International Literacy Explorer - Oaxaca Language Preservation Center

Language and Literacy Preservation
Oaxaca Language Preservation Center, Mexico

PROJECT ACTIVITIES

Committed to preserving language and cultural diversity in Central and South America, the Native Literacy Center in Oaxaca, Mexico is focused on enabling indigenous peoples to write and publish texts in their own language about their own cultural practices. Using computer technology, native peoples learn how to capture their language in written form by creating their own literature.

But it is more than just a place where Indians from Mexico and around the world can come to write books in their own languages. It is a beginning of a movement that can provide them a means to continue a culture that might otherwise disappear.

Writing Books in Native Languages

Native people, mostly bilingual school teachers with the desire to preserve their language, come to the Center. These teachers are able to speak in Spanish and at least one other Indian language. Their first step is to create a written language by standardizing an alphabet and then making the alphabet coherent and uniform. If their language requires special characters that have not yet been designed for the word processor, then those characters are designed. With the help of the staff, they rework a computer keyboard to incorporate the characters and tonal accents of the new orthography.

People live and work at the Center for up to three months learning to use the computer and word processor. Indigenous educators train their peers to use the computers to record their texts. Educators are then able to write, print, bind, and publish their own books of native language literature. They write about various topics central to indigenous life teachings. Some write about their lives, their customs, their legends, and their histories. Others write about their native natural medicine, their agriculture, or their politics. At the end of three months, they have a printed, bound book that they have written themselves in their native language. Recently, a recording studio has been built so that authors can record their work by voice as well as in writing.

Quicktime Movie: Using the Center's Computers

T1 Connection (1.1 MB)
28.8 Modem (323 K)

Training Indigenous Peoples to Continue the Work

Before new authors leave the Center with their texts, they are taught how to train others. They then return to their homes and use the texts to teach adults and children in their community how to read and write about their local cultures. Authors, spending just a few months at the Center, can have a tremendous impact on their communities. One author, Bartola Morales Garcia, came to the Center and after completing her work there, trained a corps group of five teachers. These teachers then trained 200 more teachers throughout the region. These results are what will make CELIAC and other centers like it, the core of the movement to preserve the world's languages and cultures.