Nora c. England

8/14/2019 Nora c. England

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NORA C. ENGLAND

Mayan Language Revival and RevitalizationPolitics: Linguists and Linguistic IdeologiesAB ST RA CT Alth ou gh spoken by a relatively large pop ulation , Mayan languages show signs of language shift and loss because thechi ldren in some of the speech commu nit ies are no longer learning the languag e. At the same time , Mayas are part icipating in a move-ment of cultural rea ff irmatio n, a principle focus of which is language. Maya l inguists are central in form ula ting and reshaping languageideologies to furthe r the goals of revitaliza tion, and they play a sign ificant role in cultura l/l inguis tic activism . This article shows the ex-tent ofthe contr ibut ion of l inguistics to Mayan language vitality through an analysis of language ideologies and how they have beenreform ulate d by Maya linguists, and by a review of an appa rently successful attem pt at reversing languag e loss th at has arisen th ro ug han integrated community-based program ofcultural revitalization that centers, to a large extent, on language and makes specific useof l inguist ics. [Keywords: language shift , language ideologies, language re vital ization, Mayan languages, Maya mo vem ent]

THE MAYAN LANGUAGES ARE A FAMILY of ap-proximately thirty languages, all descended from acommon ancestral language that was spoken more than4,000 years ago. They are currently spoken by about fivemillion people inGuatemala, Mexico, Belize, and Hondu-ras. The family is, compared tomost other American lan-guage families, quite robust, both interms of the numberof speakers and the vitality of the languages that compriseit. However, all of the languages in this family show signsof language loss, principally because of the fact that chil-dren in at least some of the communities inwhich eachlanguage is spoken are no longer learning the language.Several of the languages are quite small and seem to be inthe last stages of language disappearance or "death," asthey are replaced by Spanish. For example, Mocho', whichis spoken in Mexico, has fewer than 150 speakers; Itzaj,which is spoken inGuatemala, is estimated to have thirtyfluent speakers. Moreover, in both cases, the only remain-ing speakers are elderly. Other languages are quite large:K'ichee' and Yukatek Maya have close to a million speak-ers each; Mam, Kaqchikel, and Q'eqchi' are estimated tohave between a half-million and a million speakers; andQ'anjob'al is estimated to have 100,000 speakers (Richards2003:44-88). But even in the larger speech communities,some children are not learning the languagew hich is thebeginning of language death.

Furthermore, the number of people who are fluent inboth a Mayan language and Spanish has grown enor-mously in the last 25years, surely as a result of th e in-

creasing interconnectedness that is one of the conse-quences of what is known as "globalization." In manycases, this bilingualism seems to be the first step towardlanguage loss. According to the latest estimates (Richards2003:44-88), if the Maya population ofGuatemala is esti-mated to be around half of the total population, then only50-60 percent are actually speakers of the Mayan lan-guages. In add ition, literacy am ong Mayas is increasing, asit is in the entire country1 but varies widely between 15percent insome areas and 92 percent inothers (Richards2003:129). What is especially telling, however, is that lit-eracy in Mayan communities is inversely related to lan-guage retention. Those townships with thehighest liter-acy have suffered the greatest language loss, while thosewith the lowest literacy have suffered the least languageloss (Richards 2003:128-129). Thus, both the precondi-t ions and the conditions for language loss are readily ob-servable in Mayan communities.

At the same time that these conditions are becomingapparent, however, Guatemalan Mayas are engaged in asignificant movement of cultural reaffirmation (Bastos andCamus 1995, 1996; Cojti Cuxil 1997; Fischer andBrown1996; Warren 1998) inwhich language is a central theme(Brown 1996; England 1996, 1998; Maxwell 1996; Ro-driguez Guajan 1996) and that may be addressing issues oflanguage loss prevention. The fact that Mayas have takenlanguage tobe the first and most important focus for cul-tural activism has meant that: (1) language has receivedattention since the emergence in the mid-1980s of what is

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 105(4):733-743. COPYRIGHT 2003, AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION


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734 American An thro polo gist Vo l. 105, No. 4 December 2003generally called the "Maya movement"; (2) linguists andlinguistics have played an important role in cultural revi-talization; (3) a significant group of Maya linguists (lin-guists who are native speakers of a Mayan language) hasbeen established; (4) Maya linguists have contribute d bothtechnical expertise and language ideological positions tothe Maya movement; and (5) some reversal of languageloss may have taken place as part of an integrated programof cultural revitalization.The principal actors in the Maya movement and inlanguage revitalization are Mayas from different languagegroups who, by and large, have received a fair amount offormal education. Most have completed secondary school,and an increasingly large proportion have attended a uni-versity. Although the majority are the children of ordinarysubsistence farmers, they have, through one means or an-other, broken out of that mold through education andmay not themselves be farmers at all. Some, of course,come from families who either became part of a tiny Mayamiddle class in previous generations or were so land poorthat they engaged in economic activities other than sub-sistence farming (e.g., agricultural labor, petty commercialenterprises). However, the most common pattern is thatthey grew up in rural villages or rural town centers infarming families. It is probably the case that most of themwere not from the poorest of such families, or their par-ents would not have been able to spare their labor longenough for them to complete school. From among theseindividuals, who number in the thousands, several hun-dred have received some education or training in linguis-tics. These include over 100 trained in the ProyectoLinguistico Francisco Marroquin (PLFM); over 50 trainedby Oxlajuuj Keej M aya ' Ajtz'iib' (OKMA) (NGOs ded icatedto linguistic research); several hundred who have studiedin the licenciatiira programs in linguistics in the Universi-dad Rafael Landivar or the Universidad Mariano Galvez(private universities); and several hundred more who havereceived some training from, and worked for, either the Bi-lingual Education arm of the Ministry of Education, or theAcademia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (state institu-tions). There is, of course, some overlap in several of thesecategories.

