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“For us, as public servants of the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI), now that this International Decade is beginning, it must be the highest priority. We are going to place the issue of our indigenous languages as the number one priority in institutional work. We are going to allocate all our institutional efforts and also our programs and our resources ”.
These were the words of the head of the INPI, Adelfo Regino Montes, at the end of last week as part of the accompaniment of the virtual conference “The situation of indigenous languages in the framework of the Decade of Indigenous Languages 2022-2032”, given by the linguist ayuuk Juan Carlos Reyes Gómez, doctor in Mesoamerican Languages and Cultures from the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands, in a transmission organized by the INPI.
The official announced that a large part of the resources and efforts will be focused in particular on the Program for the Comprehensive Wellbeing of Indigenous Peoples (Probipi) and the Indigenous Education Support Program, both part of the institute, and added:
“So that we can, from now on, generate projects for the revitalization, development and strengthening of each of the 68 indigenous languages, I am proposing that we make a bag in the institute of around 100 million pesos and that this money It can be used for specific actions to rescue, revitalize, strengthen, develop each of the indigenous languages, placing special emphasis on those languages that are unfortunately at serious risk of extinction ”.
Distant budgets
Throughout the week, the public debate on the initiative of the head of the Executive for the possible incorporation of the National Institute of Indigenous Languages (Inali), whose budget depends on the federal Ministry of Culture, in the INPI, transpired on social networks. which operates as a non-sectorized entity.
Both institutes have budgetary pockets very distant from each other. While for this year the Inali has 71 million pesos, the INPI will operate with just over 3,819 million, of which, according to the PEF 2022, it will spend 2,661 million, 70% of its budget, in the two programs mentioned by its holder: the Support to Indigenous Education and the Integral Welfare of Indigenous Peoples.
On Sunday, January 3, through a public statement, the federal Ministry of Culture guaranteed that this year it will continue its work “in favor of indigenous languages” through Inali, since the institute has a guaranteed budget of 71 million pesos, but defended the viability of the initiative of the Executive to merge it with the INPI: “the community infrastructure that the INPI has would allow a greater scope and impact of the study, institutionalization and safeguarding of national indigenous languages” .
Without mentioning said discussion during his participation, Regino Montes announced that on February 21 he will give details of the projects that will be promoted by the institute he heads for the strengthening of indigenous languages throughout the country. In addition, he announced: “this year we are going to launch this commission that the President of the Republic has given us, the creation of the University of Indigenous Languages of Mexico.” He noted that said project will be launched in Milpa Alta, south of Mexico City, by indications of the Presidency of the Republic.
Joint efforts
As part of his virtual conference before representatives of the Coordinating Centers for Indigenous Peoples (CCPI) and the Indigenous Cultural Radio Broadcasting System (SRCI), Dr. Juan Carlos Reyes Gómez pointed out that among the languages prone to disappearing are those subordinate to a language “Of greater use, power and prestige”, associated with “marginalization, poverty and lack of opportunities” and that contempt and discrimination generate identity problems.
Likewise, he proposed some possible strategies to be followed for the maintenance and preservation of indigenous languages in the country: “alliances must be established with other academic and State institutions, as well as community organizations, initiatives and institutions, as well as coordinating development actions and linguistic strengthening or revitalization with other official bodies whose purpose is to provide care for indigenous peoples ”. He emphasized that there are institutions that for their immediate tasks will be essential, including Inali himself and the General Directorate of Indigenous Education, of the SEP.
However, he said that public policies “cannot continue to float in the institutions of the State and never reach the peoples, the speakers. This implies a linguistic planning process that must consider linguistic study, registration and documentation, something they call a corpus. Next, languages must be given status, power, auditory and visual presence, that indigenous languages are present in all media, in all spaces under different modalities. And, finally, to facilitate the transmission, the teaching of these languages in the communities ”.
A new language survey?
So far, Mexico is among the top 10 countries in the world with the greatest linguistic diversity. According to Inali data, in 2008 68 linguistic groupings with 364 variants from 11 different families were identified in Mexico. For Dr. Juan Carlos Reyes Gómez, almost 14 years after this study, more dialectological studies are needed to determine with greater precision how many languages we are speaking. That should be a goal of many in the coming decade.
Decade Calendar:
- 2020-2021: Planning and implementation of actions relevant to indigenous languages and mobilization and consolidation of the necessary resources, among others.
- 2022-2025: All relevant stakeholders will participate in the implementation of the global action plan through a financial mechanism.
- 2025-2027: Mid-term exam. New opportunities will be identified and existing problems will be addressed for the integration of indigenous languages in a new global framework for development.
ricardo.quiroga@eleconomista.mx
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