Introduction

This paper concerns the translation of the Mexican national anthem into the Chatino language of San Juan Quiahije, Oaxaca, Mexico. This language is mostly oral as most people do not write it (^{Cruz 2019}), and this is precisely why the translation of the Mexican national anthem is interesting to analyze. According to Joel ^{Sherzer (1987)}, the relationship between language, society, and culture can be understood better by paying closer attention to discourse, which can be oral or written, and the length can be long or short. The people in Quiahije express their culture, social and political organization, and identity through discourse. According to Hilaria ^{Cruz (2014}; ²⁰¹⁷), and Emiliana ^{Cruz (2019)}, Quiahije has a wide range of discourse genres, including prayers, persuasive talk, political speeches, narrative, jokes, and everyday conversation. Quiahije is one of the few communities where people still practice these discourses. The discourse found in this municipality is poetic. Ongoing analysis has demonstrated the poetic features of the municipality’s discourse genres, including parallelism, formulaic phrases, difrasismo, sentential adverbs, poetization of grammar, assonance, and performance (^{Cruz H. 2017}; ^{Cruz E. 2019}). Now, the analysis of the oral discourse is from a written form and not oral, which displays its own artistic creativity.

The long written national anthem in Chatino contains a great deal of verbal art, including more conservative language, and fewer Spanish borrowings, as well as a political rhetoric that has cultural meaning (^{Sherzer 1987}). Further, the teachers who translated the text had to find creative ways to express the essence of the national anthem in Spanish into Chatino. The schools function as hegemonic institutions, which have the power to determine “The Standard” variety of Chatino that is most prestigious or considered the best (^{Silverstein 1996: 285-286}). The local schools in Quiahije established and maintain the standardized written form of Chatino. Through writing Chatino, a language that is mostly oral, a standardization ideology has been introduced (^{Silverstein 1996}). It is not just random that the local teachers created this translation; teachers have been pressured to create orthography rules for the Chatino language, so with this translation, they are accomplishing this task, as well.

The analysis of the text also shows the role of the State’s expectations that indigenous people perform and reproduce a glorious and imaginary indigeneity of the past (^{Miranda 2017}). Many actors are involved in performance of the national anthem, including local teachers, political leaders, parents, and children. As ^{Rodriguez (2016: 335)} argues, the performance of the national anthem in indigenous languages is important, and “this shows one’s patriotism”.¹ Further, the performance of the national anthem shows the power relations between the state and indigenous people, specifically in this exchange through how the indigenous people pay respect to the State (Rodriguez 2016). The performance of nationalism in Chatino communities starts in local schools, but is also re-enforced in the local government. For example, most local government offices display a Mexican flag and photos of national heroes. Further, to mark important national historical events in Mexico, such as the Mexican Revolution day (November 20th), the local schools and authorities march around town to show their patriotism. The authorities will come out of their office carrying a Mexican flag to meet the students, and then they march through town. This alliance, as Rodriguez argues, is to make a better relationship with the State, while “indexing their indigenous identity”, and the performance of indigenous people creates a stereotypic folklore about themselves (Rodriguez 2016). Further, the translation of the national anthem is to standardize the Chatino languages within a monoglot (^{Silverstein 1996}) Mexican society. Analysis of the Chatino translation will shed light on both culture and language and their intersection (^{Sherzer 1987}) in Quiahije.

1. The translation of the national anthem project

The translation of the national anthem was mandated by the 2003 General Law on Linguistic Rights of Indigenous People (Ley General de Derechos Lingüísticos de los Pueblos Indígenas 2003), which was the first law since Mexico’s independence to recognize indigenous languages at a national level. Through this law, the Mexican government created the National Institute for Indigenous Languages (INALI). The main objectives of INALI are to promote and preserve indigenous languages spoken in Mexico. The translation of the anthem became a significant project, in part because the task was rapidly undertaken in local communities by indigenous schoolteachers.

