Eduardo González
The Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB) and the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture (OEI) have made public their activities in defense of indigenous languages in Latin America on the occasion of International Mother Language Day, celebrated this past Wednesday, February 21.
In a press release, the AECID has reported on a series of initiatives that it carries out for “the recognition, visibility and promotion of the different indigenous languages” through the different centers of the Network of Cultural Centers of Spanish Cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean and the cooperation projects of the Agency’s Heritage for Development program.
In Panama, the Agency finances the adaptation of the program and materials of the official Panamanian educational system to the language of the Guna Yala people, through a program of successive phases, which includes the creation of textbooks and teacher training in the Kuna language.
In Mexico, the AECID supports the Indigenous Languages Project in Chiapas, promoted jointly by the Cultural Center of Spain and the Indigenous Program and which contributes to improving the right of access to justice for indigenous people. This is a pioneering project aimed at training legal interpreters and translators, as well as translating legal terminology into five of the indigenous languages of Chiapas.
In El Salvador, the Project for Strengthening and Visibility of the Nahuatl Language, carried out by the AECID Cultural Center in San Salvador and the Indigenous Program, has supported, since 2022, the revitalization of the Nahuat culture and language through the strengthening of communities, speakers, the preservation and registration of the language and the dissemination of the Nahuat cultural heritage.
In Honduras, the Agency supports the project to update the Honduran Language Portal. Additionally, the Cultural Center of Spain in Tegucigalpa, along with other institutions, has collaborated since 2013 in the study, dissemination and promotion of the country’s indigenous languages. Furthermore, in 2024 the Peoples of Honduras project initiative will be launched, aimed at the revitalization, registration and visibility of the languages and cultures of the peoples of Honduras. Finally, in Peru, the AECID supports local partners for the bilingual training of teachers who teach in the languages of different indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon.
SEGIB
On the other hand, the SEGIB reported last week on the 16 projects it is promoting to “preserve, make visible and promote” the use of the languages of the region’s native peoples. The projects, promoted by IberCultura Viva and Ibermemoria Sonora, Fotografia y Audiovisual – the cultural cooperation programs promoted by the SEGIB – were selected within the framework of the Cenzontle call: a window for the native languages of Ibero-America, endowed with 16,500 dollars, and were presented on February 21 and 22 in a virtual forum on the occasion of International Mother Language Day, celebrated this past Wednesday.
The initiatives come from ten countries (Mexico, Panama, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Colombia, Argentina, Costa Rica, Paraguay and Ecuador) and are aimed at processes of conservation, registration, research, dissemination, education, management or valuation of languages originating from Latin America.
Among the chosen projects is a Mexican initiative that seeks to incorporate the gender perspective in indigenous Tojolabal, Tseltal and Tsotsil languages by creating and integrating terms such as “equity”, “feminism” or “stereotype” into its vocabulary. Another proposal promotes a dictionary to strengthen and revitalize the native languages of Peru, while, from Chile, a community promotes a Mapuche sound archive.
Another formula for language preservation is to create school materials to teach Costa Rican boys and girls the Bruncáic language both at school and at home. For its part, the Ñujnusinango Yocuu Bajade/Recovering the Ancestral Voices project seeks to recover the voices and oral memory of the Ayoreo elders of the Paraguayan Chaco mountains.
Audiovisual and graphic resources are Comarca‘s tool for learning the Woun-meu language, in Panama. Yaju Mama or mother water, from Ecuador, another of the 16 projects, rescues that knowledge by uniting adults and children in the preparation of a bilingual Kichwa and Spanish digital book made by the minors of the community.
OEI
Lastly, the OEI launched last Wednesday the report Indigenous languages in the digital world. Inventory of resources and shortcomings, which includes an x-ray of the state of digitalization of indigenous Ibero-American languages, as well as the collection of digital resources available to them and their presence in the global internet ecosystem.
The work, led by the General Directorate of Multilingualism and Promotion of Portuguese and Spanish Languages of the OEI, came to light on February 21 on the occasion of the International Mother Language Day, “a date that invites us to value diversity world linguistics and that vindicates the need to preserve and promote the digitalization of indigenous languages, which in Ibero-America number around 800, according to figures from Etnologue,” indicated the organization, whose headquarters, as in the case of the SEGIB, is located in Madrid.
The countries with the most resources for their indigenous languages, according to the report, are Mexico (1,900), Brazil (1,200), Peru (586), Colombia (498), Guatemala (279) and Paraguay (180), which reflects a situation very disparate between countries, languages and number of speakers, if one takes into account that only the languages of Mexico have more digital resources than languages such as Quechua or Guaraní, the two with the largest number of speakers in the region. In that sense, Zapotec and Mixtec, from Mexico, are the two languages with the greatest number of resources, accounting for more than 10% of the total inventory.
In Brazil and Colombia, the high number of resources found corresponds to the high number of languages spoken, but not necessarily due to their usefulness for their speakers. In Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala and Paraguay, for their part, a significant number of resources of sites and applications of interest have been found, although in a restricted number.
Regarding the origin of the resources, the report points out that the majority come from the academic field (40%), followed by those created by associations (27.2%), community initiatives (12.7%) and personal (11.30 %), as well as public entities (5.45%) and companies (2.9%) as creators, animators or disseminators of the resources. Likewise, the report indicates that only twelve Ibero-American indigenous languages (Quechua, Guaraní, Mayan, Aymara, Nahuatl, Bribri, K’iche’, Nhengatu, Totonaco, Otomí, Triqui and Kaqchikel) have a presence in the major search engines or language applications of massive use on the internet such as Google, Bing, Duolingo, Aikumi or Wikipedia.
