Multilingual Mexican-Origin Students' Perspectives on Their Indigenous Heritage Languages

• In Event: Indigenous Mexican Families and U.S. Schools

Abstract

Students of Mexican indigenous ancestry have been overlooked by educators (Ruiz & Barajas, 2012), as they seem to blend in with the general Latinx population and remain “ocultos (hidden), omitted, or ignored…” (Machado-Casas, 2009, p. 84). Many of these students' families are Spanish-speaking, and in the context of the U.S., this already marginalized language becomes the focus of language maintenance if there is an opportunity for students to participate in bilingual programs. Additionally, for many indigenous communities, speaking Spanish continues to tie them to a broader Mexican community, both within Mexico and in the U.S. (Machado-Casas, 2009). Indigenous languages, such as Zapoteco, are unnoticed or devalued, particularly in the school context.

This paper looks at the perspectives of three multilingual Mexican-origin students and their parents around their language use and schooling experience. These students have all participated in the same dual immersion program in southern California and are fluent Spanish and English speakers. Additionally, they all have different relationships and fluency with the indigenous language of Zapoteco. This study considers what each language provides the youth and their parents access to and how their heritage languages connect them to others who speak the same languages – in Oaxaca or in the Los Angeles area. Interviews were conducted in 2010 (5th grade) and 2013 (8th grade) with the students and their mothers. Through a narrative analysis of the interview transcripts, I examined the participants’ constant or changing perspectives regarding their languages and how their schooling (or other influences) has affected their relationships with Spanish, English, and Zapoteco.

As fifth graders, all three students spoke, read, and wrote in Spanish and English as part of their school curriculum. Two of the students (Rosa and Edwin) identified as speaking or understanding Zapoteco, even though it was not a language they used in school. Opportunities to learn and speak Zapoteco came in familial contexts and their trips to Oaxaca (Author, 2016). These two students were each the youngest children, and a few of their older siblings had been born in Oaxaca, in Zapoteco-speaking contexts. The third student (Kevin) did not identify Zapoteco as a language he was familiar with as a fifth grader. In fact, his mother also spoke only Spanish and English. However, as an eighth grader, Kevin had begun playing in a band of traditional Zapoteco music, which his mother encouraged. She shared that this language – which she terms dialecto (“dialect”) – is one that her own father speaks, but that she never learned. This language learning that her son began out of interest demonstrates the power of language tied to demonstrations of identity and belonging.

Although there has been an increase in research about indigenous populations from Oaxaca moving to the U.S. (Cruz-Manjarrez, 2013; Klaver, 1997; Stephen, 2007), the literature remains slight about these youths’ educational experiences (Ruiz & Barajas, 2012). For these students, language helped them maintain ties across time and space with family members and their ethnolinguistic communities in both Mexico and Los Angeles.

Author

• P. Zitlali Morales, University of Illinois at Chicago