Indigenous Language Policy and Education in Mexico

Abstract

The policies which nation-states, and their societal majorities, apply to their ethnic and linguistic minorities have become a touchstone to evaluate the quality of democracy, pluricultural commitment and the construction of modern states in almost any part of the world. There-fore, educational and language policies for the minorities can no longer be dismissed as marginal components of state policy that may be dealt with outside the domains of mainstream power relations and the state. Mexico is a paradigmatic case in point. At least in America it represents the probably most-centralized, all-embracing and vertical case of nation-state building. It did not, however, achieve its historical goals of creating a homogeneous nation (cf. May, Language Education, Plura-lism and Citizenship, Volume 1) and fully assimilating the indigenous peoples in the 500 years since the beginning of Spanish colonization. On the contrary, the Mexican indigenous population is the largest in the continent, although language shift advances in many language groups. During the twentieth century the indigenous population, mea-sured as speakers of the 62 surviving languages by the Mexican national census, has grown steadily in absolute numbers, but declined as a percentage of the total population from 2.2 million in 1930 (¼16%) to 7.2 million (¼7.2%) in 2000 (INEGI, 2000). To understand the apparent paradox in Mexico between present overt policies that support diversity and indigenous language maintenance on the one hand, and covert pressure for assimilation on the other, we have to revise historical and present-day ideological orientations in lan-guage policy. In the following section, I briefly outline the history of language policy for indigenous peoples from colonial times to the pre-sent day in Mexico. Next, I consider the central problems of general language and culture orientations and the use of the languages in indig-enous education. I then refer to recent changes in legislation and dis-cuss to what extent a linguistic rights perspective developed over time. In this chapter, the focus is on general language policy and linguistic rights issues, which relate to indigenous education in Mexico. I deal S. May and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 1: Language Policy and Political Issues in Education, 301–313. Education and language as instruments of state building and control have played a major role ever since complex states emerged on Mexi-can territory. The Aztecs developed their own educational system, an Academy of Science and a selective language policy to govern their vast empire (Heath, 1972). Throughout nearly three centuries of Colonial Empire (1519–1810) the Spanish Vice Kingdom attempted to build a hierarchical society modelled on Spain with the King, the Church and the Spanish language at the top. After independence in 1810, the new Mexican-born bourgeoisie pursued the construction of a unified, homogeneous nation-state as the main overall objective of state policy (cf. May, Language Education, Pluralism and Citizenship, Volume 1) up until the present (Cifuentes, 1999, 2002; del Valle and Gabriel-Stheeman, 2002; Hidalgo, 1994). In which language(s) should public administration, exploitation and the saving of souls be accomplished? Two basic strategies of language policy for indigenous peoples established continuity between the two regimes (Hamel, 1994; the classical work is Heath, 1972; see also Nahmad Sitton, 1982). The first and generally dominant strategy con-sidered the assimilation, that is dissolution, of indigenous peoples in Mexico and the suppression of their languages to be a prerequisite for building the new polity (see also McCarty, Language Education Planning and Policies by and for Indigenous Peoples, Volume 1). A second position favoured the preservation of indigenous languages and cultures in this process, without giving up the ultimate aim of unit-ing nation and state. The first strategy imposed direct Hispanicization (castellanización) through submersion programmes: the national lan-guage was considered to be the only target and medium of instruction. Transitional programmes reflecting the second strategy applied diverse bilingual methods where the indigenous languages played a subordi-nate, instrumental role as the languages of instruction and initial alpha-betization. The complex process of implementing political, spiritual and cultural domination developed full of contradictions and advanced at different speeds in different phases of history (Hamel, 2006). The century from independence in 1810 to the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) meant a time of devastating destruction of indigenous organization and communities, a severe reduction of its population and the period when Spanish became the majority language in the