Most schools in the Chatino education system only require the use of local languages from preschool through elementary school. In secondary school, and beyond, students are not required to use (or even to be able to speak) Chatino. Exceptions include the Institute of Intercultural Education (Educación Intercultural) and a few other college programs throughout the country, including one in the state of Oaxaca, the Escuela Normal Bilingüe Intercultural de Oaxaca (ENBIO). The ENBIO trains future teachers; the students come from various regions of Mexico, especially the southern states like Chiapas. These future teachers, many of whom are indigenous, are required to speak an indigenous language and write their theses in their native languages as part of their degree program at the ENBIO. Even though the ENBIO emphasizes indigenous cultural and linguistic competence, it does not have the power to place its graduates in indigenous communities. This decision ultimately comes down to the national teachers’ union, and as a result, many teachers are placed in indigenous communities that tend to speak Spanish to children or in communities that speak another language. Many of these teachers still attempt to teach students about their indigeneity through folklore, for instance by having them dress in indigenous clothing to sing the national anthem and honor the Mexican flag.

Across the country, the Mexican anthem is performed every Monday and on special occasions, in mestizo as well as indigenous communities.² As such, the national anthem has been the most visible sign of the “inclusion” of indigenous people in the Mexican national integration project. Singing the national anthem translated into a local indigenous language has a particular power in this context. The weekly performance of the translated anthem focuses attention away from the systematic exclusion of indigenous people in Mexico, the low quality of teaching available in indigenous areas, and the exclusion of indigenous languages in classrooms. The translation of the national anthem in Chatino created positive meanings for indigenous citizens, particularly for the indigenous teachers who worked in teams to translate the piece and for the parents who are proud of their children and appreciate the image of their children honoring their Chatino culture every Monday. At the same time, these performances of the Chatino-language national anthem give rise to conflicting representations of indigenous people in Mexico, who are celebrated as contributors to the country’s national diversity but accorded lower social status.

2. The vitality of indigenous languages in Mexico

Mexico is linguistically diverse, with the government officially recognizing 364 indigenous languages, through a publication created by the National Institute for Indigenous Languages: Catálogo de Lenguas Indígenas 2005. Historically, however, the Mexican government has imposed Spanish onto the country’s indigenous peoples while suppressing or undermining their native languages. This has had a dramatic effect on linguistic vitality, as residents of many indigenous communities have ceased using their languages, while others have become bilingual, likely in transition to becoming monolingual in Spanish.

This pattern of language loss is found across the world. According to ^{Simons & Lewis (2013)}, 75% of the languages in use in 1950 are now extinct or moribund in Australia, Canada, and the United States; however, in sub-Saharan Africa, less than 10% of languages are extinct or moribund. They also found that 19% of the world’s living languages are no longer being learned by children. Many factors, which vary depending on the country, affect the vitality of indigenous languages (^{Swadesh 1948}; ^{Grenoble & Whaley 1998}; ^{Nettle & Romaine 2007}; ^{Brenzinger 2007}; ^{Rogers & Campbell 2011}; ^{Gómez Menjívar & Salmon 2018}). It is no easy task to preserve indigenous languages from disappearing; many languages are under-documented and there is little support for revitalization projects. A multitude of factors are at play, including those related to economic disadvantages, local and national politics, language ideologies among speakers, demography, geography, history, religion, urban migration, and education (^{Rogers & Campbell 2011}; ^{Simons & Lewis 2013}). To have a chance at success, any effort to support indigenous Mexican languages must take these contextual factors into account.

The Chatino languages are spoken in the southern part of the state of Oaxaca. Chatino languages belong to the Otomanguean language stock and form a genetic subgroup within Zapotecan (^{Kaufman 2006}; ^{Campbell 2013}). There are three Chatino languages: Zenzontepec, Tataltepec, and Eastern Chatino (^{Campbell 2013}), which can be located in Map 1. Eastern Chatino is spoken across nine municipalities and comprises fifteen varieties (^{Cruz, E. 2011}) that share a number of phonological, morphological, and lexical innovations (^{Campbell 2013}). These fifteen varieties are to some degree mutually intelligible (^{Cruz & Woodbury 2014}), but distinct enough to constitute dialects.

