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KEEPING THE FIRE ALIVE: A DECADE OF LANGUAGE REVITALIZATION IN MEXICO*

José Antonio Flores Farfán Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social Juárez 87, Tlalpan 14000, México D.F., México flores@ciesas.edu.mx

Abstract

A decade ago innovative efforts were undertaken by a group of native and non-native

professionals to safeguard and promote the cultural and linguistic heritage of a number of

indigenous groups in Mexico. The initial focus was directed to the Nahua people, dwelling in the

Balsas river basin in the state of Guerrero, Mexico. In this region roughly 40 thousand people

still speak Mexicano as their native tongue. This article reviews the results and ongoing efforts

of that decade-long initiative, in particular the effect of successful popular opposition to the

construction of a long-planned hydroelectric dam in the indigenous speakers’ region and the

effect of developing and commercializing a series of indigenous crafts that reinforce the

ethnolinguistic awareness of Balsas Nahuas. Other recent initiatives in different indigenous

groups such as the Maya are also touched upon. More briefly discussed, from a critical

perspective, are general theoretical, methodological, and political strategies for reversing

language shift, especially although not exclusively in Mexico.

Introduction

It is well known that most languages worldwide are threatened by extinction. Of an estimated

linguistic diversity of 6000 languages, by the year 2050 most of this wealth will become a

memory---between 50 and 90%---if urgent action is not undertaken (see for example Krauss

1992). This is even more likely considering that approximately half of these languages have

fewer than 600 thousand speakers (Karttunen 2000). In other words, by the end of this new

century only about 300 ‘strong’ languages will survive. Linguists and activists in different forums,

including publications and conferences, have made a call for action against the demise of

linguistic diversity [1]. The destruction of cultural and linguistic heritage is a growing concern,

which has led to the creation of a number of initiatives to confront the threat of extinction and

promote cultural and linguistic diversity. This is true most of all in the so-called developed (or

‘rich’) countries of Europe and the USA [2]. Yet the resources available are still few when

compared to those of the various organizations in charge of coping with the destruction of the

world's biodiversity, another seriously threatened legacy. The extent to which languages are at

risk of fading away and the rate of that development are higher by far than what is predicted for

the biological species. The challenges are enormous and scholars have had to admit that the fate

of a significant number of indigenous languages is that they will decline within a couple of

generations. This brings about difficult and sensitive issues of individual and community

freedom to keep or give up their language as well as the role that linguists can or should play

in language revitalization and reversal proposals (see for example Cantoni 1996: VI, or more

recently Grenoble and Whaley 2006).

As is the case with programmatic formulations in the field of linguistic human rights (for

a critique see the articles in Hamel 1997), we understand better the factors that do or do not

provoke linguistic discrimination or shift than the ways to oppose and reverse these phenomena

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(see Fishman 1991: passim). This article, pointing to some of these factors, reviews a series of

strategies in progress in a pilot effort to reverse “linguicism” (Skutnabb-Kangas 1998), with

special reference to Mexicano (or Nahuatl) [3] along the Balsas River, in the state of Guerrero,

Mexico. Based on extensive research and collaborative action, it reviews the outcome so far of

an innovative model that promotes a participatory methodology using the arts in different

media (audio, video, and internet). The specifics of the case study reported here relate to

general issues at stake in developing effective alternative strategies for reversing language shift,

revitalizing, maintaining and even developing minoritized languages. Effectively pursuing such

goals will require going beyond previously accepted descriptive documentation and adopting an

activist documentation approach (see the Introduction and Appendix in Flores Farfán and

Ramallo 2010) [4]. But before looking at such issues, to better assess the situations reported

here, let us provide a general outline of the sociolinguistic diversity in Mexico.

Mexico’s Linguistic Demography

Comprising a territory of roughly 2 million square kilometers, Mexico is one of the largest, most

complex and heavily populated countries of Latin America -- only less so than Brazil and

Argentina. Contrary to widespread simplistic beliefs outside Mexico [5], its geopolitical

complexity encompasses parts of North America, Central America and the Caribbean. These

three clearly differentiated regions form an extremely plural and complex Mexico. This

heterogeneity is clearly manifested in the ethnic composition of each region, of which the

northern part has the lowest prevalence of indigenous population while the southern region

comprises most of the native population of the country. Such differences correlate with the low

economic development of the latter as compared to the former. Most of the cultural region

usually referred to as Mesoamerica falls within the Mexican national territory [6].

Of a total population of about 120 million people, today 10 to 15% is of indigenous origin

and still speaks a prehispanic tongue, with varying degrees of bilingualism in Spanish, the

national, only fully standardized official language of the country and the language utilized almost

exclusively in mass-media and all public spheres. Historically, Spanish has been the language

with most speakers in the country at least since the inception of Mexico’s independence from

Spain in 1810 (see Pellicer et al. 2005). Yet even today, especially considering the variety of

linguistic families represented (see below), Mexico is one of the most linguistically diverse

countries in the world, behind only such countries as Papua New Guinea and India.

The estimated 10 to 18 million indigenous people represent between 60 and 300

different languages, depending on which source one relies on. Because they manifest different

socioeconomic interests, statistics about indigenous people are the subject of intense political

manipulation, indexing opposing ideological interests. This is the case with quantitative profiles

of minority populations, not only in Mexico, but worldwide (for a discussion see e.g.

Khubchandani 1989) [7]. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that there is no agreement

whatsoever as to what constitutes a language and what constitutes a dialect. Different

approaches to reckoning speakers and languages can be seen in some extreme contrasts in

demographic and linguistic figures. The Mexican national census reports an underestimated

indigenous population of 6.7%, while agencies specifically in charge of the indigenous sector,

such as the Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas (CDI) (‘National

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Commission for the Development of Indigenous People’) offer overestimates, 15% or more in

the case of the CDI. Similarly, the Protestant evangelical organization known as the Summer

Institute of Linguistics (SIL), with a Tower of Babel approach to language, tends to consider every

speech form a language, while indigenous intellectuals have a very different point of view. The

SIL, for example, considers that two representatives of the Otomanguean family, Zapotec and

Mixtec, are made up of 57 and 51 "languages" respectively, whereas some indigenous leaders

consider that these same two Otomanguean varieties consist of only four or five distinct

languages apiece.

