Linguistic and cultural self-management: some mesoamerican examples
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7764/onomazein.amerindias.12Keywords:
ethnolinguistic hegemony, Mesoamerican languages, language self-management, critical education, co-participative workshopsAbstract
This paper deals with the language policies implemented in Mexico and, specifically, in formal educational settings, particularly in schools. Both the limits and the scope of current offi-cial bilingual education programs will be highlighted, and particularly those self-managed projects targeted towards the development of its autochthonous languages and cultures. We will especially focus on the more than 30 co-participative educational workshops held in the last few years with speakers of several Mesoamerican languages. The critical analysis of the methodology, interaction and teaching materials brings up the following questions: When does linguistic and cultural self-management begin? Should self-management proj-ects be only monocultural? Is it possible to learn to be self-managing from interculturality? Our findings suggest that during these intercultural workshops speakers perform grammar recognition processes, which means learning and developing a continuum of orality-writ-ing-orality beyond the pedagogical limitations of official policies (Léonard et al., 2013). These workshops also contribute to implementing pedagogical contents which are culturally rele-vant, and making visible the local and global issues that threaten Mesoamerican languages and cultures. In doing so they also offer a way to highlight processes of minoritization and resilience, denaturalizing Spanish linguistic hegemony. Finally, most of these workshops are available online, spreading their impact and potential applications, and therefore promoting a kind of revitalizing documentation (Léonard & Avilés González, 2015).