The Maya movement in Guatemala has long antece-dents but emerged as a small but quite vocal force after thecivil war of the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is separatefrom, but overlapping and in some respects convergingwith, the popular political movement, which includesboth Mayas and non-Mayas and has much greater politicalpresence and force. The Maya movement, however, hastaken the lead in speaking to specific ethnic issues, such aslanguage rights. It has no formal political representation,such as a political party or congressional delegates electedon a Maya movement platform, but current leaders of themovement (200.3) occupy several key politically appointedpositions, including the minister of culture, a vice minis-ter of culture, a vice minister of education, a vice ministerof agriculture, and the director of bilingual education. The

fact that the Maya movement emerged after the civil waras a "cultural" rather than specifically "political" move-ment can be linked to the severe repression that politicalleaders suffered during th e war. By con cen trating their e n-ergies on the seemingly more benign cultural aspects ofpolitical action, groups and leaders were able to escape re-pressive notice at first. "Culture," in the eyes of the mili-tary and other national political figures, was akin to "folk-lore" and, therefore, not the threat that the organizationof political parties or unions would have represented. Thefact that a movement for cultural revitalization and recog-nition was in essence a political movement became appar-ent only gradually, and the fact that the movement hadlittle power for political mobilization (unlike the popularpolitical movement) continued to protect its leaders fromrepression.The Maya movement is beginning to have influencein the national political arena and has been noticeably in-fluential in all levels of civil society below the very top. Inspite of the facts that the Maya movement's formal politi-cal influence is weak, that its con nec tion to a popular baseis weak, and that it is viewed by many Mayas as politicallyineffective, the ideas that are generated by Maya intellec-tual leaders have become quite generalized among theMaya population. Such ideas include a revalorization ofMaya culture and language, a demand for public educa-tion that better serves Mayan communities and takes in-digenous languages into account, access to public servicesin local languages, access to more equitable economic andpolitical opportunities, and notions of political autonomythat are still fairly unspecific and undeveloped. Severalideas that emerged from the Maya movement have hadsignificant influence on the more formally organizedpopular movement. For instance, the part of the 1996Peace Accords between the government of Guatemala andthe coalition of guerilla forces that deals with indigenousrights is taken in large part, including some of the specificwording of the legislation, from an earlier publication byDemetrio Cojti Cuxil (1994), widely regarded as the prin-cipal intellectual voice of the Maya movement. Many ofthe Maya movement ideas, with significant popular sup-port among Mayas, are becoming de facto operating prin-ciples for governmental agencies, or at least are beingtaken into consideration. With regard to language, theidea of officializing or co-officializing Mayan languageswas introduced in the 1996 Peace Accords but was turneddown in 1999 in the referendum on constitutionalchanges designed to fulfill the Peace Accords. However, asrecently as May 2003, Congress passed the "Law of Na-tional Languages" that, while stating that Spanish is theofficial language of Guatemala, at the same time recog-nizes indigenous languages as essential parts of nationalidentity which must be promoted. This law 2 also recog-nizes the right of all people to receive public services intheir own languages. This is a considerable change fromthe Guatemalan Consti tution, which only recognizes in-digenous languages as a part of the "nationa l patrim ony ."


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England Mayan Language Revival and Re vitaliza tion Politics 735The non-Maya population has also responded to ideasthat come from the Maya movement (many of whichhave been hotly debated in opinion page columns in sev-eral different national newspapers). The segment of theGuatemalan society that has responded the least to theseideas has been the real political and economic power cen-

ter, still in the hands of a very small percentage of thepopulation. In general, however, the Maya movement,with significant support from international groups, hasbeen quite effective in forcing national society to recog-nize the Maya population of Guatemala as part of that so-ciety, rather than, as in the past, ignoring it entirely or atbest considering it to be a "problem" that must be re-solved.Mayan languages are still actively spoken by the ma-jority of people in most of the Mayan communities inGuatemala (by 51-100 percent of the population of 61percent of the townships with indigenous population

[Richards 2003:99-106]). They are widely considered to bethe single most im portant symbol of Mayan identity, bothbecause they are still spoken by a majority of the popula-tion and because they are unequivocally "authentic."They are furthermore the principle means through whichMayan worldview and cultural practices are transmitted.As a consequence, in the initial stages of recent cultural re-vitalization, Maya leaders often remarked that the firstthing to concentrate on was language; after that it wouldbe possible to pay attention to other things. Similarly,many Mayas find it difficult to conceive of people who areMaya but do not speak the language (despite the fact thatmore and more children are not speakers of a Mayan lan-guage). In some communities children who do not speakthe language are regarded as anomalies: They are not quiteMaya but not quite Ladino (non-Maya) either. Adults whodo not speak a Mayan language are frequently charac-terized by other Mayas as "half-Ladino," "becoming Lad-ino," or as people who, somewhat vaguely, "have otherideas"which is to say, they are "not one of us." Theseevaluations, like all evaluations of identity, are fluid andsituational. Identity as either Maya or Ladino is stilllargely clear to all actors, and the inability to speak a Ma-yan language does not invalidate membership in a Mayancommunity. Rather, the inability to speak results in moreambiguity in the identity of members of a Mayan commu-nity from a community-internal perspective, and the rec-ognition that heterogeneity is increasing with regard tolanguage ability and choices. However, the evaluationsthat distinguish between Maya and Ladino suggest thatmany Mayas disdain people who no longer speak the Ma-yan languages, despite the fact that the practice of speak-ing a Mayan language is decreasing in many communities.

Mayas have taken a number of actions that are in-tended, in part, to address the problem of language statusand language shift. These include: (1) the establishm ent ofthe Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala as anautonomous state institution directed by Mayas; (2) theAcademia's establishment of linguistic communities corre-

sponding to the 21 Guatemalan Mayan languages; (3) thefounding of several NGOs that are devoted to linguistic re-search by Mayas; (4) the establishment of at least onefoundation to address community language promotion;(5) the incrementing of the numbers of Mayas who are in-volved in the Ministry of Education bilingual educationprograms; (6) the establishment of private "Maya schools"that are intended to deliver appropriate education forMaya children in response to deficits in the national edu-cational system; (7) the organization of nongovernmentalassociations to support those schools; and (8) the estab-lishmen t of several Maya presses that p rom ote pub licationin and about Mayan languages as well as other issues ofconcern. Many of these initiatives have included linguistsand linguistics.