Quantitative profiles are not only limited indicators of qualitative sociopolitical phenomena, but

they also represent the point of view of outsiders as opposed to the view of native speakers, as

in this last case. Even more telling about the dissonance between speakers’ views and outsiders’

views of what counts as a language or a speaker is the contrast between the high SIL language

counts and the idea of a "general, unified Nahuatl" put forward by some Nahua teachers or

intellectuals. In sum, figures are manipulated according to different actors, representing

different ideological biases, and do not necessarily reflect actual sociolinguistic complexity, even

when they have been a part of it.

The linguistic landscape includes languages representing several linguistic families,

notably the Uto-Aztecan, the Mayan, and the Otomanguean. These three families consist of

continua of different languages presenting a variety of scenarios of language retention and shift.

Other important Mesoamerican language families present in Mexico include three isolates, with

only one language each, Tarascan (Purepecha), Huavean (Ombeayiüts), and Seri (Cmiique iitom).

Considering that historically they were once related to other languages, Mexico’s language

isolates constitute an indication of indigenous people’s resistance to total assimilation and of

their endangered status (see Karttunen 2000).

To move beyond statistical profiles and language family identifications alone, I will

briefly discuss some representative cases of the continuum of retention and shift, or language

conflicts, of the country.

A Sociolinguistic Outline of Mexican Indigenous Languages

Attempts in Mexico to characterize the sociology of Mesoamerican languages are few

(exceptions are Flores Farfán 1989; Lastra 1992; Hamel 1997). Sociolinguistic accounts of

indigenous languages have been dominated by one of two major and opposing trends: (1)

Anthropological (Socio-) linguistics (AS); and, (2) the Sociolinguistics of Conflict (SC). AS

concentrates on the internal organization of language in strong connection to culture at a more

‘micro’ level, while SC emphasizes the ‘macro’ inroads of Spanish that from the outside threaten

Mexico’s original tongues. Departing from both of these perspectives allows a much more

realistic and complex situation to emerge (see Flores and López 1989). For instance, the series

of contradictions that nurture the dynamics of Mesoamerican languages retention and shift are

only partially captured by the SC use of the concept of diglossia (see for example Hamel 1997).

In other words, the focus of AS is the “native theories” that distinguish indigenous people’s

epistemologies, including languages. In contrast, SC is interested in the influence that Spanish

institutions exert on the indigenous worlds, reaching the point where indigenous peoples adopt

Spanish as their primary language. A more nuanced approach would have to take into account

the history of language contact and language shift in Mexico, an unwritten chapter in Mexico

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(nevertheless see among others Brice Heath 1972; Lockhart 1992; Flores Farfán 2000). The

literature proposes various models of contact and shift (see among others Fishman 1991; Krauss

1998) advancing the idea of a continuum of language change and ultimately substitution, tracing

displacement of various features of the indigenous language by Spanish ones. According to these

models, such developments as change in some varieties of Mexicano from a polysynthetic to an

analytic structure, shifts in phonemics or morphology, forms of attrition, and massive borrowing,

make it possible to identify a speech variety's phase in the process of endangerment. But

phenomena such as language interpenetration and syncretism complicate these models, and

“phase” theories are only rough approximations of the complete history of an endangered

language. The actual dynamics of language maintenance and language shift are more complex

than this; a language may simultaneously demonstrate features of what are supposed to be

different phases, as is true of Mexicano. Moreover, a more open conceptualization of Mexican

multilingualism, rather than the received diglossic view (as in Hamel 1997), might better

characterize the linguistic syncretism described for example by Hill and Hill for Mexicano (1986)

as an appropriation and resistance phenomenon (Hill 1993, Flores Farfán 2000, 2001).

Contrary to the idea of stable bilingualism in Mexico (see for instance Suárez 1983: 171)

or the non-recognition of the threats posed to less used languages (see UNESCO

http://www.unesco.org/culture/), all Mexican languages are endangered, yet to extremely

varying degrees. This can be demonstrated by the case of Yucatec Maya (Yucatec). Spoken in

the Yucatec Peninsula (YP), and distributed across three different states (Campeche, Yucatan

and Quintana Roo), Yucatec is a fairly robust, still vital and viable language. With around a million

speakers, Maya historically is a language that considerably more people spoke during

prehispanic Maya civilization than today. After the demise of prehispanic Maya civilization,

speakers certainly have not increased or only relatively been maintained in terms of number of

speakers. Yet Yucatec presents high degrees of intelligibility at the regional level, with minor

dialectal varieties. Moreover, consider Yucatec’s high intelligibility with Lacandon, spoken in the

Chiapas jungle of Mexico, and with Mopan and Itza, spoken in Belize and Guatemala

respectively. This continuum suggests that these Maya languages are really modalities of one

single ‘language’, not separate languages. This is a perception much more in consonance with

speakers’ perspectives, as opposed to received (academic or not) viewpoints in which the

concept of language stems from an ethnocentric monolingual construction, linked to a written

culture and the emergence of nationalism.

Another indication of Yucatec’s vitality is that regionally it has exerted more influence

on (regional) monolingual Spanish than any other Mesoamerican language. It also enjoys a

certain institutional support (for example from the Academia de la Lengua Maya, The Academy

of the Maya Language) and is required (although not officially so) in public spheres, especially in

the most densely populated Maya regions in the YP, namely, in central Quintana Roo, the YP

area with the highest percentage of monolingual Maya population. Thus Yucatec enjoys

considerable language loyalty and even prestige among important sectors of both Maya and

Mestizo populations in the YP and beyond. Yet this does not mean it is not endangered. Or that

Yucatec is not subjected to stigmatization, a fact manifested in the existent terminology for

different Yucatec varieties, the hach “real” Maya vs. the xeek’ “mixed” Maya. For example,

consider that due to migration and intensive contact in tourist resorts, Yucatec varieties have

almost disappeared along the coasts of the YP. Given this context, we have initiated an

intervention project in the YP, looking to develop and disseminate materials in Yucatec in

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different media (see Briceño Chel, Jiménez Santos & Flores Farfán 2002) following the

participatory model succinctly described below for the Balsas Nahuas, based on indigenous

epistemologies (see Flores Farfán 2005b). This methodology develops co-authorships or a

multiple author approach in which speakers are actively incorporated as principal protagonists

of the materials developed, recovering their own indigenous ways of speaking as expressed in

for instance language games. These materials are in turn disseminated at the community level

via workshops in which, as we will see, an indirect method of revitalization is deployed.