Map 1 Chatino languages. Map by Ana Smith Aguilar: ‘ya^C kwti^B=Zenzontepec; lo^A ‘o^B=Tataltepec de Valdes (la parte gris dentro de este municipio es sya’^C=Santa Cruz Tepenixtlahuaca); kchin^A ‘ya^C=San Juan Quiahije; skwi^E=San Miguel Panixtlahuaca; s’we^F Santa Catarina Juquila; ke^G shin^E=Santiago Yaitepec; senyan^A=Santa María Temaxcaltepec; wya^H=Santos Reyes Nopala; y tso^H kwi^B=San Juan Lachao Nuevo. (^{Cruz 2018}). 

Chatino languages in some communities are currently on the verge of disappearing (^{Cruz & Woodbury 2014}). The Mexican census bureau (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, INEGI) counted 51 612 Chatino speakers (Encuesta 2015). The pueblo of San Juan Quiahije is one of a few places where the Chatino language is still vital and where one can find children speaking Chatino in the streets. According to the same census, 4 233 people live in San Juan Quiahije and over half the population is bilingual in Chatino and Spanish, particularly those under 40 years old; older people are monolingual in Chatino. The people of Quiahije have resisted assimilation by using Chatino when possible and are proud that the language still thrives in their community, a pride which is reflected in their translation and performance of the Chatino-language national anthem (^{Cruz & Woodbury 2014}).

3. Educational opportunities for indigenous people

One of the major sites of assimilation of indigenous people into the Mexican national culture is education. The school system is the first place where indigenous children encounter the homogenization and indoctrination project, which has been widely documented by scholars (^{Fuentes 2012}). Children learn to (re-)produce civic rituals that connect them to the Mexican nation. This includes annual celebrations, such as Flag Day, Independence Day, and Revolution Day, as well as the weekly pledge of allegiance to the flag and the singing of the national anthem, which is celebrated every Monday (^{Montes 1995}).

The main project of schools has been to hispanicize indigenous children, both culturally and linguistically (^{Pineda 1993}; Hidalgo 1994; ^{Fuentes 2012}). The majority of indigenous languages of Mexico are not used for class instruction. Rather, Spanish is the language of instruction in most schools in Mexico, even in those in which most children speak an indigenous language (^{Vázquez Carranza 2009}; ^{Cruz & Woodbury 2014}). There are a few exceptions, such as the Zapatista schools, which include Tzeltal, Tojolabal, and Tzotzil in their curriculum (^{Baronnet 2012}). Another exception is T’arhexperakua ‘Growing together’, a collaboration project between P’urhepecha teachers and academics from Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa (^{Hamel et al. 2018}). Pineda, among others claimed that, since the 1930s, the government has officially encouraged bilingual education for indigenous communities, but this has never been accomplished (^{Pineda 1993}). According to Fuentes (1992), the symbolic violence (in the sense of ^{Bourdieu & Thompson 1991}) in the use of Spanish-only is nothing new and has been widely documented (see also ^{Heath 1972}; ^{López & Velasco 2000}; ^{Muñoz Cruz 2006}; among others).

Moreover, the use of Spanish-only impacts the academic achievement of non-native Spanish speaking students in the Mexican school system, and as a result, we find low academic achievement in indigenous communities. According to the National Institute for Education Evaluation (Instituto Nacional para le Evalulación de la Educación, INEE), Mexican indigenous schools far worse than the non-indigenous schools. For example, teachers in indigenous schools tend not to have undergraduate degrees, and in localities with the largest indigenous population, students are unlikely to pursue their education past middle school (INEE 2006). Consequently, one-fifth of Mexico’s indigenous population is illiterate, almost 2.4 million people. The cycle feeds itself in that indigenous teachers have unequal access to education, and when they train to become teachers, the education that they acquire in their home communities often does not compare to the education that urban citizens can receive.

In Chatino communities, indigenous teachers are not placed in areas where they can use their own language. While the 2003 General Law on Linguistic Rights of Indigenous People states that indigenous people have the right to receive an education in their native language, that is not being achieved in the Chatino region or elsewhere in Mexico. This situation casts doubt on INALI prospects as an effective institution for ensuring the educational rights of indigenous children.