The prominence of Mayas with some preparation inlinguistics in m any of these institution s is because, in part,of the establishment of the PLFM as an NGO dedicated tolinguistic research in 1971 (under the linguistic supervi-sion of Terrence Kaufman) and the later establishment ofOKMA, also dedicated to linguistic research, in 1990 (un-der my linguistic supervision). Both Martin Chacach, whowas the technical director and later the general director ofthe PLFM, and his predecessor as general director, NarcisoCojti Cuxil, can be credited with considerable vision re-garding the role of linguistics and Mayan languages in theMaya movement. Cojti Cuxil was instrumental in theearly work toward establishing the Academia de LenguasMayas de Guatemala, and Chacach was instrumental inextending the training role of the PLFM. The originalmembers of OKMA received their first courses in linguis-tics at the PLFM. Since its establishment, OKMA has pro-duced highly sophisticated basic linguistic materials, prin-cipally gramm ars of several different kinds and hasco ntinu ed the trainin g role first assumed by the PLFM. Sev-eral members of OKMA have extended that role to the uni-versity programs in linguistics, where they have beenteachers for a number of years.

The importance that language has assumed in theMaya movement is largely a reflection of its importance inMayan life and communities. However, that Mayas wereprepared intellectually to give immediate attention to lan-guage stems from the fact that there were linguists whowere native speakers of several of the languages when theMaya movement began to gain strength after the civil war.The change in the intellectual environment regarding lan-guage has been substantial over the last 30 years. Whenthe PLFM began its first training program in 1972 (inwhich I participated), no one in Guatem ala exce pt thepeople involved in the program cared about it, or evenwas aware of it, and there were no employment optionsfor the people who participated in the program except inthe PLFM itself. In 1985, right after the civil war, a suddenincreased awareness of language issues among Mayas wasmarked by the participation, for the first time, of severaldozen Mayas who were not associated with the PI.I'M inthe Mayan language workshops that had been held since


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736 American Anth ropologist Vol. 105, No. 4 December 20031975. Subsequent courses given in the PLFM or in OKMAhave received considerable attention and have producedmany individuals who have been working directly ontheir languages in a number of different institutions, bothprivate and public.

The principle contributions of Maya linguists to lin-guistic revitalization come in three forms. First, linguistscontribute to the creation of technical materials, such asgrammars and dictionaries, which are necessary both forlinguistic pride and for significant literacy. Second, lin-guists provide the technical assistance necessary for the es-tablishment of standard languages, which are critical forliteracy and education in Mayan languages. Third, theselinguists act as critics and protagonists in the estab-lishment and diffusion of language ideologies that fosterlanguage retention.

The technical contributions of Maya linguists are thenin two areas: basic materials and standard language codifi-cation. Both contribute principally to literacy, a domainthat Mayas believe they must retake for their languages toenjoy a prestige and utility that will ensure their survival.Mayas have had at least two periods of substantial literacyand literary production in the past: the 16th century whenthe classics of Maya literature such as the Popol Wuuj, theAnnals of the Kaqchikels, or the Books ofChilam B'alam werefirst written down in a Roman alphabet; and the Classicperiod, when innumerable texts were written hieroglyphi-cally. However, literacy essentially died out after the 16thcentury, and it was not until the late 20th century that ef-forts have been made to revive it. Meanwhile, the agree-ments about standard form, written form, and writtenconvention that must have existed in the earlier periodsalso died out, and the situation that Mayas face today inpromoting a revival of literacy is one characterized bymarked dialect differentiation within the majority of thelanguages, marked local loyalty, and little popular grasp ofthe unifying principles of literacy.

In addition to basic language description, which Mayalinguists have undertaken and which has resulted in theproduction of some of the grammars and dictionaries thatare needed, standardization has been the focus of consid-erable linguistic work. It is still in the beginning stages inmost languages, and in a number of cases has been boggeddown in alphabet decisions. However, the linguistic com-munities established by the academia have begun to workon other problems of standardization and codification,such as standardizing the lexicon and morphological vari-words. In addition, the linguists of OKMA have proposedstandard grammars for seven Mayan languages, after com-leting extensive dialect studies in those languages that

serve as the database for the proposals. They have devel-d a set of criteria for choosing among competing forms

r the standard, several of which are linguistically quitenteresting. Some of these are as follows (Oxlajuuj keej1993:124; also cited in England 1996:187; examples and

ussion are added):

1. Where different terms for the same concept ar e found in dif-ferent places, all of them can be taken to be synonyms andthey can be taught as such in the places where they are notused.

This criterion addresses regional vocabulary differences. Theidea is to expand the vocabulary on the basis of regionaldifferences rather than to reduce those differences to onestandard form. Part of standardization, then, is to toleratecertain kinds of differences. For instance, Mam has region-ally mutually exclusive terms for a number of commonvocabulary items, such as:

xiinaq ~ iichan manxu'j ~ qya womanpich' ~ ch'it birdab'j ~ xaq stone

Because different terms for the same referent are un-known outside the region where they are used, they im-pede mutual intelligibility. The hope is that by teachingsuch terms as synonyms, everyone will learn and recog-nize them, even if they continue to use only the regionallyspecific term.2. Where variation in the form of the same term (o r rule) exists

in different places, it is important to select the forms thatgive more information and that ar e more readily understoodby the majority. This generally means writing the more com-plete and more basic forms, and at times it also means writ-ing the more original and conservative forms.

Historical "authenticity" has become a criterion of sub-stantial weight. For instance, showing that one form is"older" than another may be enough to guarantee its ac-ceptance. An example from K'ichee' involves the repre-sentation of long vowels. Many K'ichee' speakers do notwrite long vowels, or do not do so consistently. This canlead to confusion of meaning, such as with the form (Eng-land 1996:188):

katik ri ab'ixPLANT THE CORNFIELDyou plant the cornfield OR the cornfield is planted

A discussion of this form between two K'ichee' linguistsled to the observation that each of them distinguished thetwo meanings phonologically, but differently:

you plant the cornfield the cornfield is plantedspeaker 1: kaatik ri ab'iix katik ri ab'iixspeaker 2: katik ri ab'iix katiik ri ab'iix

Analysis of the forms resulted in the identification of thelong aa in you plant the cornfieldas the more conservativeform of the second person singular prefix, and the identi-fication of the long ii in the cornfield is planted as the moreconservative form of the passive. Therefore, the two ana-lysts agreed to maintain the two long vowels, even thougheach only had one in her dialect:


