Indigenous Maya Language Under Threat in Yucatan The News
go to original August 16, 2013

Can the power of star-gazing be an effective counter to the threat of marginalization in parts of Latin America? Sofia and Yayo believe it can. They are amateur astronomers and trained sociologists from Argentina who have travelled the continent, working with disenfranchised communities to help them look upwards to the stars as well as inwards at their own cultural identity. (Al Jazeera)

The existence of the Maya language is in peril, as the number of Maya speakers who regularly communicate in their native language falls, according to Graciela Tec Chan, director of the Language and Culture Department of the Maya Development Institute.

In an interview this week, Tec Chan said that — although 58 percent of the population of Yucatán State can speak Maya — the language is spoken less due to fears of discrimination and ridicule, despite the laws that protect the rights of indigenous people. She added that this has also meant that far fewer people learn to write in Maya.

“When we go to (rural) municipalities, above all in the most isolated communities, and we ask children and adolescents if they speak Maya the first thing they tell us is no,” Tec Chan said. “Later we hear that they do speak (Maya) and we ask them why they denied it, and they say it’s because they’re ashamed and they’re afraid of ridicule.”

Read the rest at The News

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