Tijuana's displaced Mixtec Indians face language problems at home and abroad

By Minerva Canto

The Orange County Register

January 23, 2000

TIJUANA, MEXICO — The survival of Mixtec Indians living in the simple homes hugging the dirt hills depends on how well they learn to navigate the intersecting worlds of their indigenous community, mainstream Mexico and the United States.

"Society has told them, `To succeed, you have to speak English,' " said Victor Clark Alfaro, director of the Binational Center of Human Rights in Tijuana. "Speaking Mixtec does not give you prestige and status in Mexico. You have to know Spanish for that."

For the children of Pedregal San Julia, that translates into school lessons that are sometimes trilingual.

On a recent weekday, roosters crowed in the distance and the occasional dog wandered by outside the first-grade classroom where teacher Venancio Salazar Lopez was prompting his class to repeat new words they had learned.

"Tres. How do you say it in Mixtec?" Salazar asked, loud enough to be heard above the excited din of 43 students.

"Oni!" many students yelled out.

"And in English?" Salazar prompted.

"Three!" the students yelled out again.

Learning Spanish is a necessity for this community set adrift in mainstream Mexico after being displaced from tiny pueblos in Oaxaca. But because long-term schooling is a vague possibility because of the high poverty rate, fluency in English is a dream, often on par with crossing "to the other side."

Their million-dollar view of glittering lights on the other side of the border - the United States - is the closest most of them will ever get to it.

Lacking resources, most stay in Tijuana. They learn Spanish, though they continue speaking Mixtec in their community. Instead of the sandals and simple clothing typically worn in their hometowns, they buy shoes and jeans.

Televisions suddenly become affordable because the community is so near the border, with people finding ways to buy used ones or barter for them.

But phones are still a luxury that almost no one in the community can afford. Instead, they communicate with their relatives in southern Mexico by using public telephones or using an informal- courier system of migrants.

They find jobs as cart vendors or sell trinkets, usually near the border or on the tourist strip on Avenida Revolucion.

It is there that the U.S. influence is the strongest, where they are in close proximity to people living in the United States.

The debate over assimilation vs. preserving the newcomer's culture, takes on new tones.

With their own country never quite knowing whether assimilation or preserving their culture is best, many find it easier to hide their ethnicity.

Thus, they straddle the border of their own community in addition to Mexico and the United States, a new twist on their legacy of oppression from their lighter-skinned compatriots.

"It's like they see us as ugly ducklings," said Ruperto Galindo Bautista, a Mixtec Indian and principal of the school in Pedregal San Julia. "I don't know if it's because we're darker-skinned or shorter."

Indigenous people have had to contend with being relegated to the lowest rung on the social ladder since the Mexican conquest, when the Spaniards asserted their authority by claiming superiority.

"The border," Clark Alfaro said, "presents new challenges and possibilities for them."