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England Mayan Language Revival and Revitalization Politics 737standard:analysis: kaatik ri ab'iixk-aa-tikaspect-2sing.-PLANT

katiik ri ab'iixka-0-tiikaspect-3sing.-BE PLANTEDThe application of principles of historical primacy andmorphological completeness sometimes has resulted inthe initial selection of forms that are not especially felici-tous synchronically. For instance, M ayan languages have anumber of relational nouns that indicate case and locationand function like prepositions, except that they are in-flected for person in agreement with their complements.In Kaqchikel, many of these are preceded by real preposi-tions (which are not inflected for person) and in manydialects the combination of preposition and relationalnoun is increasingly being grammaticalized as a singlelexical item where the vowel of the preposition is deletedand, in third person singular, the person agreement inflec-tion is also deleted. Thus,

ch i preposition + r-e 3sing.-relational noun results inche to him/her/it (dative/benefactive)The whole paradigm is:

chwe < chi + w-echawe < chi + aw-eche < chi + r-echqe < chi + q-echiwe < chi + iw-echke < chi + k-e

to meto youto him/her/itto usto you (pi)to themIn a first attempt to standardize Kaqchikel published in1994 (Rodriguez Guajan 1994), these forms were labeled"incorrect" and the "correct" forms were given as follows,preserving all the details of the source for these words:

chi we to mechi awe to youchi re to him/her/itchi qe to uschi iwe to you (pi.)chi ke to themThere are at least a half dozen relational nouns that un-dergo similar grammaticalizations. In a grammar publish-ed in 1997 (Garcia Matzar and Rodriguez Guajan 1997)the relational nouns were described as they are actuallypronounced, and the standardization project in OxlajuujKeej has been reconsidering the whole issue of how to rep-resent these forms correctly.3. ft is important to avoid localisms; that is , the forms that arerestricted to one local variety and that are not found in othervarieties.An example from Kaqchikel comes from the morphologi-cal structure of a verb that has an incorporated element ofmovement. In almost all dialects of Kaqchikel and in factin many other Mayan languages, such morphemeswhich usually indicate go and do X, come and do X, or passby doing Xoccur between the object marker and the sub-

ject marker before the verb stem. In at least one dialect ofKaqchikel, however, incorporated movement occurs be-tween the subject marker and the stem (Garcia Matzar andRodriguez. Guajan 1997:191 ):usual order: x-o/'-b'e-m-tz'et-a'aspect-o^/Vcf-movement-^t/^/eirf-SEE-status suffixhe/she went to see usothe r orde r: x-o/'-n


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738 American Anthropologist Vol. 105,No. 4 December 2003SVO: K'ichee': subject highlighted, topicalized, or non-contrastively emphasized (16th-century example fromCarmack and Mondloch 1989:37, realphabetized by LopezIxcoy 1997):B'alam K'ichee'. B'alam Aq'ab', Maiukutaaj, Iiq' B'aiamSIN THEIR CITYxkib'an k'oxtun chuwi' kitinamiit.V OBUILT TEMPLE(B'alam K'ichee', B'alam Aq'ab', Majukutaaj, Iiq' B'alam builttemples in their city.)OVS: K'ichee': object topicalized or focused:K'i chee' k'oo chi rii. Ri kaqachee ' xkichoy ri ajawaab ' .

O V SMANY TREE EXIST THERE THERED. TREE CUT THE LORDS.(There were many trees there. The lords cut the red tree. [As forthe red tree, the lords cut it.})SOV: K'ichee': Genealogies; topicalized subject and objectwith noncontrastive emphasis:Ri tata' Pakal B'alam, ri a Koot Pakal xuk'ajolaaj.S O VPAKAL B'ALAM KOOT PAKAL ENGENDERED(Pakal B'alam engendered Koot Pakal.)OSV: Kaqchikel: Genealogies; topicalized object andsubject with noncontrastive emphasis:Ri a Kot Pakal. ia ri ma Pakal B'alam xuk'aiolaj.O S VKOT PAKAL PAKAL B'ALAM ENGE NDER ED(Pakal B 'alam engendered Kot Pakal.)VSO: K'ichee': for some speakers, both subject and objectdefinite and animate:Xuq'aluj le ala le achi,V S OHUGGED THE YOUTH THE MAN(The youth hugged the man. [The man hugged the youth.])

In many school texts produced by the national bilin-gual education program, however, all the possible ordersare reduced to one, SVO, which in addition to being morelike Spanish is also the most frequently used order inK'ichee' and Kaqchikel for sentences in isolation. Thispractice has been heavily criticized by OKMA linguists, onthe basis that it reduces the expressive power of the lan-guage significantly, since each order is used pragmaticallyin a different context.

The above examples are a very brief sampling of thekinds of decisions that must be made when a languagethat essentially lacks a tradition of literacy is standardized.Some of them are fairly straightforward, but others requirequite a bit of specific grammatical information and knowl-edge for I he results to be workable, satisfactory, and con-

vincing. Maya linguists believe they have an importantrole to play in standardization.

In addition to the sort of technical contribution 1have just described and that is absolutely critical to thestandardization process, Maya linguists have been activein both the analysis and critique of language ideologies.Papers given by Maya linguists at the Latin American Stud-ies Association (LASA) Meetings in March 2000 (BenitoPerez, Jimenez Sanchez, Mateo Toledo, Sis Iboy), providegood examples of how their work combines analysis withproposals that imply modifying or selecting among cur-rent language ideologies. These, it should be stressed atthe outset, do not come in neat packages. They are partial,contradictory, reactive, proactive, historical, contempo-rary, all at the same time. The language ideologies that arecurrently especially prominent among Mayas can be di-vided into two categories: (1) those that address the posi-tion of Mayan languages in relation to Spanish and (2)those that have to do with situations and identities thatare internal to the Mayan language communities.

With regard to the position of Mayan languages in re-lation to Spanish, Ajb'ee Odilio Jimenez Sanchez (2000)indicates quite clearly that the lack of equality that is en-countered between Mayan languages and Spanish has re-sulted from a history in which the political projects for theconstruction of a Guatemalan State, always carried out byCriollos or Ladinos (non-Mayas), have never taken Mayanlanguages into account. Jose Gonzalo Benito Perez (2000)also states that the state has always ignored Mayan lan-guages as means of communication. This situation resultsfrom an ideology held by the dominant society that deval-ues everything related to indigenous culture, includinglanguage.

