Revitalizing Indigenous Languages: the Case of Pipil in El Salvador

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Revitalizing Indigenous Languages: the Case of Pipil in El Salvador Paper presented at UNESCO’s Expert Meeting on Endangered Languages, UNESCO headquarters, Paris, 10-12 March 2003 Revitalizing indigenous languages: the case of Pipil in El * Salvador Jorge E. Lemus Universidad Don Bosco/Penn State University 2003 In this paper, I first provide a brief historical background about the origin of the Pipil people, the Conquest, the Colony, and the continuous deterioration of their language and culture to their present state. Then, I give a general description of the Pipil people and their language today. Finally, I propose a five-component language revitalization process intended to reverse language shift in cases such as Pipil, which is found at the final stage of language extinction. 1. Origin of the Pipil people Several studies (Barberena 1966, Fowler 1989, Campbell 1985) place the arrival of the Pipil people to Central America between the IX and XII Centuries AD. They were a Nahua group fleeing from Xoconochco (Soconusco), Mexico, to escape the Olmec’s tyranny. There is, however, very little historical evidence regarding the pre-Columbian history of El Salvador. Fowler (1989) mentions the believed existence of the Manuscrito Pipil, containing an important part of the history of the Pipil people and their social organization, but no such document has ever been found. Nonetheless, there are other accounts accepted as historically valid. The Franciscan Chronicler Fray Juan de Torquemada in his Monarquía Indiana (1966, first published in 1615), mentions the arrival of the Pipil to Central America. Torquemada’s account is based on interviews he carried out in Mexico and Central America. Starting in 1591, Torquemada began collecting information about different ethnic groups of Mesoamerica, based on their oral tradition. The Pipil-Nicarao from Nicaragua told him, when asked where they came from and when, that they had come from “where the sun sets”, about seven or eight ages, or lives of an old man before the Spanish came to Nicaragua1. This means that the first waves of Pipil immigrants came to Central America between 728 and 832 years before * I am grateful to Alan King, Monica Ward, Chip Gerfen, and Jackeline Toribio for their comments and discussion on an earlier version of this paper. All mistakes, however, are my sole responsibility. 1 An old man lived two cycles of 52 years; that is, 104 years or one huehuetiliztli, according to Thompson (1948) and Jiménez (1959). 2 the Spanish, or before Torquemada carried out his interviews: the VIII or IX Centuries AD. Some archaeological evidence places the arrival of the first waves of Nahuas to Central America about 200 years earlier (VI Century AD), and Lehman (1920, cited by Fowler 1989) concludes that because of the archaic status of the Pipil language compared to Nahuatl (Mexica) and the Nahuat of the Nicarao, the Pipil should have arrived to El Salvador around the fourth century AD. The linguistic and archaeological evidence recorded by several scholars makes us conclude that the Nahua migrations to Central America took place in different waves, during a period of about six hundred years (VII to XII Centuries AD). Lehman’s observation that Pipil of El Salvador is more archaic than that of the Nicarao, although refuted by Campbell (1985), plus the evidence provided above, provides grounds for a Diaspora that took place over the centuries. The Pipil people were warriors, and they found little resistance from the scattered Maya groups they encountered on their way to Central America, especially in El Salvador, from whence most Mayas had fled north, to Honduras and Guatemala. They established themselves in Central and Western El Salvador, using the Lempa River to the East and the Paz River to the west as natural borders. Other Nahua migrants settled in Guatemala and in Nicaragua at different times. 2. The Conquest Most of the reports we have about the conquest and colonization of El Salvador come from the conquerors themselves (letters, reports, and legal proceedings); native accounts are only provided through interviews as the ones carried out by Torquemada (1966) or the translation of native manuscripts, such as the Annals of the Cackchiquels. In this section, I give a brief account of the Conquest of Kuskatan (Modern El Salvador) by the Spanish, based on both types of historical sources. Captain Don Pedro de Alvarado, one of Hernán Cortez’s deputies, began the Conquest of Kuskatan in May or June, 1524. His army consisted of 200 Spanish soldiers and about 2000 indigenous people he brought from Guatemala. The Pipil from Itzalco were waiting for the Spanish at Acaxual (near the modern Acajutla Port), wearing their war costumes, with spears and arrows, and heavy cotton