. In later years, Zambrano said, the funds decreased to 5 million pesos - including a portion provided by the local government.

The waterways of Mexico are the only natural habitat of the axolotl - "water monster" in Nahuatl - although the amphibian is abundant in captivity and a popular pet in various corners of the world. But Zambrano says that differences between wild and captive-bred creatures are considerable because captive axolotls experience losses in physiological and behavioral capabilities.

While Zambrano's original idea was for surviving axolotls to wiggle on their own into the restored canals or refuges, researchers are also looking into the possibility of introducing captive-bred creatures to these spaces themselves. Before that can be done, however, Zambrano said they need more information about the salamanders' genetics and reproductive capabilities, among other things. It's known that farmers sometimes release axolotls into canals after raising them in aquariums, but the researchers say this is generally frowned upon due to environmental regulations.

"The quality of the water is reduced a lot when you put in pesticides and fertilizers because they kill everything, including the axolotl."

If the axolotl goes extinct in the wild, it would be a tremendous loss to Mexico and the world, he said.

"It's not only one of the most researched species in terms of genetics, but it's an animal that's closely connected to our Mexican culture."

In Aztec mythology, the creature is the last incarnation of Xólotl, the god of fire, whotransformed himselfseveral timesafter refusing to die in sacrifice for the launch of the fifth cycle of creation. It's a story passed down among generations, and Eslava knows it well. "When Xólotl was discovered, he was condemned to stay a salamander forever and was told that when his body of water was no longer useful, he and the human race would disappear," he explained.

The ancient tale seems particularly relevant nowadays; Eslava maintains: "We are experiencing enormous pollution worldwide, and many species are becoming extinct. Here in Xochimilco, we are putting a lot of pressure on the axolotl area and the water that's so important to us."

On another spring day, Eslava paddled in the shallow waters of Xochimilco toward the chinampa where he grows his crops. Although he was away for years when he worked for the government and when he retired, he returned to his childhood home some years ago to find another Xochimilco. Houses had replaced vegetables in chinampas; plastic bags of trash piled high in the waterways and treated water flowed in canals once awash with natural spring water.

As Mexico City's population has grown, intensive water pumping has depleted much of the underground sources that are used to feed the maze of canals. They now get treated wastewater from nearby plants, which has contributed to the decay of waterways and chinampas.

"Things were different when I was growing up," Eslava said. "It was cleaner; there was no plastic at all. The scent of flowers was intense in the morning, and there were still many beautiful chinampas and canals."

Many farmers have abandoned their chinampas, either because they're not interested in farming or because they can't make a living at it. Some rent out their plots, and instead of growing crops, tenants build houses or turn them into soccer fields or other unauthorized sites.

Meanwhile, crowds of visitors roam the waters of Xochimilco in colorful, flat-bottomed boats called trajineras, injecting money into the local economy but also straining the ecosystem.

Eslava was already involved in clean-up projects and restoration efforts with other Xochimilco residents when Carlos Sumano came calling in 2020. He relished the idea of the project because the university's sponsorship would help provide funding and resources to assist chinamperos in reactivating dormant chinampa agriculture.

Axolotls can regenerate their limbs and other missing organs. Paul Starosta/Stone/Getty Images

"All the fertilizer we need is down there in the water," he said. "All the vegetation that disintegrates there is very rich material; it's what our ancestors used. That's why chinampa farming was so rich. There was an enormous diversity of crops, and everything was done using traditional methods like mud and native seeds."

Those traditions had gradually succumbed to new agricultural practices that were ushered in starting in the 1940s with the promise of greater yields.

"The 'green revolution' was this vision of increasing agricultural productivity as fast as possible, as best as possible, and that's when the use of pesticides and fertilizers started to grow,'" Zambrano said. "But the quality of the water is reduced a lot when you put in pesticides and fertilizers because they kill everything, including the axolotl."

Narciso Alvarado is another chinampero who has stopped using pesticides and is participating in the project. He spends most of his days tending to such crops as cauliflower, onions, and radishes in his chinampa. The idea of being able to sell his crops at a fair price with validation from the university while helping to restore the ecosystem appealed to him.

"I've been farming for a long time, and I want to keep doing it here, in Xochimilco," he said in a recent interview. "I don't want chinampas to disappear."

Neither does Eslava, who spends much of his time improving plots. He and Sumano recently brought six very young axolotls bred in aquariums to a narrow, restored canal. The minuscule creatures, which resembled tadpoles, wiggled out of a bucket and into the water. Sumano explained that the axolotls were placed there to be monitored for a few days, after which Eslava took them back out.