This ideology of devaluing Mayan languages has beenconverted into an internal ideology in Mayan communi-ties, according to Brigittine French (2000), Nikte' JulianaSis Iboy (2000), and Jimenez Sanchez (2000). Within thisideology, Mayan languages are associated with the nega-tive values of the "traditional"such as ignorance, lack ofeducation, isolation, poverty, and so onwhile Spanish isassociated with the positive values of the "modern"suchas sophistication, education, opportunities to migrate,economic advancement, and so on. French (2000), espe-cially, analyzes the association of Mayan languages withnegative values as key to the initial stages of Mayan lan-guage loss in favor of Spanish. All of the individuals andinstitutions that are working on Mayan languages are at-tempting to combat this ideology, one way or another.Jimenez Sanchez (2000) in particular uses his analysis ofthe historical context in which it has arisen to stronglycriticize it.

While this negative evaluation of Mayan languagesvis-a-vis Spanish is by now quite widespread and has re-sulted in the growth of bilingualism that tends to be tran-sitional toward a language shift into Spanish, at the sametime there are ideologies that resist or contradict this viewof Mayan languages. There are some Mayan communities


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England Mayan Language Revival and Re vitaliza tion Politics 739that have been able to m aintain a high degree of bilingual-ism for more than a century (Brown 1998) and in whichindividuals customarily take pride in being able to speakboth languages well (Reynolds 2000), thus distinguishingthemselves from their less accomplished neighbors. Thereare also communities, one of which I will discuss later,that have apparently been able to halt or, perhaps, evenreverse language shift, by equating the ability to speak aMayan language with being Maya and taking pride inboth.

As Sis Iboy (2000) states, connecting language andidentity is not only the result of recent revitalization ef-forts but is also a much older ideology among Mayas. Theelders in many communities explicitly confront attitudesof embarrassment connected with speaking a Mayan lan-guage by saying "it is not possible to lose the heritage ofour grandparents, change allegiance, identify ourselveswith others who are not of our family, who are not ourown" (Sis Iboy 2000). For the most part, the elders havebeen guided by this ideology, in that they have usuallymaintained the Mayan language among themselves andwith their children. In fact, the idea of equating nationwith language is widely held by Mayas. On the one hand,it has long provided, and continues to provide, one of thereasons why Mayas have been tenaciously loyal to theirown languages. It is also cited as a major reason why lan-guage is critical to cultural revitalization (cf. Cojti Cuxil1991). On the other hand, the idea of the language/nationequivalence has played a major role in language ideologi-cal debates that concern the status of Mayan languages inrelation to each other, or to what I have called their internalsituation an d identities.

With regard to this internal situation, it is possible toidentify two strong currents in opposition to each other:the localist and the unifying. The debates that have re-sulted among proponents of these different language ide-ologies have been most notable in the discussion aboutth e sta tus of Achi (Lopez Ixcoy and Sis Iboy 19 91; Sis Iboy2000; Sis Iboy and Lopez Ixcoy 1989). Achi is the recentlycoined name of the Rabinal political community and itslanguage. This community, located in Baja Verapaz andknown originally as the "Rab'inaleeb'," broke off from theK'ichee' kingdom in approximately 1300 (Carmack 1979:63) and was independent at the time of the Conquest. Thelanguage spoken by the Rab'inaleeb' at the time was cer-tainly K'ichee' and still is, by any linguistic measure. How-ever, and in spite of the fact that the Spanish Conquest de-stroyed any political autonomy that different Mayancommunities may have enjoyed, the political identity ofthe Rab'inaleeb' has remained quite distinct from that ofthe K'ichee'. When the A cademia de Lenguas Mayas beganoperating in 1987, it recognized "Achi" as a separate lan-guage; most linguists, however, including myself, still re-garded it as a dialect of K'ichee'. Nikte' Sis Iboy (2000) re-counts the strong negative reaction to hearing that herlanguage was something other than she believed it to be.It is as if, she says, someone comes and tells you "you

aren't what you believe you are; you're something else"(Sis Iboy 2000).However, as she learned more and more linguisticsand immersed herself in the study of her language andother varieties of K'ichee', Sis Iboy gradually came to theconclusion that Achi was, indeed, a dialect of K'ichee.'Furthermore, and much more importantly, she also cameto believe that it is necessary to unify Mayan languages asmuch as possible if they are to be adequate modern meansof communication that can hold their own against Span-ish. By unification she and othe r M aya linguists m eanthree things: (1) halting the fragmentation of Mayan lan-guages in ever more dialects and separate languages; (2)halting the tendency to identify dialects of these languagesas radically different forms or as separate languages, thuscontributing to the fragmentation by giving strength tolocal identities that may not otherwise have been asstrong; and (3) working to find a common ground amongall the dialects of a particular language for establishing asingle standard form of that language.

As a consequence, Sis Iboy then took the public posi-tion that Achi, as a dialect of K'ichee,' should be unifiedwith it. Sis Iboy began writing linguistic analyses ofK'ichee' that took into account data from Achi as well asother dialects. The ongoing debate between Sis Iboy,whom other Mayas who work in linguistics have sup-ported, and the Achi linguistic community has beenheated. Other Rab'inaleeb' have accused Sis Iboy and herlinguistic colleagues on a nu mb er of occasions of trying to"destroy their identity." Recently Sis Iboy came to theconclusion that for political reasons it was now impossibleto unite Achi with K'ichee' and gave a paper to that effectat an academic meeting in 1999, effectively abandoningher unification principles. However, she also suggestedchanging the name of the language back to its originalname, Rab'inalchii' (language of the Rab'inaleeb'). Bysheer bad luck, the only other speaker of the language inthe audience was from Cubulco, the town with the mostdivergent dialect of Achi. He took violent exception to thesuggested name change, on the grounds that it privilegedthe people and dialect of Rabinal, the principal seat of theRab'inaleeb' community.