armors. They looked so fierce, that Alvarado himself states in a letter to Hernán Cortez, how scared he felt upon seeing the Pipil troops, which outnumbered the Spanish by thousands (Barberena 1966). Alvarado strategically retreated to a place, between mountains, where his army could counterattack. The Pipil army was massacred. Their cotton armors were so heavy that when they fell down, they couldn’t get up, and were, then, killed on the ground. Five days later, the Pipil had organized another army to fight the Spanish in Tacuscalco. It was a terrible battle. The Spanish horsemen and Alvarado’s superior military strategies guaranteed another success for the conquerors. Once the Itzalcos were defeated, Alvarado marched towards Kuskatan, the major domain of the Pipil. He did not encounter any resistance there. On the contrary, the Pipil were peacefully waiting for the Spaniards with fruit, turkeys and other food. Since the Pipil did not have any gold to offer the Spanish, they offered copper axes to the conquerors instead. Alvarado was not satisfied and as his prize for conquering Kuskatan he enslaved and branded the Pipil to serve his Spanish soldiers. Many Pipil soldiers fled to the mountains, escaping the brutality of the Spanish conquerors. Alvarado himself, in his 1529 proceedings in Mexico, accepts these charges, and, in a letter sent to Cortez, he tells 3 him that he decided to hang the rulers of Kuskatan and enslave the Pipil to sell them in order to recover the expenses he underwent in the conquest, i.e., ammunitions, horses, men, (Barberena 1966:303). There were several battles afterwards, and the conquest of Kuskatan was not completed. Alvarado went back to Guatemala, and returned in 1525 (or at the end of 1524) and founded San Salvador with his brother Diego de Alvarado. 3. The road to linguistic death At the time of the Spanish arrival, there were several languages spoken in present day El Salvador, but the dominant one was Pipil, at least to the west of the Lempa River. There were other languages spoken in eastern El Salvador (Lenca, Cacaopera) and to the north (Chortí, Mame and other Mayan languages). Pokomam was spoken in Chalchuapa (West), and Lenca in Sensuntepeque and Ilobasco (Central). There were other languages, but most of them were regarded as inferior to Pipil, and were called either Popoluca or Chontal, Nahuatl words that mean rustic, twisted, incomprehensible, and foreign.2 The Pipil people were then the rulers of Kuskatan and their language was the lingua franca of the region. 3.1 Linguistic Classification Pipil3 is a Uto-Aztecan language, independent from other Nahuatl varieties found in Mexico. It is the result of the first major division of Nahuatl (Whorf 1937, Swadesh 1954-1955) that created the Nahuatl-Nahuat distinction. Subsequent subdivisions created the nahual varieties. These divisions are based on the phonemic evolution of the 4 alveolateral affricate /tl̮/ that became /t/ for Pipil and /l/ for other Aztec languages. The th /tl̮/ ~ /t/ division took place around the 11 Century, which coincides with the arrival of the Pipil to Central America, as discussed above. This places Pipil as one of the most archaic varieties of proto Aztec. At the time the Spanish came to El Salvador, their Aztec translators regarded the language spoken by the natives as corrupt Mexica.5 Within the Uto-Aztecan family of languages, Pipil can be classified as follows (Campbell 1997:134). 2 These languages actually exist with these names, but at the time, the Pipil used them to refer to any language other than Pipil. 3 Pipil is also known in the literature as Nahuat and Nawat. Nawate is also an autoglotonym reported by Campbell (1985) but which is no longer used. 4 Hasler (1954-1955) proposes other morphological and phonological differences to classify the Nahua dialects into four geographical regions. Swadesh (1954-1955) offers a glottochronological analysis of the Nahua languages. 5 There are at least two different versions about the origin of the term Pipil. One of the versions refers to the supposed leader of the first Nahua settlers in El Salvador, Pipilzín, a noble child, or prince. So, based on these facts, the Pipil are descendants of the noble Pipilzín. The other version states that, because of their language, which sounded to the Aztec translators as badly spoken Nahuatl (corrupt Mexica), as if spoken by a child learning the language, the Spanish called these people Pipil, which means child, to denote the kind of Nahuatl they spoke. 4 Figure 1 Uto-Aztecan family of languages Northern Uto-Aztecan Numic (Plateau Shoshoni) Western Paviotso-Bannock-Snake (Northern Paiute) Oregon, Idaho, Nevada Monache (Mono) [obsolescent] California Central Shoshoni-Goshiute, Panamint [obsolescent] Nevada, Utah, Wyoming; Comanche [obsolescent] Oklahoma Southern Southern Paiute Utah,
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