In the face of these challenges, teachers nonetheless attempt to incorporate indigenous languages in their classrooms. In order to do so, they might, for instance, assign projects like translating the Mexican national anthem, which is the text most commonly translated in these types of projects. Teachers must create their own pedagogical materials. For example, I have worked with Amuzgo teachers who have created Amuzgo-language pedagogical materials for their classroom activities. While other teachers expressed an interest in following suit, they lacked the resources. One teacher I spoke to did use Zoque (Mixe-Zoquean) in his classroom for two main purposes: (i) to greet the children and (ii) to explain material when the children did not understand Spanish, using the native language as a mechanism to move the students toward learning Spanish. While many teachers would like to teach in Zoque, teaching in Spanish is easier because they themselves have only been educated in Spanish. They would need to be trained further in order to be able to teach solely in Zoque, and such training does not exist.

In 2015, I was invited to teach a college course for indigenous students at the Instituto Superior Intercultural Ayuuk (ISIA) in Oaxaca. Students at this university come from various indigenous communities throughout Mexico, and I was fortunate to have the opportunity to learn about their individual educational experiences. Many students talked about getting punished in schools for speaking their native tongue. One student told the group about a teacher in his school who would write down the name of the student if s/he were caught speaking Mixtec to another classmate. If the student was caught five times, s/he would be sent to clean the opposite gender’s bathroom. Another ISIA student told us about how his classmates would get in trouble for using their native language in school. One day, the students had a “native language day,” which was a day that the teachers had to talk about linguistic diversity in the classroom. The teacher of this class asked the students to translate a natural science text from Spanish into Mixe. The students did not know much of the Spanish terminology in the text, so they were not able to finish the assignment. The teacher got upset at them because they had the “opportunity” to use their language in the classroom, but they did not want to use it. The student explained to us that they wanted to use it but they did not know how to translate every word. Most of the indigenous ISIA students had negative experiences in school stemming from the use of their native language. I also gathered that most indigenous parents supported teachers punishing children at school for speaking an indigenous language, which is a practice that still occurs regularly, despite the State officially recognizing indigenous languages as national languages.

4. Linguistic ideologies and their sources

Indigenous citizens of Mexico face a double bind of linguistic ideologies. On the one hand, they are expected to speak Spanish, the majority language, to be a national and global citizen. On the other hand, they are expected to maintain the use of their indigenous language, to present themselves as authentic indigenous individuals (^{Falconi 2013}; ^{Davis 2016}). The source of this tension in Chatino communities traces back to at least the 18^th Century, when many non-indigenous people moved to coffee plantations in the Chatino region for economic opportunities. Chatinos lost their land and were used as slaves on these plantations (^{Hernández 1987}). These circumstances created a clear distinction between Chatinos and mestizos.

Moreover, in the 19^th Century, the project of nation-building began to apply assimilationist pressure. This “modernization,” including cultural and linguistic assimilation (^{Heath 1972}). During the 20th Century, bilingual education was designed for indigenous people as the main vehicle to introduce the Spanish language. Since that time, the linguistic assimilation project of Hispanicization in Mexico has been insistent (^{Messing 2007}; ^{Miranda 2017}). According to ^{Coronil (1996)}, this, in tandem with the mestizaje project has created racism against indigenous people, and a hierarchical society in which indigenous peoples are perceived as inferior and those who claim a greater degree of European descent are assumed to be superior (^{Coronil 1996}). These ideologies continue to be reproduced in Mexico and reinforce the notion that indigenous languages are less valuable than European languages like Spanish or English (^{Veronelli 2015}).

The passing of the General Law on Linguistic Rights of Indigenous People in 2003 was a significant step toward the recognition of language rights in Mexico. The law aims to regulate the recognition and protection of linguistic rights, individual and collective, and promote the use and development of indigenous languages. The law positions indigenous languages as integral to Mexican cultural and linguistic heritage and a major expression of the multicultural composition of the nation (^{Vázquez Carranza 2009}). In theory, the law defends the right of indigenous Mexicans to use their language in private and public spaces: at home, in education, and in legal, cultural, religious, and political settings. However, the law has been poorly enforced and often altogether ignored. Further, this law has not stopped the overarching assimilationist project of the 19th Century.