Here again the localist ideology came into conflictwith even an attenuated form of the unification ideology.Sis Iboy, in opting to support the identification of Achi orRab'inalchii' as a separate language from K'ichee', still sup-ported the unification of Achi itself and the creation of astandard form of that language. To at least one spokesmanfrom Cubulco, however, the unification of Achi was unac-ceptable because of fears that it would disadvantage hisvariety of the language. In fact, there is now a strongmovement in Cubulco to gain recognition of the localform of speech as a separate language (Sis Iboy, personalcommunication with author, 2003).A similar debate has been m ore recently engaged inregard to the status of two languages known as Q'anjob'aland Akateko (Mateo Toledo 2000). These languages, unlike


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740 American An thro po log ist Vo l. 105, No. 4 December 2003Achi and K'ichee', have always been considered by theirspeakers to be varieties of the same language spoken bythe same political community, the Q'anjob'al community.However, Akateko was identified by Terrence Kaufman, alinguist, as separate from, although very closely related to,Q'anjob'al. That classification has been followed by mostlinguists working on the languages. Akateko was recog-nized as a separate linguistic community by the Academiade Lengua.s Mayas in 1987 but w as never organized as suchbecause the members of the community insisted that theywere Q'anjob'al. B'alam Eladio Mateo Toledo, who isQ'anjob'al, wrote a thesis (1999) making a detailed com-parison of the gramm ars of the Akateko and Q'anjob'alforms of speech and concluded that they were dialects ofthe same language. However, his work has been rejectedby at least some Akateko leaders on the grounds that be-cause they and their way of speaking have been ignoredby members of the other Q'anjob'al communities, theynow want to be considered to be Akateko. They have alsofinally classified the Akateko linguistic community sepa-rately from the Q'anjob'al linguistic community. It seemsthat the tide may have turned in the Q'anob'al/Akatekoregion. That is, it has moved away from unification andtoward localism.These two cases are symptomatic of the increasinglycommon debates centering on localist and unification ide-ologies. The localist position has been strengthened by in-ternational indigenous rights declarations that hold thatindigenous communities have a right to their own lan-guage. While Mayas use this position to defend Mayanlanguages against Spanish, different communities withinMayan-speaking language groups also use it to defendtheir rights to their own local variety of a language, and insome cases to insist on their own language name, theirown language materials, and their own language identityas opposed to that of any other community. The most ex-treme example of this can be found in the only townwhere the Mayan language Awakateko is spoken. Part ofthe population there has been pushing for the recognitionof its slightly different dialect as a separate language, C hal-chiteko. The Guatemalan Congress has recognized this de-mand, presumably because it sees this action as part of arelatively cost-free way of recognizing the rights of localcommuni t ies.Jimenez Sanchez (2000) roundly criticizes what heconsiders to be the extrem e localist positions tha t have be-come more and more common. He argues that localist ide-ologies result in part from postconquest history, in whichadministrative divisions were established by the Criolloand Ladino State that favored the development of localrivalries that resulted increasingly in dialect divergence.Jimenez Sanchez characterizes this divergence not as nor-mal linguistic change but, rather, as an abnormal phe-nomenon provoked by the Criollo and Ladino policiestoward Mayan communities. He goes on to say that theexisting dialect differences must be regarded as differentways of expressing the same identity, rather than as ways

of expressing different identities. He thus comes back tothe language and identity issue but argues that identitybased on language must be understood in a broad and re-gional "whole language" sense, rather than a narrow andlocal "my dialect" sense.The analyses and arguments made by Benito Perez,Jimenez Sanchez, Mateo Toledo, and Sis Iboy at LASA2000 constitute part of the ongoing debate among Mayasregarding the status of their own languages, and at thesame time are instrumental in the construction and diffu-sion of language ideologies, especially so given that theauthors are principal actors in the Maya movement of cul-tural and linguistic revitalization. The positions taken byJimenez Sanchez, Sis Iboy, and Mateo Toledo with respectto their own languages are all unifying rather than local-ist. In general, Maya linguists have led the unification sideof the debate. In doing so, they enter directly and person-ally into these debates. They have also almost universallytaken the position that Mayan languages are essential toMayan identity and should, therefore, be preserved anddefended against prevailing attitudes and practices thataccord the m secondary status with respect to Spanish.

There are indications that some of the efforts on thepart of linguists and language-based institutions are result-ing in at least limited success in the promotion of Mayanlanguages. For example, the establishment of the linguis-tic communities by the Academia de Lenguas Mayas hasresulted, in some areas, in a much more conscious aware-ness of language issues within the communities, and agreater willingness b oth to speak and be identified as aspeaker of a Mayan language. The recent signing of thePeace Accords in Guatemala (1996) placed on the table thepossibility of recognizing Mayan languages as official orco-official with Sp anish, and the ev en m ore recen t "Law ofNational Languages" (2003) brought that possibility closerto actuality. Other initiatives seem to have resulted in theslowing of language loss and even in a possible growth inMayan language acquisition.The recent history of Palin, for instance, is instructiveas an example of how language revitalization is closelyconnected to cultural revitalization (Benito Perez 2000).

Palin, located 40 kilometers south of Guatemala City, hasa population of about twenty thou sand, of whom 65 percentare Poqomam and the rest are Ladino. The Maya popula-tion is quite isolated, since there are no other Poqomam-speaking towns nearby. Fu rthermore, Palin is situated o n amajor highway that connects Guatemala City with the Pa-cific Coast, which has resulted in constant contact withurban elements, both desirable and undesirable. In 1991,the Guatemalan linguist Guillermina Herrera Pena wroteabout the "last generation" of Poqomam speakers in Palin,characterizing the community as being on the verge oflanguage death (Herrera Pena 1991:14-15). However,the language has not yet died, and there are signs thatthe trend toward disappearance may have been reversed.Michael Richards (2003:110) places Palin today in a category


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of "moderate risk of language loss," midway down the listof his five categories of loss.Benito Perez describes language revitalization in Palinas having its roots in the 1970s, with a ctivities of the PalinIndigenous Fraternity, which was in charge of electing theindigenous queen for the town's patron saint festival. Inthe 1980s, the name of the group was changed to the Po-qomam Cultural Committee, and it began to promote in-digenous theater, handicrafts, art, and music at the na-tional level as well as play a part in the town festival. Themembers, all quite young, consciously began to use Po-qomam in their activities. In 1988 the Committee aban-doned the festival in order to concentrate on the rescueand promotion of Poqomam cultural activities, especiallylanguage, dress, music, and education. To further theirgoals with regard to language, they sent two members tolearn linguistics. A year later, the group changed its nameagain, this time to the Poqomam Cultural AssociationQawinaqel, and the group began to look for concrete waysto accomplish its goals of cultural promotion. With theidea that cultural promotion must concentrate on chil-dren, at the end of 1989 they surveyed the Poqomampopulation in order to find out whether there would beany interest in establishing a Poqomam school. The inter-est was sufficient that in 1990 they decided to fund andestablish the school, but plans were accelerated when anumber of the parents who had been surveyed turned upin January to register their children in the school that didnot yet exist. Deciding that it had to respond to suchspontaneous community interest, Qawinaqel levied an in-ternal tribute on its members and otherwise begged andborrowed enough to open the school with 40 pupils. By2000 the school had grown to 435 pupils between kinder-garten and ninth grade.

