“The Spanish tried to make the Xinka culture a ghost,” says Jose Amilvar Urias (66), a local Xinka chief. “We all come from a European culture imposed on us. We’re 400 years behind,” he says, speaking at a cultural event organised by the Xinka Parliament outside Cuilapa, the capital town of Guatemala’s central Santa Rosa province.
The Spanish invasion, which began in the early 16th century, violently ousted the Maya kingdom and other indigenous leaders who once ruled modern-day Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and southeastern Mexico.
The wooden chief staff wielded by Urias is crowned with a snake because one way the Xinka fought back during this period was by poisoning Spanish soldiers sheltering in trees in their territory with snake venom.
Due to their different languages, Guatemala’s indigenous Maya and Xinka people, which represent a majority of the population, struggled to organise against the colonial-era regime which violently seized their land and distributed it to Spanish settlers and institutions including the Catholic Church.
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A US-backed military coup against Guatemala’s democratically elected president in 1954 led to a bloody civil war, which left an estimated 250,000 people dead by the time the conflict ended in 1996.
“Trapped in an atmosphere of cultural and literal genocide, citizens of Guatemala stopped speaking their native languages for reasons of personal safety,” says Chris Rogers, a linguistics professor at Brigham Young University.
The peace accords, which ended Guatemala’s civil war, included provisions recognising the country’s indigenous groups and supporting intercultural bilingual education. The Mayan languages of Kʼicheʼ, Q’eqchi’ and Kaqchikel are today the most widely spoken in Guatemala, with each spoken by more than one million people.
The peace accords, which ended Guatemala’s civil war, included provisions recognising the country’s indigenous groups and supporting intercultural bilingual education. In 2008, Rogers spent time video-recording the last native speaker of the Guazacapán dialect of Xinkan, a 95-year-old man named Carlos. These recordings are available for Xinka people to watch and learn their native language.
“Each language does something differently, no two are exactly alike but each represents a unique identity for the people who speak it,” says Rogers. He highlights how in Xinkan, there is a difference between verbs that involve actions done by choice (for example, to sing or to cry), and those which are not (to be alive or to kneel). “This distinction provides a look into the culture of the Xinka people,” he says.
The Endangered Languages Project states that of the nearly 7,000 languages which exist in the world today, some 3,000 are endangered. The project’s website says that many oppose calling languages “extinct” to avoid discouraging those who are attempting to learn or revitalise their language – “it can be demoralising to read that their language is deemed dead”.
Now, due to efforts over the last two decades from activists, language scholars and particularly young Xinka people, Guazacapán Xinkan is being slowly revitalised as a second language. “Young people are at the forefront of the revival of the Xinkan culture and language,” says Ayda Cortes Carrillo (22), a volunteer at the Xinka Parliament event.
Misrain de la Rosa Perez, a lecturer, travelled from Taxisco, Santa Rosa, with two of his students, Obed Vasque (20), and Jimmy Revolorio (28). While Perez is not Xinka, his two students are – “I thought it was important for them to see more of their culture”.
Vasque and Revolorio are keen to learn more about their Xinkan culture. Neither can speak the Xinkan language, nor could their parents or grandparents. There is no Xinkan language TV or radio, while Xinkan classes in school focus on broader culture rather than the language because teachers lack fluency. “It is difficult to learn it because since we were born we’ve been speaking the Spanish language,” says Revolorio.
Urias says the Xinka parliament is lobbying the ministry of education for more support for the Xinkan language and culture. But he says it is also important for children to learn about Xinka spirituality and their way of life. If that happens, he believes an increased focus on teaching the Xinkan language will follow.
Two members of the Xinka parliament, Quelvin Jiménez, a lawyer, and Luis Fernando García, travelled to Ireland in March with support from the Trocáire to highlight the struggles facing their community. The cultural revival of the Xinka has happened alongside the political mobilisation of the community which has spent more than a decade campaigning against the El Escobal silver mine in Santa Rosa, despite violent attacks on Xinka leaders that have forced some to flee Guatemala for their own safety.
“The Xinka have become human rights defenders. We won and we stopped the mining company,” says Carrillo, standing by a mural dedicated to Xinka activism. “Protecting mother nature is not a crime, it’s a right.”
- This reporting was supported by the Simon Cumbers Media Fund