In contrast to Yucatec and a handful of other situations (e.g. Seri, Purepecha, Huave, and

Huichol), the case of the Otomanguean family presents the most extreme instances of

dialectalization. The Otomanguean language Zapotec has at least four clearly differentiated and

mutually unintelligible varieties or "languages" (or, by the SIL count, over 50 "languages"),

spoken by a socially compartmentalized population totaling over a quarter of a million in

regionally diverse locations. If Yucatec represents relative linguistic unity, Zapotec represents

the opposite. Mixtec, another Otomanguean language, resembles Zapotec in this respect.

Within Zapotec itself, one can encounter sharp differences ranging from almost total

displacement to language retention and even language development. For example, the use of

Juchitec, Zapotec’s most prestigious variety, is linked to relative economic wealth, contrasting

sharply with other Zapotec varieties, especially in that it constitutes a language of commerce in

the Isthmus’s markets. This situation reaches the point where speakers of the neighboring

isolate Huave have to learn Zapotec. In addition, due to a grassroots movement, Juchitec has

become a literary language and has reached the phase of being accepted as a written language

by at least some sectors of the Juchitec population (see Saynes Vázquez 1996). This is still a rare

situation in the Mexican indigenous scene, despite official declarations and claims of support for

indigenous languages in the public sphere.

A similarly complex situation emerges, in view not only of the differences between the

various Uto-Aztecan languages but also even of the differences between various localized forms

of a single one. If one compares Mexicano demography with for example extremely small

languages such as (Hokan) Cocopa or nearly extinct Kiliwa (with fewer than 50 speakers), the

high number of Mexicano speakers as a whole will become evident, with over a million and

maybe even more speakers, the most numerous (indigenous) ‘language’ of the country.

Geographic fragmentation reduces any sense of linguistic unity, promoting the use of Spanish

as a lingua franca and also fostering the dialectalization of Mexicano [8]. One can also find

situations in which Mexicano is almost extinct, as in the few communities where Mexicano is

still spoken in the Central Mexican plateau (in and around today Mexico City). The same is true

for neighboring states such as Morelos and to a lesser degree Tlaxcala (see Messing 2007). As

one moves away from central Mexico, it is possible to find several separate Mexicano

communities, including the Balsas region, with high rates of Mexicano-speaking population and

even monolinguals in Mexicano. In some of these communities, Spanish is still acquired as a

second language both by children and also even by adults (as reported in Hill and Hill 1986 and

still valid today).

Reversing Language Shift in Mexico: the Balsas Nahuas

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Contrary to the situation that prevailed in prehispanic times, when Mexicano had the status of

lingua franca in the Mexica (‘Aztec’) ‘empire’, today, like all Mesoamerican languages and

cultures, Mexicano is endangered. Extensive research on the history and consequences of

Mexicano-Spanish contact abound (Hill and Hill 1986; Karttunen and Lockhart 1976; Lockhart

1992; Flores Farfán 2000). Among the various languages treated in this literature, the most

interesting are those that document cases of resistance to complete assimilation and language

shift, in which indigenous speakers have found ways to give continuity to their endangered

languages (see Hill 1993; Flores Farfán 2000, 2001). This is the case for the Balsas Nahuas, whose

tradition of resistance probably runs all the way back to incomplete subjugation at the time of

Aztec 'imperialism' [9]. Today this tradition of reinvention and political dissent is manifested in

for instance the flourishing of native artists, Tlacuilos, “Painters”, whose production is part of

the grassroots movement briefly depicted below [10].

The Mexicano communities of the Balsas region comprise around 40,000 Mexicano

speakers dwelling along the Balsas river basin in the state of Guerrero, officially the third most

marginalized and most impoverished state of the country. These include communities that

historically have undergone different stages of language retention and language shift covering

the whole spectrum of the continuum (see Flores Farfán 2000, 2001).

Given the relatively low agricultural productivity of the region, Balsas Nahuas have

developed other means of economic subsistence and other survival strategies, such as the

production and marketing of different crafts (amates, [11] carved wooden masks, pottery),

which Balsas Nahuas sell in different locations, enabling them to generate a certain economic

wealth. The successful, ongoing production of crafts for the tourist market, rather than

destroying Nahuas’ cultural legacy, has tended to reinforce it (see Good 1988; Amith 1995).

To a considerable extent, commerce within Balsas communities takes place in Mexicano.

Contrary to the commonest situations depicted in the literature (see for example Lam 2009;

Messing 2007), this fact has contributed to a strong sense of ethnolinguistic unity, preventing

internal Mexicano dialectal fragmentation in this region and creating an awareness of Mexicano

instrumental and ethnic value. In this sense, even when Spanish has penetrated traditionally

Mexicano-oriented domains, like the household in specific communities such as Xalitla, there

are still strong internal pressures from other more Mexicano-speaking communities to use

Mexicano in commercial or ritual exchanges. An additional context worth mentioning that has

strengthened Mexicano awareness of ethnolinguistic unity is a successful resistance movement

against the construction of the long-planned hydroelectric San Tetelcingo dam in the region, a

couple of decades ago. A local organization formed at the time, the Consejo de Pueblos Nahuas

del Alto Balsas (CPNAB), still remains active. For the first time in Mexican history an indigenous

movement against a state’s project has succeeded. This fact is telling both of the strength of

these communities and the new conditions by which the relationship between minority

populations and the Mexican State are defined. In short, the threat of displacement by the

construction of the dam strengthened awareness of Mexicano ethnolinguistic unity much more

than any official educational program in the region could have, no matter how supposedly

"bilingual" or "bicultural". The grassroots movement that emerged against the San Juan

Tetelcingo dam has stressed Mexicano as an emblematic symbol and even as a language of

secrecy to communicate within the communities. Mexicano is intensively manipulated in

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political identity formation and wielded against the Mexican's state's hidden assimilation trends.

