Mixtec Language - Mixtecan Literature

Mixtecan Literature

Prior to the Spanish Conquest in the early 16th century, the native peoples of Mesoamerica maintained several literary genres. Their compositions were transmitted orally, through institutions at which members of the elite would acquire knowledge of literature and other areas of intellectual activity. Those institutions were mostly destroyed in the aftermath of the Conquest, as a result of which most of the indigenous oral tradition was lost for ever. Most of the codices used to record historical events or mythical understanding of the world were destroyed, and the few that remain were taken away from the peoples that created them. Four Mixtec codices are known to survive, narrating the war exploits of the Lord Eight Deer Jaguar Claw. Of these, three are held by European collections, with one still in Mexico. The key to deciphering these codices was rediscovered only in the mid-20th century, largely through the efforts of Alfonso Caso, as the Mixtec people had lost the understanding of their ancient rules of reading and writing.

However, the early Spanish missionaries undertook the task of teaching indigenous peoples (the nobility in particular) to read and write. Through the efforts of those missionaries, or those of the Hispanicized natives, certain works of indigenous literature were able to survive to the modern day. Over the five centuries that followed the Conquest, Mixtec literature was restricted to the popular sphere. Through music or the way in which certain rituals are carried out, popular Mixtec literature has survived as did for millennia: by means of oral transmission.

It was not until the 1990s that indigenous literature in Mexico took off again. At the vanguard were the Zapotecs of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, who had been recording their language in writing since at least the mid-19th century. Imitating the great cultural movement of the indigenous people of Juchitán de Zaragoza in the 1980s, many native cultures reclaimed their languages as literary vehicles. In 1993 the Asociación de Escritores en Lenguas Indígenas was created and, three years later, the Casa del Escritor en Lengua Indígena. At the same time, the Nezahualcóyotl Prize for indigenous language literature was created, in order to promote writing in Native American tongues.

In the Mixteca region, the literary renaissance has been led by the peoples of the Mixteca Alta, including the cities of Tlaxiaco and Juxtlahuaca. The former has produced such notable writers as Raúl Gatica, who published works by several Mixtec poets in the book Asalto a la palabra, and Juan de Dios Ortiz Cruz, who in addition to collecting the region's lyrical compositions has also produced notable pieces of his own, such as Yunu Yukuninu ("Tree, Hill of Yucuninu"). That piece was later set to music by Lila Downs, one of the leading figures in contemporary Mixtec music; she has recorded several records containing compositions in Mixtec, a language spoken by her mother.