Oaxacan Languages of the Transnational Central Coast

The Monterey Bay has been a cultural and linguistic crossroad for over 300 years. While Latinx multilingualism is often framed in terms of English and Spanish, a key dimension of transnational migration involves speakers of indigenous languages. In recent decades, more than 100,000 people from Oaxaca have immigrated to California. Oaxaca is one of the most ethnically diverse states in Mexico, home to dozens of indigenous peoples — Zapotec, Mixtec, Mixe, Chatino, Trique, among others — speaking hundreds of distinct languages, each used by just a single town. In the Central Coast, 15,000-30,000 Oaxacan immigrants are estimated to speak the widest range of indigenous languages, according to a 2007 California Institute for Rural Studies report (Kresge 2007). Several interlocking fallacies about these languages — that they are alien, inferior, or uncivilized in comparison to Spanish — have persistently stigmatized them, even among native speakers, and this stigma has not abated in the diasporic context (Fox and Rivera-Salgado 2004). And yet, these indigenous languages often play an important role in sustaining indigenous community identities and familial ties in a diasporic context, and many indigenous immigrants express a wish to reconnect their languages and lives: to share with the larger Californian community this vital part of their Oaxacan identity.

This story, while particular, is resonant for indigenous Latinx immigrants and indeed for multilingual immigrants in general, reflecting perennial tensions around language and identity. In California, these issues have arisen repeatedly in relation to Spanish, first, a colonizing language during Spanish settlement, then an official state language, and then supplanted by English over a century of English-only movements. And yet, today, nearly 30% of Californians speak Spanish, and many, especially in the Central Coast, have indigenous language heritage as well.

There is thus an opportunity to speak to the braided story of multilingual Latinx identity in the contemporary California Central Coast, and to illustrate the ways in which the interaction of the many languages of Latin-American immigrant communities creates the range of linguistic identities and ideologies in contemporary American Latinx communities, involving the rich linguistic heritage of immigrant speakers of indigenous languages, the contested history of Spanish, and today’s English dominance, all serving to illustrate how dominant languages delimit, stigmatize, and impose on populations that speak other languages, and how dominant languages may in turn be displaced.

With Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) support, this project expands The Humanities Institute (THI) at UCSC’s Public Fellowship program, recruiting a team of paid graduate and undergraduate students who will receive fellowships to co-build an exhibition in collaboration with and under the layered mentorship of library professionals, museum professionals, local transnational indigenous activists, and academic faculty. The exhibition will consider four interlocking themes: a) language science, b) indigenous Oaxacan languages, c) Latinx language and identity, and d) Latinx language and history in the Monterey Bay.

While focusing in particular on the languages of Oaxacan immigrants and sharing those languages and the stories of this community, the project aims to exemplify the complex conditions that Latinx indigenous language speakers face in the California diasporic context and foster more general conversations about indigenous Latinx identity.

Partners  

• Comparative Language Sciences Center (CLaS)
• Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH)
• Senderos
• UCSC Special Collections and Community Archiving

This project is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Center for Comparative Language Sciences (CLaS), and The Humanities Institute.

Banner Photo: Flor de Piña dance in Oaxaca by Jose de Jesus Hernandez