The new global relationship between indigenous populations and national states has favored

the emergence of a group of political leaders who stem, mainly and ironically, from a particularly

Hispanized community in the Balsas region, Xalitla. Due to some of these leaders’ desire to claim

a Mexicanero identity in negotiating political legitimacy, these middle-aged men pretend to

speak Mexicano; that is to say, they are pseudo-speakers (see Flores Farfán, 2001). This ‘new’

type of speaker is distinguished from quasi-speakers (see Dorian’s 1981 similar notion of semi-

speaker). Quasi-speakers also participate in these movements as leaders and have been

empowered as well. Today they gain more and more visibility in the broader political scene, and

this context has actually motivated them to become more active Mexicano speakers, at least

emblematically. Along these lines, as we will see below, reactivating a “passive” competence

has also been one of the most outstanding results of our revitalization efforts. This has been

done via the production and dissemination of multimedia materials at the community level.

Multimedia and the Arts in Language Revitalization and Development

There are few, if any, high-tech efforts in the field of language revitalization and development,

especially in the so-called under-developed countries. The emergence of a Balsas Nahuas culture

of innovation and recreation of their ancestral heritage provides a positive context to revitalize

and develop Mexicano. The availability of a tradition of cultural re-creation has allowed us,

together with local figures, to produce a number of books. Collaborators include a native artist,

Cleofas Ramírez Celestino, with whom we have co-authored a number of books on Mexicano

riddles, tales and tongue twisters (see for example Ramírez Celestino and Flores Farfán 1995a,

1995b). Her two daughters, Paula and Félix Alejandro Ramírez, both in their early twenties at

the beginning of the PRMDLC, have also been integrated into the project. They constitute the

Balsas Nahuas team of native professionals who have provided a series of voices for the videos

and recorded versions of the books. A most stimulating and interesting result, derived

“naturally” from the development of the project itself, is precisely the re-activation of what used

to be a quasi-competence of these young ladies, giving way to a full-fledged speaking ability.

Today, they overtly communicate in Mexicano, in contrast to what used to occur in their

childhood, when they replied in Spanish to their grandmother’s addresses in Mexicano. While

there are villages where Mexicano is still the mother tongue of the community and the

monolingual population still includes children, as in San Agustin Oapan, these women come from

Xalitla, a village where language shift is so advanced that it almost approaches the point of

extinction. This result shows that it is indeed possible to reverse language shift at least on an

individual level, when there are relevant socioeconomic, emotional and even aesthetic

motivations involved, as briefly reviewed in this article.

Using an intercultural approach and taking advantage of all types of media, we seek to

reinforce the indigenous language and culture, drawing on their innovative character by

adapting several Mexicano oral and pictographic genres, such as local riddles and tales,

illustrated in amates, for such media as video and internet (see for example

http://lenguasindigenas.ciesas.edu.mx). This multimedia initiative allows us to reach a wide

public and does not limit our efforts to indigenous people. Rather we hope to (re)educate a

more general public about the values and aesthetics of indigenous languages and cultures,

especially although not exclusively through the informal education of children. This approach

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counteracts long-established educational practices that have separated indigenous people from

mainstream education. Such separation has tended to segregate and ghettoize indigenous

peoples, a most subtle and pervasive way of discrimination that is still prevalent, as

demonstrated by the very existence of the Dirección General de Educación Indígena, a branch

of the ministry of education devoted exclusively to indigenous education.

In our proposal, promoting the use of Mexicano is not linked to hegemonic institutions

of Hispanicization, such as the school apparatus. In Mexico, as in a number of other countries,

schools do not serve to promote or revitalize native tongues (see Flores Farfán 2005a); rather

they serve as one of the principal entry points for the national language and thus for

acculturation and assimilation, no matter how "bilingual" or "intercultural" they claim to be. A

series of negative consequences are linked to the school’s policies towards indigenous

languages. For instance, limiting languages to writing eliminates the particular voices of local

speech varieties and replaces them with fixed, artificial forms that have neither flexibility nor

authenticity – not to speak of users. Thus school-introduced written forms of indigenous

languages become the conduit for inculcating nation-state ideologies and doctrines among

indigenous peoples and foisting such ideologies and doctrines on them. Examples include

reducing educational interventions to the production of an alphabet – a technical issue – and

translating nationalist content such as the national anthem, the Mexican constitution, the

national school curricula and the like.

Given this context, the intervention model adopted for this program opts in its first stage

to develop extra-school workshops conducted totally in Mexicano, or what can be called inverse

monolingualism. The dynamics of the workshops are as follows: Mostly although not necessarily

in the Saint Patrons’ festivities of the communities, we invite children to participate in a video

projection. This allows us to first warm up the atmosphere, conceiving such an exercise NOT as

a school activity, but rather as a part of the feast’s celebrations, echoing people’s own cultural

practices. Afterwards we open up the floor to the audience for comment on the content of the

video, what type of things they like (or don’t like), whether they know different versions of the

stories, can reply to riddles or provide others, etc. As part of an emergent and relational

dynamic, we encourage participation by distributing books with tapes to those who have taken

an active role. By the end almost everybody has had something to say, and we basically turn

over to participants as many materials as possible through these workshops. At this point we

have distributed thousands of books and tapes in the whole region and beyond. In general the

workshops have produced very positive results in terms of attendance and participation. Quite

a few children of different ages attend the workshops together with their parents, promoting

and reinforcing intergenerational transmission of the language and culture, one of the main aims

of preventing and reversing language shift. Over the years our program's initiatives have

countered the cultural and linguistic violence exerted on the Nahua people by returning for their

local use their own culture's materials. This indirect method of revitalization operates beyond

secondary socialization (schools), impacting the household and the community as a whole,

opposing the negative effects of schools. Innovative re-creation of traditional Mexicano genres

has proved to have very positive effects; recasting local characters such as the opossum, a

Mesoamerican trickster (see Ramírez Celestino and Flores Farfán 1995a). At the same time, this

approach recovers the oral medium and local pictographic practices (the amates de historias

‘amates that tell stories’), a local way of "writing" Nahuas’ social life, true self-representations