The passage of this law also complicated ideologies that some indigenous people had regarding speaking their native language. A particularly clear expression of this frustration occurred in 2006 at the conference Coloquio sobre lenguas otomangues y vecinas in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico. Two speakers of the Ixcatec language, Cipriano Ramírez Guzmán and Pedro Salazar Gutiérrez, made a public comment based on their experiences as speakers of a highly endangered language:

Not long ago the government told us to stop speaking our language and to learn Spanish. As a result, there are only a few elders who speak Ixcatec. Now, the government is telling us to speak our language. So, what is it? Why were we told before to not speak our language, and now we are told to speak it? The government has to make up its mind, because this is a confusing message. (Ramírez & Salazar, COLOV I, April 2006)

The Ixcatec speakers saw firsthand the changes in policy towards indigenous people in Mexico. They were told for many years not to speak their language. Now they are being told to speak it, but their language has only a handful of speakers left.

Even among indigenous people, there is a strong sentiment that as members of the Mexican nation, they should speak Spanish. Not speaking Spanish might mean exclusion from education, health care, and legal services. Some people, in fact, view today’s Mexico as monolingual, despite the fact that it is not. In 2016, the Secretary of the Department of Education in Mexico, Aurelio Nuño, gave a speech in which he said that in ten or twenty years Mexico would be a bilingual country in Spanish and English, implying that Mexico, at present, is a monolingual society. Nuño further said that to be successful, one has to speak English, and that he is in favor of reinforcing English education in Mexico by better funding English language programs. Indigenous advocates view this focus on English as a threat to support of the local language use.

Indigenous languages in Mexico are used to identify both individuals and communities. Consequently, those who feel they have lost this identity seek a new identity through other means. They may identify as a peasant if they are from the countryside, as mestizos if they are from an urban area, or as indigenous through non-linguistic identifiers, such as folklore, dancing, music, arts and crafts. In the Chatino region, many people will not identify as indigenous because they don’t speak the local language, some would say that they are not a “real” indigenous person because they do not speak an indigenous language.

There have been some positive changes in Mexico since the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) uprising of 1994, in which the EZLN declared a war on the Mexican government. Since then, they demand autonomy, justice, and peace for indigenous people (see, for example ^{Muñoz Ramírez et al. 2008}; ^{Klein 2015}; ^{Mora 2017}). Before the EZLN uprising, many Mexicans felt more affinity to their European identity, in part because of the low social status of indigenous people. As a largely Mayan movement in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, the Zapatista movement inspired many to feel pride about being indigenous in Mexico. Since then, many indigenous people have found a voice and have been able to more openly call themselves indigenous. It also caused more mestizos to embrace their indigenous background without having to present linguistic competence as evidence.

5. The national anthem in indigenous languages

Of course, the national anthem is not the only Spanish language text translated into indigenous languages. Many translations were made to convert people into Christianity. The Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) translated the Bible, or parts of the Bible, into many indigenous languages, including Chatino. SIL arrived in Mexico in 1936 as linguists and not officially as missionaries (^{Stoll 1982}). Since the arrival of SIL in Mexico they have worked with the Secretary of Education; they offer workshops for indigenous teachers and create pedagogical materials for many Mexican tongues.

Until 2005, the Mexican national anthem itself could only be found written and performed in Spanish (^{Kaltmeier & Rufer 2017}). That year, article 39Bis was added to the Law of the National Seal, Flag, and Anthem (Artículo adicionado DOF 07-12-2005) requires the national anthem be taught to children attending preschool through secondary school and, in so doing, continues the integration project created after the Mexican Revolution, which constructs Mexico as one nation united by one language, Spanish (^{Heath 1972}). When article 39a was added, it urged indigenous communities to perform the anthem in their local languages. The Secretary of Public Education selected INALI to do the corresponding translations (^{Kaltmeier & Rufer 2017}).

