#StoriesThatInspire. Meet 10 activists who use digital media to strengthen and promote Mayan languages ​​in Mexico.

Photo of Juan Carlos Gómez Pérez, shared with his permission.

Learn about the inspiring story of one of the grantees selected for the 2024 Mayan Language Digital Activism Fellowship organized by Rising Voices. In this personal essay, the author shares about his experience in activism and the project through which he seeks to promote his native language, within his community and in digital spaces.

My name is Juan Carlos Gómez Pérez, I am originally from the Ranchería la Gloria, a Tzeltal Indigenous community that belongs to the municipality of Ocosingo in the State of Chiapas, Mexico. I am fluent in the Mayan-Tzeltal language and I graduated from the “Jacinto Canek” Intercultural Bilingual Indigenous Teacher Training School (ENIIB), with a degree in Bilingual Intercultural Primary Education. I have 14 years of experience working as a director and teacher in the Indigenous educational system. The school where I have worked for six years is located in the community of Chicja, municipality of San Juan Cancuc, Chiapas.

During my years of teaching, I have noticed that in the schools incorporated into the Mexican Indigenous education subsystem called “bilingual intercultural schools,” reading and writing are not taught in the native language of the children, only in Spanish. This often leads to school dropouts because students do not understand Spanish, the language in which they are taught.

The reasons for not teaching the Tzeltal language come from both internal and external factors. Among the internal factors are the parents. Some of them do not want their children to be taught in their Indigenous language, only in Spanish, because they do not see how writing in the vernacular language is useful within their contexts. For example, in the different managements of communal property, requests are only received when they are written in Spanish. Among the external factors we can mention teachers who are illiterate in the local Indigenous language, so they cannot teach literacy in the language; there is rarely didactic material in schools to teach native languages; ​​and there are no teacher training courses from the Ministry of Education for teaching the Tzeltal language, among others.

Chilolja community, municipality of San Juan Cancuc, Chiapas. Photo: Juan Carlos Gómez Pérez. Used with permission.

Digital teaching materials to strengthen the Tzeltal language

I was concerned about this situation, so I decided to pursue a master's degree in Amerindian Studies and Bilingual Education at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Autonomous University of Querétaro. The program helped me establish myself as a “Bats'il winik Tseltal” (true Tzeltal man) and to become a professional in the conservation and preservation of traditional languages and cultures of Indigenous communities through education. Today I can confirm that we learn most of our mother tongue during childhood and that it is through language that we share the customs and traditions that give us identity as Indigenous peoples.

One of the lessons learned within the master's program is to incorporate technology in the production of various teaching materials, since today everything revolves around this concept, as it is currently impossible to find families that do not have a technological device in their homes, even in Indigenous areas. For this reason, in many of our towns, we can find satellite internet kits for sale that the locals use, sometimes to communicate and other times just to have a good time watching funny videos on social media.

It is worth mentioning that most of the available digital content is not educational, it does not teach literacy, much less is it developed in the Indigenous language of the community. Therefore, considering the current reality and the need for the Tzeltal people to write in their language, I am implementing the project called “Creation of digital teaching materials to develop initial literacy in Tzeltal” as a member of the 2024 Rising Voices Mayan Language Digital Activism Program.

Photo: Juan Carlos Gómez Pérez. Used with permission.

My project aims to help students learn to read and write in the Tzeltal language. Reading and writing will be encouraged through playful educational materials in digital formats with students in the first and second grade of primary education because it is in these grades where the literacy process begins.

The materials will be made through the Jclic platform, which is free to access and allows the creation of different playful activities such as association games, word searches, and puzzles. The materials needed for the project, in this case, images and audio recordings, will be developed by the students themselves, so that the materials are of interest to them and they can take ownership of the project. Likewise, we will work with the teachers of the educational institution so that they learn to create digital materials and expand the subject matter when they require it. The materials will be installed on school computers so that children can use them and recognize the grammar of their language.

This project allows me to continue promoting and revaluing the Tzeltal language through digital platforms, as I have previously collaborated for the creation of different materials. For example, I translated stories into the Tzeltal language from the Storyweaver platform, I collaborated with the Autonomous University of Querétaro to translate and provide the voice in children's videos of stories in Tzeltal posted on YouTube, and my translations have been used to make YouTube videos.

Screenshot of the Storyweaver Platform. Fair use.

I hope that through this project, native Tzeltal speakers can write in their language and strengthen their learning in school contexts, since it is much more meaningful when the child understands what he or she learns. I hope that this initiative helps to motivate future researchers and writers of the language. Although it is true that in Indigenous communities there are many limitations, such as free access to the internet and little government investment in significant projects for teaching and writing in Indigenous languages, as a Tzeltal I am proud to be able to contribute a small part so that speakers become aware that the language can be written and used by children for many more years.

Follow my work on Literacidad Tseltal (Tzeltal Literacy)