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(for an example see lenguasindigenas.ciesas.edu.mx), setting them in three-dimensional

animations to produce high quality Mexicano “cartoons”. Among other things, this provides

status to favorite indigenous media, including the oral and the pictographic, stimulating their

use in enjoyable ways. All this creates curiosity and interest in consuming the products that are

distributed in the workshops, such as books, tapes or DVDS. It is common for households to have

a tape recorder or a DVD player, making local use of these products possible on a spontaneous,

everyday basis. So far we are still in the phase of evaluating community use of the distributed

materials. Positive results are indicated by, among other things, end-of-workshop approaches

from children and their parents, requesting more materials, and also by invitations from local

organizations to develop more workshops and donate materials to different community

institutions, including schools --- not to speak of the enthusiasm shown by the children in the

workshops. Keep in mind, here, that the materials distributed in the interactive workshops are

autonomously and spontaneously chosen by workshop participants who see them as "new"

cultural artifacts (book, DVD, CD), unlike the schoolbooks imposed on pupils within the

(nationally controlled) educational system. Apart from favoring interactivity as a triggering

device for engagement with their own culture outside the school (i.e. on a household basis), the

materials themselves by their essential characteristics avoid the usual top-down language-

planning approaches. Unlike Mexican state-produced materials these are high-quality products,

attractive and enjoyable by their very nature, capturing users' eyes and their interest in

multimedia formats, and allowing for an approach more consonant with the speakers’ own

epistemologies.

In other words, our current intervention efforts are designed to be consonant with the

Nahuas’ tradition of innovation, already noted, recreating their cultural specific legacy in

different media, on a bottom-up model. This allows us to avoid limiting language planning

interventions to one-sided, external approaches that follow top-down models of school

instruction and presumed standardized writing, in effect subordinating indigenous knowledge

systems and exerting epistemic violence (MacDonald 2002). For instance, the hegemonic

approach limits itself to translating and reciting e.g. the national anthem at schools. Such a

school approach even fosters the emergence of conflicts among the communities themselves

insofar as one (written) variety is imposed on an array of (socio) linguistic varieties which

represent several communities’ identities. In contradistinction, our efforts do not intend to

“normalize” the use of the language, but instead allow celebration of linguistic and cultural

diversity, favoring in a spirit of linguistic pluralism and equality the written representation of

each variety, in consonance with the communities' own preferences and expectations. Ironically,

in Mexico the few existing efforts to “salvage” indigenous languages are almost exclusively

based on writing, a practice by no means widespread among indigenous laymen [12].

Oftentimes developing an alphabet constitutes a sign of social differentiation and status,

deployed as a power differential by indigenous caciques, an educated elite co-opted by the

State, a practice that favors community factionalism. In other words, writing in alphabetical

script is part of the symbolic violence (Bourdieu 1994) exerted by the State towards indigenous

people. Writing is after all a fairly unfamiliar experience for most community members, filling a

euro-centric need that derives from an outside educational model, one which is often

internalized by indigenous people themselves, who then take a written language to be what a

"real" or "legitimate" language is, or should be. Other long-term investigations have clearly

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shown the difficulties of implementing a written “standard” devised from and for the school

system, even in situations in which literacy is a (relatively) familiar experience, (Dorian 2010,

citing Jones 1998). In the case of Eastern Sutherland Gaelic, to take another example, the written

variety is perceived as an almost invasive expression on the (normally oral) private characteristic

use of the language, raising dilemmas of authenticity and purism (Dorian 2010; see also Dorian

1994). In the case of Mesoamerican languages also the question of artificiality arises, to such an

extreme that whole books are created in unintelligible varieties that are seldom used or

understood. Our project has tried to avoid this problem, both by producing books in as many

diverse varieties as possible, celebrating even “internal” linguistic diversity, and by not limiting

the initiatives to the written form, as would be typical of the predominant top-down approach.

Discussion and final remarks

It is a recognized fact that nearly all of the world’s languages are confronting the danger of

vanishing away. This is particularly so in large, multicultural states such as Mexico and the U.S.

where initiatives in the domain of language revitalization, retention and cultivation are still

relatively scarce. It is a sad paradox that North America is one of the most technologically

advanced places on the planet, home to technological advances that could be applied to the

problem of halting and reversing language shift but are too seldom adopted to slow and even

reverse language shift. Trial initiatives such as the ones described here are underway in Mexico

with several other languages such as Hñahñu (Otomi), Tu u’ nu savi (Mixtec) or Cmiique iitom

(Seri) to draw on various media and improve the appeal and use of native tongues. Exploration

of the use of multiple media, and their actual application, have proved to enhance the appeal of

indigenous language use not just among educators and activists, but among speakers, especially

children, when undertaken with materials appropriate to the educational and cultural context.

Our goal is that the pilot project reported here will serve as the commencement of a productive,

long-term application of novel media promoting language revitalization and reversal in various

settings, at least prefiguring the reversal of language shift by expanding the contexts of use for

the languages and cultures in question, enhancing their status along with their speakers'

economic and psychosocial well being.

Launched over a decade ago, our project is in keeping with the emergence of the CPNAB

and the culture-of-innovations conditions described above. Novel aspects of the project include

the participation of native and non-native artists, with consequent intercultural dialogue and

mutual learning, and the production of educationally innovative mono-, bi-, and multilingual

materials not dependent on literacy and representative of actual Mexicano diversity. The

inclusion in some materials of Spanish and other languages of wider communication along with

the indigenous language presents the local language as the equal of the others, but monolingual

materials are also very important, as noted in describing the inverse monolingualism of the

workshops. Monolingual materials are all the more important for a mostly oral language, since

writing in the Latin script is an externally imposed practice historically motivated by

Hispanicization and evangelization, even though subsequently employed by some indigenous

peoples to defend their own interests. In sum, based on culturally relevant genres such as

riddles, tales, tongue twisters, and illustrated in amates by native artists, our model produces

bilingual audio books for children, which in turn constitute the basis for the production of high-

tech videos or DVDS. These materials are utilized in community-oriented workshops, looking to

11

create new spaces for the Mexicano language and culture while at the same time returning the

materials to the communities themselves. As suggested, similar non-institutional (i.e. non-state-

controlled) initiatives which recover indigenous peoples’ epistemologies are being adopted for

other Mexican indigenous languages (see lenguasindigenas.ciesas.edu.mx).