The local teachers were often tasked with translating the anthem into the local language. This difficult project often took several years to accomplish. Not all the teachers speak the same variety of an indigenous language, and some do not speak an indigenous language at all. Moreover, one needs to know an older form of Spanish to understand the anthem. An example of how hard it is to translate is illustrated in a conversation that linguist Ryan Sullivant had with a schoolteacher in Tataltepec named Flavia: “Flavia told me that she had a hard time figuring out how to translate “las guirnaldas de oliva” ‘olive garlands’ or ‘laurel’, ultimately settling on a reference to sweet-smelling basil, since it was given as an offering to saints, not unlike bestowing a trophy on a victor”. Note only are olives not native to Mexico, but Flavia comes from a tropical area where there are no olive trees and people do not tend to eat olives, which are a more European delicacy. In order to translate “olive”, the schoolteachers would have to employ the borrowed word from Spanish or, as Flavia and her team did in this instance, find an equivalent metaphor or symbol that would evoke a parallel sentiment. This problem would be prevalent in translations of any texts that took their metaphors from a European context.

In many indigenous communities, local teachers and leaders considered translating the anthem an important task because they saw it as an opportunity for indigenous people to participate in the national project-at the invitation of a federal agency, no less-which had excluded them from for so long. Performance was also an important addition to the national anthem, as it allowed indigenous people to show their patriotism (^{Rodríguez 2016}). Further, the project of translating the anthem into indigenous languages shifted the linguistic landscape in institutions and indigenous communities, as the translation imbues nationalism into local expressions. We can therefore view the translation of the national anthem from Spanish into indigenous languages as semiotic ideology (^Keane1997, ²⁰⁰³; ^{Rodríguez 2016}), with the project of transforming the Mexican public (^{Habermas 1991}). The translation of the anthem takes on patriotic qualities upon translation, giving it new meanings associated with indigenous authenticity, later to be used in performances produced by both indigenous leaders and the Spanish-speaking non-indigenous public (^{Rodríguez 2016}). The translation of the anthem into Mexico’s indigenous languages evokes the idea that all speakers of different languages belong equally to the national project.

6. The translation of the national anthem into San Juan Quiahije Chatino

Tomás Cruz Cruz, a schoolteacher and speaker of San Juan Quiahije Eastern Chatino, was appointed by Regional School Council in 2012 to lead the national anthem translation for San Juan Quiahije Chatino. Tomás is one of the few people who can write Chatino. He translated the anthem in collaboration with other teachers from the bilingual elementary school Guillermo Prieto. Before they started the translation work, the teachers had to study the meaning of the lyrics of national anthem in Spanish, which were not always obvious. According to Tomás, the translation took about two years to complete. An excerpt from the anthem, written with the practical orthography that the teachers used, is presented in §6.1 and the entire anthem can be found in the appendix.

Writing down the Chatino lyrics, however, raises another question-that of establishing a standardized practical writing system, or orthography. In the last decade, there has been growing interest in writing indigenous languages in Mexico. But even now, many still do not have a practical orthography. INALI is working on formalizing writing systems for all Mexican indigenous languages, which would contribute to the production of materials in indigenous languages for education, recreation, and culture. According to INALI, there are fifteen standardized practical alphabets: Totonac, Mayo, Ch’ol, Maya, Zoque, Papago, Pima, Tenek, Tojolab’al, Tsotsil, Otomi, Kakchikel, Mam, Mocho’, and Tseltal. The majority of languages that have a standardized orthography are Mayan and Uto-Aztecan languages.

Not everyone has signed on to the idea of standardizing their orthography. To give an example, the Colectivo Mixe (COLMIX) suggests in the introduction to their website (colmix.org) that their orthography does not need official recognition, because the Mixe people recognizes the spelling rules that were created in the 1980s as sufficient to meet the needs of the community. They advocated, however, for funding from INALI to publish literature in the Mixe. Another example is the case of the Zapotec languages of Oaxaca: the Isthmus Zapotec have an active writing culture, but have not standardized their practical orthography, and some Valley Zapotec speakers are participating in writing projects meant to develop a more active writing culture, without the creation of a standard written system (^{Lillehaugen 2016}).