Zambrano believes the project has already started to reap benefits, like healthy species in some canals and growing interest in reactivating abandoned chinampas, though he notes that ambitious restoration projects such as this one take time and effort.

But "reactivating chinampas, restoring Xochimilco, implies improvement of biodiversity, improvement of the city's water management, improvement of microhabitat changes," he said. "It implies more resiliency in terms of climate change and conservation of an iconic species like the axolotl, as well as a significant increase in local food production."
Lourdes Medrano is an independent, bilingual journalist based in southern Arizona who can often be found unraveling stories south of the U.S.-Mexico border. This article was originally published on by Lourdes Medrano. Read the original article here.

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In Mexico, indigenous peoples and scientists race to save an iconic Aztec animal

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On the Southern edge of Mexico City, on a patch of land surrounded by water, a farmer and a scientist recently inspected rows of small cubes of mud that had sprouted seedlings. They were crouching on a chinampa, an island that appears to float in LakeXochimilco, part of a complex ecosystem where the Aztec Empire once flourished.

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Mexican Farmers and Scientists Share a Mission: Saving a Wetland

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Mexican Farmers and Scientists Share a Mission: Saving a Wetland

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O n the southern edge of Mexico City, on a patch of land surrounded by water, a farmer and a scientist recently inspected rows of small cubes of mud that had sprouted seedlings. They were crouching on a chinampa, an island that appears to float in LakeXochimilco, part of a complex ecosystem where the Aztec Empire once flourished.

The farmer, Dionisio Eslava, expects a good harvest of the mix of crops he planted this year. On this spring day in May of last year, he showed the agricultural scientist, Carlos Sumano, the sowing cubes he created with mud he scooped up from the bottom of canals, a Mesoamerican farming technique called chapín. "They're just about ready for transplanting," said Eslava, carefully pulling a single cube from the ground and, after a closer look, returning it to its place with other chili pepper plants.

Eslava and Sumano are working together to preserve the region's chinampas, remnants of the branch and reed rafts that Mesoamerican farmers covered in nutrient-rich lake mud to grow fruits, vegetables, and flowers. They are part of a conservation partnership that is tapping Indigenous agricultural knowledge and scientific expertise to prevent the demise of Xochimilco, an ecosystem of more than 6,000 acres of protected wetlands that provides multiple environmental benefits, including food production, groundwater recharge, and carbon sequestration.

The traditional farmers, known as chinamperos, and scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, also known by its Spanish acronym UNAM, are seeking to encourage sustainable and pesticide-free ancient farming to restore areas degraded by rampant development, pollution, and over-exploitation of groundwater. Though they haven't always seen eye to eye over the years, the farmers and scientists agree that a healthier ecosystem will not only ensure continued food production but also the survival of the remarkable salamander called the axolotl, which is on the brink of extinction.

So far, the project involves some 30 farmers, including Eslava, who rely on ancient agricultural methods that include extracting a mix of rich soil and decaying vegetation from the marshy lakebed to grow crops. Among other things, they are digging narrow canals adjacent to chinampas to act as a refuge for the critically endangered axolotl and other threatened species. Rustic filters made from aquatic plants are placed in the canals to absorb contaminants and increase water transparency.

Chinamperos maintain the canals, irrigate crops with cleaner water from restored waterways, and replace pesticides with organic fertilizers. Scientists evaluate species development and changes in water quality. They collect samples of water and soil to test in the laboratory for the presence of bacteria, heavy metals, and other pollutants. When the canals are free of contaminants and have reduced salinity, the water quality is better prepared to sustain the axolotl and other native species. Sumano and his colleagues also hold workshops on organic fertilizers and water and soil quality.

The farmers, meanwhile, provide the project with a wealth of knowledge that has been passed down from generation to generation, Sumano maintains. "We're working with people who know how to get results on their chinampas," he said. "It's not like the institution is here to tell them what needs to be done."

Eslava views the exchange of knowledge as a boon for one of the last vestiges of a centuries-old lake culture facing major threats to its survival. For years, he has worked on his own and with other chinamperos to clean up garbage from the shallow waterways he has navigated in wooden canoes since he was a youngster. "We contribute what our ancestors taught us about the richness of the chinampas," he said. "Scientists bring resources, they monitor the quality of the water and the nutrients in the soil."