All this invites a critical review of conventional approaches to developing research in the

social sciences, especially in linguistics and anthropology. Briefly stated, the received approach

limits its efforts to the informative level. In its extreme form this surfaces as an extractive praxis

that shows little if any concern for the speakers' interest in the language. Instead, speakers are

conceived of as a means to an end, namely the construction of a corpus. Descriptive linguistics,

of limited use to a closed group of people (linguists), is a good example of such focus. For the

sake of the advancement of linguistic science, speakers are viewed as repositories of data, which

in turn are edited without any reference whatsoever to the conditions in which the corpus is

obtained -- conditions which in many cases involve a very asymmetrical power relationship.

Investigating an indigenous mother tongue in a colonial language, controlling who speaks first,

who opens and closes the "conversation", who defines its content, who decides who counts or

doesn’t count as a ("good") speaker of the language or what counts as data, etc., all reproduce

a series of hierarchies and constitute features of symbolic violence (Bourdieu 1994). In contrast,

in the last decade the field of documentary linguistics has emerged (see Gippert et al. 2006). A

number of important methodological differences arise in documentary linguistics with respect

to descriptive biases. These include a multipurpose agenda, which also looks to incorporate

communities’ interests in the language. Registering and creating huge repositories of data

available to speakers themselves in high-tech formats, along with full-fledged annotations or

metadata, is a very important part of the documentary utopia. This is supposed to provide the

most exhaustive account possible of interactive conditions, a practice called “annotation” (cf.

Gippert et al. 2006). The rapid growth of the documentary field today allows us to recognize and

practice different types of documentary approaches.

On the one hand, a descriptive documentary approach can be identified. This is still quite

close to descriptive linguistic views yet is presented as politically correct, often phrased as “good

practices”. In this perspective, the agenda is still overwhelmingly the construction of vast

corpora. The demand for "good" data then consumes most of the available energy and

resources. On the other hand, in an activist or active documentation approach the focus should

be that control of the whole process is linked to the speakers of the endangered language, an

objective actually very close to the revitalization agenda but still not the priority in the received

linguistic documentation approach (for a discussion see the introduction and appendix in Flores

Farfán and Ramallo 2010). Somewhere in the middle lies a comprehensive approach to linguistic

documentation, in which not only absolutely everything is documented, but the participation of

speakers is strongly encouraged. In the PRMDLC, the documentation approach is directly linked

to the revitalization agenda. Efforts at revitalization -- understood as recovering and extending

the use of the endangered language -- include alternative, experimental, indirect methodologies

to reverse language shift. One such methodology is the training of speakers in informal and

practical approaches, distinct from any type of school instruction, that allow speakers to take

part in research. For example, think of the animated video production of audio that we have

developed, in which speakers have learnt to play roles of different characters -- oftentimes

principal roles -- that could even move a participant from “passive” to “active” competence in

12

the indigenous language. Empowerment practices of this sort encourage the emergence of

empowerment cells of a more lasting kind. This in turn encourages communities of practice (see

Eckert and McConell-Ginet 1992), a prerequisite for a sustainable revitalization agenda. As is

well known, a revitalization program requires long-term projects. In this respect, a number of

dilemmas have still to be faced by our project, especially establishing much more long-term

initiatives such as permanent workshops. We are only now starting to develop them after over

a decade of what can still be considered pilot initiatives. All in all, our project has shown that

revitalizing a language is possible, in the sense of expanding its spheres of use, activating a

“passive” competence into an “active” one, and empowering speakers while enhancing their

status. When there are dismaying forces against language retention, an approach which

recovers and recreates indigenous epistemologies is much needed, with the economic value of

languages as well as their emotional overtones taken into account, in order to fulfill a task that

is at times very daunting.

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Dorian, Nancy C. 1994. Purism vs. compromise in language revitalisation and language revival. Language in Society 23. 479-94. Dorian, Nancy C. 2010. The public and the private in documentation and revitalization. In José Antonio Flores Farfán and Fernando Ramallo (eds.), New perspectives on endangered languages. 29-47. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 29-47. Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConell-Ginet. 1992. Think practically and look locally: language and gender as a community based practice. Annual Review of Anthopology 21. 461- 490. Fishman, Joshua A. 1991. Reversing Language Shift. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Flores Farfán, José Antonio (ed.). 1989. Sociolinguistics in México. Sociolinguistics 18. Flores Farfán, José Antonio and Fernando Ramallo (eds.). 2010. New Perspectives on Endangered Languages: Bridging Gaps between Sociolinguistics, Documentation and Language Revitalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Flores Farfán, José Antonio. 2000. Transferencias náhuatl-español en el Balsas (Guerrero, México). Reflexiones sobre el desplazamiento y la resistencia lingüística en el náhuatl moderno. Amerindia 25. 87-106. Flores Farfán, José Antonio. 2001. Spanish in the Nahuatl of the Balsas river basin during the XXth century. From language shift to language appropriation and resistance. In Klaus Zimmerman & Thomas Stolz (eds.) Lo Propio y lo Ajeno en las Lenguas Austronésicas y Amerindias. Berlín: Vervuet Iberoamericana. 179-198. Flores Farfán, José Antonio. 2002. The use of multimedia and the arts in language revitalization and reversal. The case of the Balsas Nahuas. In Burnaby, Barbara and Jon Reyhner (eds.), Proceedings of the Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Conference. Toronto: University of Toronto Press/ Northern Arizona State University. http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/ILAC/ILAC_24.pdf (accessed 28 March 2011). Flores Farfán, José Antonio. 2005a. Towards an intercultural dialogue in and around the school in México: Problems, reflections and new perspectives. In Wolfang Herrlitz & Robert Maier (eds.), Dialogues in and around Multicultural Schools. Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. 119-132. Flores Farfán, José Antonio. 2005b. Intervention in indigenous education. Cultural sensitive materials for bilingual Nahuatl speakers. In Margarita Hidalgo (ed.), Mexican Indigenous Languages at the Dawn of the 21st Century. Contributions to the Sociology of Language 91. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 301-323. Flores, José Antonio & Gerardo López. 1989. A sociolinguistic perspective on Mexican multilingualism. Sociolinguistics 18. 33-40. Gippert, Jost, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann & Ulrike Mosel (eds.). 2006. Essentials of Language Documentation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Good, Catherine. 1988. Haciendo la Lucha. Arte y Comercio Nahuas de Guerrero. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Grenoble, Lenore A. & Whaley, Lindsay J. 2006. Saving Languages: An Introduction to