As Silverstein argues, “people who speak standardized languages usually see non-standardized languages as not being ‘real’ languages” (^{Silverstein 1996}). It is possible that standardization could facilitate writing for indigenous languages, and writers can produce literature in their native languages. See ^{England (2003)} for a description of process and motivation in one case of the development of a standard written language. Still, language standardization could have negative outcomes as well. While some language varieties are mutually intelligible, standardization may be done using the variety that has the higher number of speakers, subjugating the smaller groups to the dominant writing system. Moreover, to create writing systems for indigenous languages is a sensitive topic with a political dimension. Linguistic pro-standardization is also about economic order, because standardization represents the rise of social institutions with power over language, such as government, school systems and dictionaries (^{Silverstein 1996}). Often people’s emotions get in the way of a practical solution. The outcome of these languages being standardized is that any official publication must be written in the standardized practical orthography. This can be alienating for those who speak a language variety that does not match well with the standardized orthography.

The Chatino language has a complicated tone system, which is difficult to represent in the Roman alphabet. Consequently, many linguists and speakers do not represent tones in writing. While the absence of tone marking may not be an issue for some languages, for others, like Quiahije Chatino which has a large tone inventory, it is imperative to represent tones in order to be understood. The alphabet for Chatino languages that is used here has not been made official by INALI; more conversation needs to happen before standardization.³

6.3 Broader themes of the translation

The differences between the Chatino and Spanish versions of the anthem are to be expected, since translation is “a deliberate and conscious act of selection” (^{Tymoczko & Gentzler 2002}) that involves forms of authorship, decision-making, and rewriting (^{Bassnett 2011}). This section will trace some significant themes of this process.

The translation puts elements of Chatino on display by highlighting aspects of Chatino language and culture that are unique to the community. In this context, the national anthem in Chatino is a means of showing indigenous identity and pride. There are even anthem singing contests run by the teachers, in which the best singer receives a prize. As a result, performing the anthem has become very important in the schools as a way to perform indigenous identity, an identity that is often denied and denigrated, but here “flourishes” in the eyes of the wider culture, in particular, when the anthem is sung by children clad in huarache sandals or barefoot, dressed in traditional clothing and braids for young girls, as seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Children in Santos Reyes Nopala honoring the Mexican flag (Photo by Maribel Matus Mendoza) 

The version of the national Mexican anthem in Chatino is dually indexical because it reflects both community experience and nationalist discourse, similar to what ^{Rodriguez (2016)} has found in his description of the national anthem in the Warao language of Venezuela. This dual aspect is reflected in performances of the anthem by indigenous people, in which indigenous people honor the flag and themselves by singing the anthem in Chatino in a traditional outfit.⁴

The teachers are also proud of translating something complex and meaningful. One told me, “Since the national anthem is mandatory to be sung in schools, we want to sing it in our native language, and not in Spanish”. The teachers alluded to the fact that the anthem is already part of the official curriculum, which they believe shows that indigenous people are also Mexican. It provides a uniquely indigenous space for children and their families that was formerly not available in schools. For example, when colleagues and I first started doing fieldwork in Chatino communities, many teachers were already busy translating the anthem. In 2008, we visited the community Tataltepec de Valdés, where teachers had just finished their translation, and a retired teacher, Flavia Mateo Mejía, who helped translate the anthem into the Tataltepec language, sang it to us. She showed much pride in her work and spoke of how difficult it was to translate.

Despite the teachers’ efforts to use the anthem to preserve their language, the national anthem translation project is a continuation of government assimilation projects. Performances of the anthem show off Mexico’s linguistic diversity and oblige indigenous people, as Mexican citizens, to pledge loyalty to the Mexican flag and to obey the Constitution. However, that assimilation comes with the compromise that Chatinos have made the Mexican anthem their own, an expression that they will defend their land against their enemies, as in the case of San Juan Quiahije against their neighbor communities. The indigenous anthem carries with it embedded forms of local and national resistance.

After translating the anthem, the teachers did not have to teach anything else in Chatino, and they returned to the regular curriculum. Images of children singing the anthem in their native language are what the Mexican mainstream appreciates seeing: innocent-looking indigenous people singing. The Chatino translation of the national anthem shows that while linguistic policy has changed in the schools that indigenous children attend, there has not been any significant socio-structural transformation at the national level. Further, it provides the space for indigenous languages to be lawfully accepted in what remains a largely Spanish-speaking society.

