On April 14 , Josep Cru (Newcastle University and Linguapax) and Jaqueline Caniguan (University of La Frontera) organised a workshop to raise awareness of the fragile situation of Mapudungun at the San Juan Bosco High School in the town of Cunco in Southern Chile (Wallmapu). The workshop was led by Waikil (Jaime Cuyanao), one of the best-known Mapuche rappers in Chile, accompanied by guitarist Ketrafe (Cristofer Collio). In the workshop,…
In ancient times, among the original Mayan population, the dzules, which were Mayan princes, used to embark on a journey to venerate the goddess Ixchel in a shrine located in Cozumel. La travesía de los mayas, accompanied by illustrations in its Mayan and Spanish version, narrates the journey that a dzul undertook from Polé-Xcaret to Cozumel and tells us about the series of events he faced to prove his divine…
On January 9, 2023, the 2022 Linguapax Award was presented to the ADN Maya collective. Pat Boy, leader and co-founder of ADN Maya along with Tania Jiménez, received the award from Josep Cru and José A. Flores Farfán, representatives of Linguapax International and the Linguapax delegation in Latin America, respectively. The event took place in the theatre of the city of Felipe Carrillo Puerto in the state of Quintana Roo…
The CD Creación Musical en Lenguas Originarias is a project that was made in collaboration with artists, both women and men, from different communities who speak different native languages. Among them we find the Mixe and Mayan rappers “Mixe-Represent”, from Tamazulapan del Espíritu Santo (Oaxaca), and “Pat Boy”, native of Felipe Carrillo Puerto (Quintana Roo). Meanwhile, María Reyna from Tlahuitoltepec (Oaxaca), with a Bel Canto style, uses an opera technique…
In this incipient 2022, the Mexican presidency has announced the dissolution of the National Institute of Indigenous Languages, INALI, the body responsible for the defence and promotion of the linguistic rights of speech communities in Mexico, created in 2003 with the aim of giving rigorous academic treatment to the preservation of the more than 60 ethno-linguistic families of the country. Such an announcement comes as a surprise in the opening…
Our collaborator Miryam Yataco, sociolinguist, educator and activist on linguistic rights, and member of Linguapax Latin America, denounces in this text the linguistic violence suffered by former Prime Minister Guido Bellido, as a result of his speech in Runasimi language (Quechua) at the Peruvian Congress. The violent reaction of congressional members exemplifies the continuing colonial attitude in the Spanish-speaking sectors of Peru, to which Quechua and other indigenous languages-speaking communities…
The Accompanying Group to the Endangered Languages GALA-Linguapax participated to the Round Table “Towards the International Decade of Indigenous Languages 2022-2032” in the framework of the National Indigenous Languages Fair organized by the National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI), to discuss actions and recommendations for the launch of the Decade and assess the mexican policies towards indigenous languages. The development of the conversation was very positive, reiterating the need for…
Cambridge University Press has just published the book Revitalizing Endangered Languages. A Practical Guide (2021), edited by Justyna Olko, from the Uniwersytet Warszawski (Poland) and Julia Sallabank, from the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. It has been almost 30 years since a group of linguists, during the congress of the Linguistic Society of America (1992), called for action to combat the relentless decline in…
Tyety Ñutyok means “the child prodigy” and is the title of a trilingual book with augmented reality narrated and written in the language of Umbeyajts by the Ikoots researcher Obdulio Muriel Díaz . The book, with translations into English and Spanish, has been published by Editorial Resistencia, with the collaboration of the Australian Embassy in Mexico, Australian and Italian researchers, coordinated by Dr. José Antonio Flores Farfán, researcher of the…
On November 11th, the virtual presentation of the book-album K’ak’alt’aano’ob yéetel tsolxikino’ob ich maayat’aan (‘Tales and tongue twisters in peninsular Maya’), organized by the Australian Embassy in Mexico and the Centre for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology CIESAS, was held, which represents the sum of the artistic work of Mayan rappers, linguists, illustrators and academics for the revitalization of the peninsular Mayan language. On this occasion, the virtual…