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Hinton, Leanne and Yolanda Montijo (1994). Living California Indian languages. In Leanne Hinton Flutes of Fire. Berkeley: Heyday Books. 21-33. Jones, Mari C. 1998. Language obsolescence and revitalization: Linguistic change in two sociolinguistically contrasting Welsh communities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Karttunen, Frances & James Lockhart .1976. Nahuatl in the Middle Years. Language Contact Phenomena in Texts of the Colonial Period. Berkeley: University of California Press. Karttunen, Frances. 2000. Raising the alarm for endangered languages. Issues of minority peoples. Helsinki: Department of General Linguistics Publication 31. Khubchandani, Lachman M.1989. Language demography in the Indian context. Sociolinguistics 18. 75-84. Krauss, Michael. 1992. The world’s languages in crisis. Language 68 (1). 4-10. Krauss, Michael. 1998. The condition of Native North American languages. The need for realistic assessment and action. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 132. 9-25. Ladefoged, Peter. 1992. Another view of endangered languages. Language 68. 809-811. Lam, Yvonne. 2009. The straw that broke the language’s back: language shift in the upper Necaxa valley of Mexico. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 195. 219- 233. Lastra, Yolanda (ed.). 1992. Sociolinguistics in México. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 96. Lockhart, James. 1992. The Nahuas after the Conquest. A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford: Stanford University Press. MacDonald, Iain. 2002. Epistemic Violence. The Body, Globalization and the Dilemma of Rights: Epistemic Violence Globalization Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems. v.12. 1. 65-87. Messing, Jacqueline. 2007. Ideologies of public and private uses in Tlaxcala, Mexico. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 187-188. 211-227. Nahir, Moshe (1998). Micro language planning and the revival of Hebrew: A schematic framework. Language in Society 27. 335-357. Pellicer, Dora, Bárbara Cifuentes and María del Carmen Herrera Meza (2005). Legislating diversity in twenty-first century Mexico. Mexican indigenous languages at the dawn of the 21st century. In Margarita Hidalgo (ed.), Mexican Indigenous Languages at the Dawn of the 21st Century. Contributions to the Sociology of Language 91. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 301-323. Ramírez Celestino, Cleofas & José Antonio Flores Farfán. 1995a. Tlakwatsin. El Tlacuache. México: CIESAS/Ediciones Corunda (ECO). Ramírez Celestino, Cleofas & José Antonio Flores Farfán.1995b. See Tosaasaanil, See Tosaasaanil. Adivinanzas Nahuas de Hoy y Siempre. México: CIESAS/ECO. Saynes Vázquez, Edaena. 1996. Usos actuales de la escritura del zapoteco: el caso de Juchitán. In Zarina Estrada Fernández, Max Figueroa Esteva y Gerardo López Cruz (eds.), Memorias del III Encuentro de Lingüística en el Noroeste. Universidad de Sonora, Hermosillo, tomo 3. 327-340. Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove. 1998. Linguicism in education or how to kill people without genocide. Euskara Biltzarra. Congreso de la Lengua Vasca, Vitoria-Gasteiz: Servicio General de Publicaciones del Gobierno Vasco. 3-22. Suárez, Jorge A. 1983. The Mesoamerican Indian Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watahomigie, Lucille & Akira Yamamoto (1992) Local reactions to perceived language decline. Language 68. 10-17. http://www.ciesas.edu.mx/jaff/index.html http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index

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http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/countries/Mex.html *Acknowledgements. I gratefully acknowledge the generous support of Nancy Dorian in the process of preparing this paper. I am of course totally responsible for any error or shortcoming. I also thank the Funding agencies of the project, including its principal sponsor Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT), as well as Lingua Pax and the Aurelia Figueras Foundation. The principal responsibility for putting together the proposals and submitting them is mine, as principal coordinator of the Proyecto de Revitalización, Mantenimiento y Desarrollo Lingüístico y Cultural (Cultural and Linguistic Revitalization and Development Project), the PRMDLC. The intention is to bring together a set of different complementary abilities beyond the capacity of any one individual in the development of the revitalization initiatives and to set up communities of practice. Other participants include Cleofas Ramírez Celestino (Mexicano), the Balsas Nahua artist, who proposed and collected a series of titles such as the opossum and the mermaid. As a resident of the Nahua community of Xalitla, she develops direct work at the community level, including fieldwork. Her two daughters, Felix and Paula Celestino Ramírez (Mexicano) were trained in developing the Mexicano animations voices. Other groups of professionals were hired for specific purposes, such as producing animations and documentaries (including a film maker and his team). For example, Mayan artist Marcelo Jiménez Santos illustrated riddles collected by Mayan linguist Fidencio Briceño Chel around 2000. Chel in turn proposed and collected the series of materials for the Maya project. Another Maya linguist, Flor Canché Teh, produced the voices for a tongue twister Maya book and conducts the Maya workshops. At different points in the history of the project, Nahua and Maya children have been incorporated in the production of the voices for the Nahua and Maya riddles. Other indigenous voices have been and are granted space in the project, for example translating to other varieties of (Tlaxcala) Mexicano the original versions of the Mexicano riddles, also producing multilingual materials (audio, video, books). Alejandra Cruz Ortiz, a Mixtec speaker who is part of CIESAS permanent staff, has also been active in the project, co-authoring a couple of books on riddles and dreams also recently published. Thanks to the continuous support of the above mentioned individuals and agencies the project is considered a relative success (e.g. the ministry of education has purchased most of its books for the national library system, with runs that total around a million copies) and our efforts are being expanded to other communities and their languages, including Otomí, Seri, Mixe, Zapotec, Huichol, etc. (for some examples please visit www.ciesas.edu.mx/jaff/index.html, lenguasindigenas.ciesas.edu.mx/ ). [1] Consider for instance the idea of responsible or community linguistics (Hale 1992) contra Ladefoged’s (1992) viewpoint of scientific detachment in linguistics. Such contradictory positions reveal different interests at stake in the field of linguistics and in academia in general. For example, mainstream linguists’ interest in endangered languages (over)emphasizes a strictly ‘internal’ interest in languages (studying phenomena such as linguistic attrition leading to language shift). This is often opposed to speakers’ “need” to give up their language or else to develop strategies to revitalize and promote the use of their mother tongue. For a discussion see the introduction and appendix in Flores Farfán and Ramallo (2010) [2] For instance, in the case of Europe consider Lingua Pax or the relatively recent creation of Lingua Mon. A good example in the USA is the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI: see Watahomigie & Yamamoto 1992). Given the growing presence of indigenous voices in the Mexican political scene, a series of responses has emerged from the Mexican state to cope with indigenous demands, such as the recently created Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (‘National Institute of Indigenous Languages’).