7. Conclusion

The translation of the Mexican national anthem reflects both a Chatino regional identity and a national identity of being a Mexican citizen. The regional identity of San Juan Quiahije can be seen in the specific references to what the community has experienced, as well as in the themes of religion, conflict, war, and community integrated into the translation. However, the national symbols within the anthem mark the Chatino people as Mexican citizens, and therefore part of the national project of assimilation and unification. The anthem is therefore dually indexical (^{Rodriguez 2016}). This is evidenced most clearly in performances of the anthem. Each performance of the national anthem by Chatino people, often wearing traditional clothing, reinforces the Chatino identity. It also symbolizes national inclusiveness for the Chatino people, but in a slighted way, because it also marks them as previously unrecognized.

The translation of the national anthem provides insight into the limitations of government efforts to encourage indigenous language use and inclusion (^{Rodriguez 2016}). Further, this translation process is the result of language-society-culture relations (^{Sherzer 1987}), where the anthem is used to build new relations as well as reflect current ones (^{Sherzer 1987}; ^{Rodriguez 2016}). The translation of the Mexican national anthem into Chatino is similar to what Rodriguez finds in Warao national anthem translation. It is an index/icon, and a semiotic and performative instrument (Rodriguez 2016: 4). In Mexico and Venezuela, the “intention” is to make an inclusive political society and safe face from the history of colonialism. The Chatino translation of the national anthem become local, but only for Chatinos, because for the State it was the Mexican national anthem. In a sense is a “new kind of text with overlapping but different semiotic possibilities from the Spanish version” (Rodriguez 2016). The translation of the national anthem in Chatino was viewed as idea that this was an inclusion, but Chatinos made their own interpretation of the national Mexican anthem.

In some ways these efforts are welcome, as many speakers of indigenous languages search for answers as to how to stop the loss of our languages. It is clear that to save them, speakers need to encounter their languages in more contexts outside of their homes. But how have government programs fared in that respect? INALI was created to support these efforts, but it has encountered barriers to implementing effective policies. Indigenous languages need to be used in schools, in government, and for social services, which requires a monumental social and political shift. To achieve this shift, we need to initiate changes at the community level, where some indigenous teachers have led high-profile projects in local schools, such as the translation of the national anthem.

Importantly, despite its failings, the 2003 General Law on the Linguistic Rights of Indigenous People empowered speakers to question the government’s paucity of support for them. Many argued that they have had little backing from the federal government because lack adequate health care, education, and land. The creation of INALI provided room for speakers to discuss the importance of indigenous languages and rights. For centuries, speakers have been told that their native tongues were “dialects”, not languages, and that the only legitimate one was Spanish. However, after thirteen years of INALI promoting indigenous language projects, they still have not been ascribed the prestige of other major languages, and it remains that speakers of indigenous languages must learn Spanish and English to succeed in Mexico and the U.S. The Mexican government has not advanced the recognition of all its languages, even with the creation of INALI. In light of the government’s lack of resources assigned to its indigenous citizens, the benefit of having the national anthem and the Constitution in their languages remains unclear to indigenous communities.

As indicated, the recent celebration of indigenous languages creates conflicting linguistic ideologies for many Chatino speakers. Despite its official recognition and the translation of the anthem, Chatino is not the language of instruction in Chatino communities, and students are often punished for speaking it. Further, Chatino people have been oppressed by the Mexican nation, and feel pressure to assimilate by learning the prestige languages of Spanish and English. Indigenous languages and identity, however, are now celebrated during select special occasions.

Based on my own experience as a speaker of Chatino, for the status of our language to change, the people of Quiahije need to create spaces for the language to flourish. Speakers must find the language in more contexts outside of their homes, for example, in schools, the government, arts and literature, and social services. In indigenous communities like Quiahije, it will be very difficult for language advocates to raise the prestige of Chatino over Spanish, because indigenous language use continues to be stigmatized by the larger society. This situation fits into a larger pattern; the citizens that hold power impose their perspectives on marginalized groups (^{Gramsci et al. 1971}; ^{Bourdieu & Thompson 1991}), and unless Chatino speakers create the change needed to shift the status quo, Spanish will remain imposed on our community.