Still, some farmers remain wary of scientists because over the decades researchers from various institutions have studied Xochimilco in isolation, neglecting to tap the deep local understanding of chinamperos. "They didn't want to hear what we had to say, just like the authorities didn't want to hear what we had to say, because we are farmers," Eslava said.

When he accepted Sumano's invitation to join the project in 2020, Eslava was already relying on traditional farming methods without pesticides. But he hoped that scientific expertise andresourcescould help expand Xochimilco's sustainable agriculture and improve habitat for the axolotl, or ajolote, and other native species like the freshwater crayfish acocil and the minnow-sized charal.

Eslava said he believes more farmers, as well as more people in the region, are coming to realize the importance of preserving Xochimilco (pronounced so-chee-meel-koh) and its biodiversity. "If we all do our part," he added, "we can leave something much better here for future generations."

D espite the environmental pressures, the ecosystem remains a striking green space on the southern shore of Lake Xochimilco. Though it's technically part of a metropolitan area of 21 million people, it retains a tranquil atmosphere. Rows of its most emblematic tree - the ahuejote, or willow - border chinampas in showy formation, its intertwined roots anchoring the plots. Xochimilco's name in the Nahuatl language, "field of flowers," is reflected in a landscape bursting with flowers like purple bougainvilleas and yellow floripondios, or angel trumpets, and rich with birds like white pelicans and egrets.

Xochimilco, which UNESCO recognized as a World Heritage site in 1987, was once part of a vast network of lakes and canals that stretched through the Valley of Mexico, wherevarious Nahuatl-speaking Indigenous communities thrived long before Spanish colonizers arrived in the 16th century. The Spanish eventually drained the waterways as a new city replaced the conquered Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, and urbanization over the centuries has further degraded the chinampas, despite multiple efforts to protect the area.

As the deterioration has worsened, concern has grown over the fate of the axolotl, which has profound cultural significance in Mexico as a symbol of the country's pre-Hispanic history. A grinning image of the creature in the waters of Xochimilco graces Mexico's new 50-peso bill.

Luis Zambrano, a biologist at UNAM who oversees the chinampas project with the farmers, arrived in Xochimilco in the early 2000s to research the axolotl, or Ambystoma mexicanum. Researchers have long studied the small salamander's extraordinary regenerative abilities in hopes of uncovering biological secrets that could one day help renew human tissue. The axolotl, which retains its juvenile characteristics throughout its life cycle, can grow new limbs and other missing organs.

When Zambrano began to study the animal, with its unusual flat head and crown-like gills, it was under siege in the canals where it had lived for centuries. Poor water quality and invasive carp and tilapia introduced in the 1970s and '80s to promote fishing devour axoltl eggs and feed on the insects, small fish, and crustaceans crucial for the salamander's survival.

Wild axolotl sightings are rare, but Zambrano says a survey of the population is pending. The last count conducted by the university, in 2014, estimated the presence of axolotls at 36 per square kilometer, or about .386 square miles. A survey conducted by the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) in 1998 put that number at 6,000 per square kilometer.

Zambrano's initial research has gradually expanded to include exploring the mutually beneficial union of salamander and chinampa. In 2017, his team received about 7 million pesos, or more than $370,000, for the project. The federal funding, made available for UNESCO designated sites, kicked the project into high gear. In later years, Zambrano said, the funds decreased to 5 million pesos - including a portion provided by the local government.

The waterways of Mexico are the only natural habitat of the axolotl - "water monster" in Nahuatl - although the amphibian is abundant in captivity and a popular pet in various corners of the world. But Zambrano says that differences between wild and captive-bred creatures are considerable because captive axolotls experience losses in physiological and behavioral capabilities.

While Zambrano's original idea was for surviving axolotls to wiggle on their own into the restored canals or refuges, researchers are also looking into the possibility of introducing captive-bred creatures to these spaces themselves. Before that can be done, however, Zambrano said they need more information about the salamanders' genetics and reproductive capabilities, among other things. It's known that farmers sometimes release axolotls into canals after raising them in aquariums, but the researchers say this is generally frowned upon due to environmental regulations.

If the axolotl goes extinct in the wild, it would be a tremendous loss to Mexico and the world, he said. "It's not only one of the most researched species in terms of genetics, but it's an animal that's closely connected to our Mexican culture."

In Aztec mythology, the creature is the last incarnation of Xólotl, the god of fire, whotransformed himselfseveral timesafter refusing to die in sacrifice for the launch of a fifth cycle of creation. It's a story passed down among generations, and Eslava knows it well. "When Xólotl was discovered, he was condemned to stay a salamander forever, and was told that when his body of water was no longer useful, he and the human race would disappear," he explained.