The establishment of the Qawinaqel school, which isdevoted to the promotion of Poqomam cultural values in-cluding language, has had a fairly dramatic effect on Palin.Each year more and more parents are willing to pay tosend their children to the school, and in the last few yearseven Ladino parents have expressed an interest in sendingtheir children to Qawinaqel to learn Poqomam. And chil-dren in the school are speaking Poqomam, some becausethey are from families in which the language has been pre-served, some because their families are now interested inpreserving the language, and some because they learn it inschool. Whether these efforts are enough to ensure thesurvival of the language is still not clear, but as BenitoPerez says, the most important thing is that "the so-calledlast generation would not be the last; instead the breedingground for the work to move forward has now been sown"(2000).

The historical progression in Qawinaqel from electingindigenous queens, to the promotion of folkloric culturalactivities, to the promotion of aspects of cultural identitysuch as language, to the establishment of a school, to thesuccess of the school in language and cultural retention, isinstructive. It shows that language retention and rescue

comes from the community and can proceed as part ot anintegrated program based on the acceptance and promo-tion of cultural values. In this process, positive languageideologies such as equating the Mayan language with apositive cultural identity become more prominent thannegative ideologies such as equating the Mayan language(and culture) with backwardness.In achieving some measure of success in language res-cue, Palinecos have made use of many of the formal organi-zations that Mayas have established to co mba t language lossand promote cultural and linguistic revitalization. Theyhave established their own culture and language associa-tion, Qawinaqel. They have also used the services of theAcademia de Lenguas Mayas, of Mayas in the state educa-tional system, of the support institutions for Mayaschools, and of institutions devoted to language issues. Atleast six community members have gone to these institu-tions to learn linguistics, with the clear idea that thiswould be of benefit to the community and the school.Those linguists have been useful for language rescue. Theyhave been responsible for codifying Poqomam for use inwriting, they have produced basic educational materialssuch as primers and grammars, and they have taught thelanguage in the school or the community. Further, thoselinguists have influenced local language ideologies andhave provided models of language retention for the com-munity because their own children are fluent speakers ofPoqomam.

The contributions of linguists in the Palin case areconsiderable. It is quite likely that linguistic revival wouldnot have been as successful without them. However, it isequally clear that linguistics alone is not enou gh to ensu relanguage retention. In Palin, the application of linguisticknowledge to the problem of language retention grew outof a general cultural revitalization movement and pro-ceeded as an integral part of that movement. Linguistshave, however, participated there in all of the ways that Ihave outlined: (1) They have produced materials for theschools and the community; (2) they have analyzed thelanguage for the purposes of standardization; and (3) theyhave promoted certain language ideologies with the inten-tion of reversing language loss. Language retention is al-ways, ultimately, in the hands of the community. How-ever, when linguists are members of a community thatspeaks an endangered language, and when they have botha personal stake in the future of that language and a nativeability to speak it, their potential for contributing to thereversal of language loss is great. They can be quite effec-tive in consciously drawing that community's attention tothe issues of language loss and retention and can then beinstrumental in implementing measures to counteract loss.

It is difficult to say with any ce rtainty w he the r the ap -parent shift in the pattern of language loss that has beenoccurring in Palin will be long-lasting enough to guaran-tee the survival of the language and difficult to say howmany other Palins there are. Little has been written aboutreversing language shift in Mayan communities. However,


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it is quite clear that the activities of the linguistic commu-nities organized by the Academia have resulted in a muchgreater consciousness about language issues among com-munity members, and the increasing concern of the min-istry of educa tion with bilingual ed ucation has had a di-rect impact on many communities. Both of theseinstitutions have had an effect on the general population,not just on their leaders. In addition, there are certainlysome families where language shift has been reversed, thatis, where younger siblings may actually speak a Mayanlanguage more fluently than their older siblings, as a di-rect result of a change in language consciousness on thepart of their paren ts. At the same time , however, the forcestoward language shift are quite strong, so these effortsmay be insufficient to halt or reverse language shift.The fact that Mayas themselves are debating languageideologies suggests that Mayas are not taking an entirelypassive role with regard to language shift. The guidingspirit of the PLFM when it was founded in the 1970s wasthat linguists, instead of merely using speakers of Mayanlanguages as informants about their languages, could (andshould) teach linguistics to Mayas so that they could use itfor whatever purposes they choose. Maya linguists havechosen to address the issues of language vitality and lan-guage standardization, among others, in the hopes thatthey can promote the use and prolong the lives of theirown languages. In doing so, they have also gone throughan informational shift from being largely unaware of whatoutsiders had to say about their languages, to listening towhat outsiders had to say, to debating with outsiders, todebating among themselves about language issues. Theyhave also gone through a positional shift within linguis-tics, from being informants, to being apprentices, to beingindependent researchers and authorities on their languages.Brief mention was made at the start of this article ofthe connection between globalization and increasing bil-ingualism. Globalization, indeed, has had several effectson processes described here. First of all, the fact that lan-guage retention among Mayas is being threatened at anunprecedented rate (as is the case with many other lan-guage communities worldwide) at roughly the same timethat the globalization phenomenon has been developingis surely not a coincidence. Mayan languages have beenlost in some communities in previous periods: For exam-ple, at least one Mayan language disappeared in the early20th century; residents of one Mam-speaking communitystopped using the language because of a presidential de-cree in the first half of the 20th century; and significantlanguage loss in Quetzaltenango, the largest Mayan city inGuatemala, is at least three generations old. Nevertheless,it is only in the last two or three decades that languageloss has been detectable in almost all Mayan communities.At the same time, however, the reaction to language losson the part of Mayas owes something at least to the in-creased communication and connectedness that globaliza-tion has brought to all communities. Mayas are moreaware of developments in other Mayan communities, and

indeed in the world, than they were several generationsago; they are in more constant discussion with otherMayas and even other non-Mayan communities that facethe same issues; they have more access to higher educa-tion and literature of all sorts than they did a quarter of acentury ago; and they are more subject to global influ-ences that have a direct positive, as well as negative, effecton their communities and languages, such as the Univer-sal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN, or the wide-spread concern in the 1990s with the preservation of in-digenous communities. They have certainly begun to takeadvantage of the technological revolution for their ownpurposes and have been applying higher education toproblems in their own communities. Whether the pres-sures toward culture change and language loss will ulti-mately and inevitably outweigh the countervailing effortstoward cultural and linguistic revitalization is still an openquestion.

