The CCCB’s international residency program for 2025 included the presence of the mixed linguist Yásnara Elena A. Gil, a writer and activist dedicated to the defense of linguistic diversity and with this defense intertwined with the claim of other rights that concern its speakers. If we conventionally state that the staff was born in the States and say something else, we would like to say that Gil is Mexican, but we prefer to underline that she belongs to a linguistic community of approximately 115,000 speakers located in the state of Oaxaca. Those who talk about the mixe anomenen the seva llengua ayüük.
I like Gil who places the evolution of languages in the sphere of politics, supporting the idea that if languages die, it is the meaning of life: only in the case in which a language has evolved, to become something else can the “natural” death of a language be certified, but in the rest of the cases the disappearance of a language is closely linked to a history of violence. It cannot be said that the processes of formation and consolidation of States were born modern and established themselves (among others, to clarify) in the denial of linguistic and cultural diversity and in the implementation of a community language in the name of the exercise of power. And power has always remained in the hands of all the mitjan for the good of alternative communities, followed by the physical elimination of the other interlocutors (extermini, forced migrations, sterilizations), followed by the pressure exerted through the legal system and economic and educational strategies. symbolic. I military.
The subject Yásnara Elena A. Gil explained in a recent interview at the CCCB how the imposition of another language (in the second case, Spanish) has led to a completely new conception of the world since the new paraules have made appear a whole series of meanings and unknown keys, and it is found that they do not have to encaixar, ella mateixa, in the imposats concepts ofindigenous OR llatinanon-existent in the mix. I didn’t even notice the difference between nature Hey culture (for her, the mateixa thing) is how comfortable we are in the West. We know that the first bullet of colonization is precisely the imposition of a new language (and a new conception of the world), just as we know from Ngugi wa Thiong’o that the last bullet of decolonization is the abandonment of the overlapping language.
Interestingly, the mateix state of Mexico is the one that gives its title to the six indigenous languages, which reveals the opinion found in the tea. The Llei General de Drets Lingüístics dels Pobles Indígenes, of 2003, qualifies all native national languages, which will confirm the validity of the fact that Spanish exists parlan. According to the National Institute of Indigenous Languages, 68 languages are spoken in Mexico with a total of 364 variants, 64 of which are at risk of disappearing. Of course, the Mexican law is good news, as it provides an important recognition for us (both the Catalan language formulation would be official for the Strip and that of Asturias for the Astúries) and establishes the legal basis for the projection of what we understand as the normalization of these languages. The Mexican state, which has Castilian estès erasing the rest of the languages, seems to have played a role in protecting diversity.
But Gil knows nothing. Despite the apparent defense of diversity (“indigenous languages are an integral part of the national cultural and linguistic heritage”, according to the law), the Mexican state would be nothing more than an ethnocratic artefact that supports the privilege of the dominant, mixed and Spanish-speaking class, and which therefore relegates native populations to a role of subordination to a progressive process of forced linguistic adaptation which, to preserve diversity, results in homogeneity. In this sense, the normalization of languages would be nothing more than a cosmetic state operation as long as it does not intervene in the majority of the living conditions of its speakers, and therefore it is not a measure against structural racism, environmental degradation or situations of poverty.
It would be free to equate ourselves and see a similar situation for the Catalans, but it is not so easy to experience a process of denormalization through, precisely, the recarving of the drets, as if extinguished cleaved a path of tornadoes. Especially in the city of Barcelona, but not only, the problems of access to housing, environmental degradation, job precariousness and the abuses of global technocapitalism are due to the social decline of the language and the progressive loss of linguistic rights. I le lengües no van enlloc sense els seus parlants.