The ancient tale seems particularly relevant nowadays, Eslava maintains: "We are experiencing enormous pollution worldwide and many species are becoming extinct. Here in Xochimilco, we are putting a lot of pressure on the axolotl area and the water that's so important to us."

O n another spring day, Eslava paddled in the shallow waters of Xochimilco toward the chinampa where he grows his crops. Although he was away for years when he worked for the government and when he retired, he returned to his childhood home some years ago to find another Xochimilco. Houses had replaced vegetables in chinampas; plastic bags of trash piled high in the waterways; and treated water flowed in canals once awash with natural spring water.

As Mexico City's population has grown, intensive water pumping has depleted much of the underground sources that used to feed the maze of canals. They now get treated wastewater from nearby plants, which has contributed to the decay of waterways and chinampas. "Things were different when I was growing up," Eslava said. "It was cleaner, there was no plastic at all. The scent of flowers was intense in the morning, and there were still many beautiful chinampas and canals."

Many farmers have abandoned their chinampas, either because they're not interested in farming or because they can't make a living at it. Some rent out their plots and, instead of growing crops, tenants build houses or turn them into soccer fields or other unauthorized sites.

Meanwhile, crowds of visitors roam the waters of Xochimilco in colorful, flat-bottomed boats called trajineras, injecting money into the local economy but also straining the ecosystem.

Eslava was already involved in clean-up projects and restoration efforts with other Xochimilco residents when Carlos Sumano came calling in 2020. He relished the idea of the project because the university's sponsorship would help provide funding and resources to assist chinamperos to reactivate dormant chinampa agriculture.

"All the fertilizer we need is down there in the water," he said. "All the vegetation that disintegrates there is a very rich material, it's what our ancestors used. That's why chinampa farming was so rich. There was an enormous diversity of crops and everything was done using traditional methods like mud and native seeds."

Those traditions had gradually succumbed to new agricultural practices that were ushered in starting in the 1940s with the promise of greater yields. "The 'green revolution' was this vision of increasing agricultural productivity as fast as possible, as best as possible, and that's when the use of pesticides and fertilizers started to grow,'" Zambrano said. "But the quality of the water is reduced a lot when you put in pesticides and fertilizers, because they kill everything, including the axolotl."

Narciso Alvarado is another chinampero who has stopped using pesticides and is participating in the project. He spends most of his days tending to such crops as cauliflower, onions, and radishes in his chinampa. The idea of being able to sell his crops at a fair price with validation from the university, while helping to restore the ecosystem, appealed to him. "I've been farming for a long time, and I want to keep doing it here, in Xochimilco," he said in a recent interview. "I don't want chinampas to disappear."

Neither does Eslava, who spends much of his time improving plots. He and Sumano recently brought six very young axolotls bred in aquariums to a narrow, restored canal. The minuscule creatures, which resembled tadpoles, wiggled out of a bucket and into the water. Sumano explained that the axolotls were placed there to be monitored for a few days, after which Eslava took them back out.

Zambrano believes the project has already started to reap benefits, like healthy species in some canals and growing interest in reactivating abandoned chinampas, though he notes that ambitious restoration projects such as this one take time and effort. But "reactivating chinampas, restoring Xochimilco, implies improvement of biodiversity, improvement of the city's water management, improvement of microhabitat changes," he said. "It implies more resiliency in terms of climate change and conservation of an iconic species like the axolotl, as well as a significant increase in local food production."
Lourdes Medrano is an independent, bilingual journalist based in southern Arizona who can often be found unraveling stories south of the U.S.-Mexico border.

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Mexican Farmers and Scientists Share a Mission: Saving a Wetland

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O n the southern edge of Mexico City, on a patch of land surrounded by water, a farmer and a scientist recently inspected rows of small cubes of mud that had sprouted seedlings. They were crouching on a chinampa, an island that appears to float in LakeXochimilco, part of a complex ecosystem where the Aztec Empire once flourished.

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New Mexicans won’t be fooled: “New water” = toxic radioactive frackwaste

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New Mexicans won’t be fooled: “New water” = toxic radioactive frackwaste

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New Mexicans won’t be fooled: “New water” = toxic radioactive frackwaste

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Clean water and communities advocates host Rio Grande presser in response to “New Water” conference; efforts to sacrifice rivers, crops, and health for frackwaste management.