NORA C. ENGLAND Department of Linguistics, University ofTexas at Austin, Au stin, TX 78712-1196NOTESAcknowledgments. The ideas expressed here have been developedduring more than 30 years of teaching linguistics to Mayas andworking with them on the analysis of their languages. I beganworking in the PLFM, then taught in the linguistics programs ofthe Universidad Mariano Galvez and Universidad Rafael Landivar,and have been working with OKMA since 1990. My many studentsand colleagues in these institutions have been very helpful. I espe-cially would like to acknowledge the linguists in OKMA who havehad considerable influence on my thinking about language ideol-ogy, language politics, and the contributions that linguistics canmake to these matteis: Nikte' Sis Iboy, Ajb'ee Jimenez Sanchez,Waykan Benito Perez, B'alam Mateo Toledo, Lolmay GarciaMatzar, and the late B'aayil Perez Vail. In addition, conversationswith Raxche' Rodriguez Guajan, Guillermo Rodriguez Guajan, andDemetrio Cojti Cuxil have helped me clarify my thoughts aboutthe role of language in Mayan society.1. Compare overall literacy in Guatemala in 1989 at 72.6 percentwith that in 2003 at 80.6 percent (UNESCO 2003).2. Ley de Idiomas Nacionales, Decreto 19-2003.REFERENCES CITEDBastos, Santiago, and Ma nuela Camus1995 Abriendo Cam inos: las Organizaciones Mayas desde el Nobelhasta el Acuerdo de Derechos Indigenas. Guatemala City:FLACSO.1996 Quebrando elSilencio: O rganizaciones del Pueblo Maya ysus Demandas, 1986-1992. Guatemala City: FLACSO.Benito Perez, Jose Gonzalo (Waykan)2000 Rescate lingliistico como afirmacion de identidad : El Po-qoma m de Palin. Paper presented at the Latin American StudiesAssociation Meetings, Miami, March 16-19.Brown, R. McKenna1996 The Mayan Language Loyalty Movem ent in Guatemala City./;; Maya Cultural Activism in Guatem ala C ity. Edward F. Fischerand R McKenna Brown, eds. Pp. 165-177. Austin: University ofTexas Press.1998 Case Study Two: San Antonio Aguas Calientes and theQuinizilapa Valley. //; The Lite of Our langua ge: Kaqchikel MayaMaintenance, Shift, and Revitalization. Susan Garzon, R.McKenna Brown, Julia Becker Richards, and W uq u' Ajp ub', eds.Pp. 101-128 . Austin: University of Texas Press.


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E n g l a n d M a y a n L a n g u a g e R e v iv a l a n d R e v i t a l i z a t i o n P o l it i c s 743Carmack, Robert M.1979 Historia social de los Quic hes. Sem inario de Inte grat ion So-cial, 38. Guatemala City. Editorialjosede Pineda Ibarra.Carmack, Robert M., and James L. Mondloch1989 El titulo de Yax y otros docum entos Quiches de Totoni-capan. Mexico: Universidad Nacional Auton oma de Mexico.Coj t iCuxil , Demetrio1991 Config uration del Pensam iento Politico del Pueblo Maya.

Gua tema la City: Asociacion de Escritores Mayances de Guate-mala City.1994 Politicas para la re vi nd ica tio n de los Mayas de hoy (Funda-me nto de los derechos especificos del pueblo maya). G uatemalaCity:Cholsamaj .1997 Ri Maya' Moloj pa Iximulew: El Movimiento Maya en Guate-mala. Guatemala City: Cholsamaj.England, Nora C.1994 Auto nom ia de los Idiom as Mayas: Historia e Iden tidad. Gua-temala City: Cholsamaj.1996 The Role of Language Standard ization in Revitalization. InMaya Cultural Activism in Guatem ala City. Edward F. Fischeran d R McK enna Brow n, eds. Pp. 178- 194. Austin: University ofTexas Press.1998 Mayan Efforts toward Language Preservation . In EndangeredLanguages. Lenore A. Greno ble and Lindsay Whaley, eds. Pp.99-116. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Fischer, Edward F., and R. McKenna Brown, eds.1996 Maya Cultur al Activism in Gu atem ala City. Austin: Univer-sity of Texas Press.French, Brigittine2000 Ser mo dern o, ser tradicional: Habland o kaqchikel y espanolen Guatem ala City. Paper presen ted at the Latin Am erican Stud-ies Association Meetings, Miami, March 16-1 9.Garcia Matzar, Pedro (Lolmay), and Jose Obispo Rodriguez Guajan(Pakal B'aJam)1997 Rukemik ri Kaqchikel Chi ': Gram atica Kaqchikel. Gua tem alaCity: Cholsamaj.Herrera Pena, Guillermina1991 (\J& ultima batalla? Asaber. Publication of the French Em-bassy in Guatemala City.Jime nez Sanchez, Odilio (Ajb'ee)2000 Politicas de iden tidad y la pobla cion Maya-M am. Paper pre-sented at the Latin American Studies Association M eetings, Mi-ami, March 16 -19.Lopez Ixcoy, Candelaria Dominga (Saqijix)1997 Ri Ukemiik ri K'ichee' Chii': Gramatica K'ichee'. GuatemalaCity: Cholsamaj.

Lopez Ixcoy, Candelaria (Saqijix), and Juliana Sis I boy (Nikte')1991 K'iche' y Achi

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