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[3] Mexicano is the name that speakers utilize to refer to their own language in this and many other regions where it is spoken, a practice I follow here. Other names to refer to the language are Nahuatl and the misleading term “Aztec” (for a critique see Lockhart 1992). [4] The set of terms related to language efforts leading to different types of linguistic “intervention” is still in need of systematic clarification (see Krauss 1992; Henze and Davis 1999; Flores Farfán 2002). For instance, the term revitalization, stemming from a biological analogy, invokes a critical situation of a living albeit extremely threatened species. Likewise, the expression “moribund languages” (Krauss 1992) also suggests an extremely difficult situation, as opposed to for instance the term “development”. Such biological analogies might prove useful as shorthand to describe different stages of language maintenance and shift, if we do not forget that we are dealing with heterogeneous human groups. For example, in contrast to the biological species, a language can be ‘revived’ (the case of Hebrew is the most well known example; see Nahir 1998). [5] For instance in England or the USA children are taught that Mexico is in ‘Central’ or even ‘South America’. Such a misconception is very common and at times even prevalent in academic circles. [6] Mesoamerica refers to a vast cultural area. It ranges from contemporary mid-Mexico, excluding the bordering Mexican states with the USA, down to El Salvador and Honduras in Central America. It is characterized by the domestication of maize and the birth of agriculture around 600 BC. This ‘maize culture’ is linked to the development of some of the greatest civilizations of the Americas, the ones who erected magnificent pyramids, superb pieces of art and advanced astronomical systems. Mesoamerica includes well-known cultures such as the Maya, the Mexica (the so-called Aztecs) and the Zapotec, which among many others constitute the Mesoamerican Sprachbund (see for example Suárez 1983.) [7] Another good illustration is the high number given for indigenous languages in the USA and Canada, totaling 210 according to Krauss (1998); yet, only 34 of these are presumed to be spoken by children. Or the 50-language figure posed by Hinton and Montijo (1994: 21) for Californian languages no longer transmitted to children. Profiles for these languages are based on the “passive” knowledge of at best a handful of speakers, most of them only rememberers, quasi- or even pseudo speakers (see Flores Farfán 2001). [8] Suárez (1983: 198) speaks of a dozen Nahua languages, a relatively low figure when compared to the well over 20 varieties listed in the SIL’s website. [9] The history of indigenous peoples’ linguistic resistance is beyond the scope of this paper (an attempt to examine this in more detail is Hill 1993). What can be stressed in the case of the Balsas Nahuas is their capacity to overcome cultural oppression, as manifested in their success in resisting the force of assimilationist “modernization” projects – the opposition to the dam -, in which Mexicano became not only a symbol of cultural resistance but a tool for political dissent and organization. As with language endangerment, indigenous linguistic resistance is a matter of degree. Different types of resistance can be identified. These range from weak and almost unconscious forms of resistance to open full-fledged opposition to the imposition of a hegemonic power and a dominant language. For instance, the persistence of isolates, which maybe had once "sister languages" in Mexico, represents a continuum of resistance to assimilation and endangerment. In general, being the one remaining representative of a Mexican language family would constitute resistance relative to the languages that passed or are fading away. This could seem a relatively weak resistance if compared with language families that still have a number of representatives. Yet it all depends on which specific language is

17

considered. For instance, Huaves have and still are relatively oppressed and discriminated against by Zapotecs, the neighboring group who took away part of Huave territory and even required Huave-Zapotec bilingualism linked to commerce and other economic forces. In contrast, Purepecha was historically never subjugated and constituted a totally independent and autonomous region - actually the historic border of the “Aztec empire” to the North. There is not enough research to account for these types of differences. Yet presumably due to this historical background, expressed in its contemporary situations, Purepecha is experiencing less language shift than Huave. Seri on the other hand is probably closer to Purepecha, and maybe even more resistant. This resistance can be linked to a number of facts. For instance Seri resists borrowings, favoring linguistic coinage, an eloquent index of its vitality, yet it is not totally immune to linguistic threats such as cross-cultural marriages, the growing presence of monolingual foreigners, schooling and the mass media. Significantly, it experiences almost no migration, in contrast to the above mentioned groups. In practice these various types of ecologies encompass several important differences and moments in their particular long-standing histories. [10] For example, Nicolás de Jesús, a well-known painter and engraver, presents recurrent themes revolving around the Zapatista struggle for the recognition of indigenous rights in Mexico, a movement that most local Tlacuilos support. [11] The amate refers to a sort of “paper” made of the bark of a tree on which Balsas Nahuas produce several different types of paintings, describing ritual and everyday Nahua life, or what Nahuas themselves denominate amates de historias (‘amates that tell stories’). Amates became fairly popular in the tourist market in the mid ’70s and ’80s, when Nahuas started experimenting with a number of different materials; it is still one of the main sources of income for a number of these communities. Itinerant merchants par excellence, Balsas Nahuas travel long distances to sell their amates and other products, including most tourist resorts of the country and even the US. The amate has been a powerful means of economic survival and ethnic reaffirmation. It has even been used as a sociopolitical weapon to manifest political dissent against Mexican-state intentions of destroying Nahuas’ territory with the construction of the aforementioned hydroelectric dam in the region (see Amith 1995). [12] Mexicano is probably the indigenous language of the whole continent with most written documentation, comparable to any literary Classical tradition, dating back to the 16th century. To better fulfill their assimilation purposes, Spaniards recreated the previous situation of Mexicano as a lingua franca and trained several indigenous speakers in the humanist tradition of alphabetical reading and writing. Writing Mexicano as a social practice survived well into the 18th century, a tradition afterwards rooted out by the need to impose Spanish as the national, only official, written standard of the country. [13] The literacy rates in Mexico are still fairly low. It is estimated that Mexicans in general read a third of a book a year, if at all, not to speak of the indigenous population, a sector where such figures are even lower.