THE LANGUAGE OF THE HEART
COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS
ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ & PATRISIA GONZALES
JANUARY 9, 2006
SPECIAL LENGTH
Paula Domingo descends from the great teachers of an ancient Mesoamerican university - Xochiicalco -- known as the place of the house of flower -- creation. When we met her at age 15 at another modern-day Nahuatl University years ago, she wanted to go to Oklahoma to meet and learn from other native peoples. At the ancient site, she offered a prayer to permit us to enter those sacred grounds.
In November, she came to the United States as part of a cultural exchange and she shared indigenous knowledge with other native students. In a moving account, she choked back tears as she recalled how she was taught in Mexico that all the Indians were dead in the United States - and therefore the native children should forget their culture. She cried as only we can do for the things we love, our relatives, whether they be across the continent or the land and all that lives upon her. As Paula calls them, all that is precious left by our grandparents.
At 22, Domingo has the wisdom of an elder. Yet, she can easily pass for a high school student. Her recent swing through the Midwest left an indelible imprint.
Domingo likely inherited her wisdom from her family as they are caretakers of Xochicalco - the place where the legendary teacher and leader Quetzalcoatl studied and where peoples from throughout the continent gathered to adjust their calendars - which included the creation of the Aztec Calendar some 1000 years ago.
In Morelos, Domingo is a community educator - teaching native schoolchildren in their native Nahuatl language. It is bilingual instruction, she says, but the objective is not to teach them Spanish so as to eliminate Nahuatl. Instead, it is to keep their ancestral language and culture alive.
She teaches Nahuatl, Mexicano or Macehual, not just in Morelos: If you want to learn Nahuatl if you want to learn a native language if you want to learn the culture, you have to learn it from the heart, says Domingo.
One does not learn it so one can run around bragging about being bilingual.
This she tells several dozen mostly Mexican-Chicano and Native students at a Nahuatl language-culture workshop at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Prior to the Zapatista uprising in 1994, this idea of a Mexico or Mexican culture without living Indigenous peoples was unheard of in Mexico. In a timely juxtaposition of Domingo's tlahtoli or words, word has come in that Comandante Ramona of the Zapatistas of Chiapas has just passed away.
Paula, La Comandante Ramona and Rigoberta Menchu are indeed kernels of the same maize.
The three not only represent ancestral memory to Cemanahuak, Pacha Mama or Abya Yala, but also represent the now and the future of Turtle Island.
Prior to the Zapatistas, native peoples were romanticized and glorified in murals and history books, but denigrated in daily life. The government says that native peoples constitute perhaps ten percent of the population - and that's because it only counts adult native language speakers.
Speaking a native language has long been equated with illiteracy and backwardness - an incredible irony, considering that those that speak native languages are most directly connected to Mexico's 7,000-10,000 year-old corn-based culture. This explains why children are not counted; they are still targets of the government's assimilation policies. It also explains why adults who are clearly Indigenous -- but who speak Spanish, who are educated or who move away from villages -- are not counted as native. The reason for the vast undercount is because it generally conflicts with the nation's historic modernization project.
Yet, in Domingo, that project to eliminate the root of Mexico's culture - that project to de-indigenize the nation has failed because in the language resides memory. Nowhere is this most evident than in the nation's Indigenous diet and in geographical names and places. For that matter, Indigenous memory, by way of thousands of Native American loanwords, permeate the Spanish, English, French and Portuguese languages on this continent.
Reflecting one day, she told us that if given the choice of being transported into the past or future - she would choose the past because she would like to see how our ancestors lived many thousands of years ago how they built these magnificent structures.
Yet, Domingo doesn't live in the past. Her desire is to study Indigenous law -- to be able to defend the rights of her people. The first right - that right to memory is secure as in Cuentepec, all the children speak Nahuatl. Many dozens of native languages survive throughout the continent and because of Domingo, Ramona and Menchu - Indigenous rights will one day perhaps translate into the re-Indigenization or the Indigenization of the continent. That means more than valuing Indigenous languages, peoples and cultures in a co-equal manner, and more than bringing about dignity, respect and equality to the continent's First Peoples. Indigenizing the continent actually means humanizing the world.
Column of the Americas 2006
* If you would like to share words regarding the importance of La Comandante Ramona, who passed away days ago, please send us your comments. Thanks.
We can be reached at: 608-238-3161 or Column of Americas or Column of the Americas, PO BOX 5093 Madison WI 53705. Our bilingual columns are posted at:
Column of Americas
* For a copy of our trilingual Amoxtli San Ce Tojuan documentary and the Mud People, or more info re future screenings contact us at XColumn@aol.com - 608-238-3161 - or go to:
Trilingual Amoxtli San Ce Tojuan Documentary and the Mud People
Contents
January 2006 Reports
Last updated on January 14, 2006