Lowland Chontal of Oaxaca Documentation of the Cultural Heritage of the lower Chontalpa, southeastern Mexico

The Chontalpa is a region in the Yautepec and Tehuantepec districts of the state of Oaxaca in southeastern Mexico. Comprised of a highland area (2,000 km²) in the sierras and a lowlands area (870 km²) along the coastal plain, it is the Mexican homeland of an estimated 15,000 ethnic Chontals.

Danzantes: Turkish pirates and Catholic kings Chontal Communities of Coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. The project focused on the lowland communities, depicted in orange. and other ornaments, alongside more ab‐ in some primary schools, future prospects stract representations of anatomy. Masks for the language are not bright. Our project History may have played roles in pre‐Columbian has preserved hundreds of recordings and worship of ancestors or gods. transcriptions of personal narratives, folk‐ The few descriptions of Oaxaca Chontals in tales, daily life, and linguistic research in colonial ethnographies famously depict the the archive; we contributed a grammatical community as barbarous savages living in description to the Archivo de Lenguas Indí‐ caves, accounts that surely arose from their genas de México (www.colmex.mx/alim/) firm and sometimes violent resistance to and produced a dictionary with paper and subjugation by other Mesoamerican groups, online versions. Spanish tax collectors, or the Catholic Church. Modern studies paint a very differ‐ ent historical picture, of a prosperous Contemporary Culture people with sociopolitical hierarchy and ex‐ tensive commercial relations with the sur‐ Traditionally subsistence farmers and mer‐ rounding region. One goal of the project was chants, the Chontal community today is in‐ to document and archive corrected versions ternally cooperative and self‐sufficient. As is of Chontal history. The DoBeS archive in‐ the case with many Mexican groups, the cludes a series of contemporary interviews Chontalpa has suffered greatly due to mi‐ by collaborator Sara de León Chávez, re‐ gration to urban areas and to the US. Even cordings of personal stories in Chontal by so, the region is renowned for an ongoing members of the community, and an extens‐ commitment to elaborate festivals and tra‐ ive compilation of written materials to unite ditional cultural practices, which include a fuller picture of the social history of the dancing with an alligator princess and re‐ people. We also published on aspects of the Language enacting historical encounters with Huave physical and symbolic landscape of the One major clue to the history of the people neighbors, Turkish pirates, and Spanish lower Chontalpa [Ref 1]. lies in the prominent cultural treasure of Catholic kings. their language. This project focused on the documentation of Lowland Chontal of Oaxa‐ ca, an endangered language with fewer than 100 elderly fluent speakers and many hun‐ dreds more who speak with less fluency. To‐ gether with sister language Highland Chontal, equally endangered, it comprises the small family of Oaxaca Chontal. A third Chontal variety, once spoken near the town of Tequisistlán, is already dead.

There are no known relatives of Oaxaca Estéfani López López Inez Zavaleta Robles Chontal nearby; instead, this small family is often associated with the proposed Hokan stock of mostly North American languages. References mentioned The connection was investigated during the project, and it seems likely that the Chontal 1. O’Connor & Kröfges. 2008. The land re‐ people migrated to southern Mexico from a members: Landscape terms and place names region in northern California [Ref 2]. in Lowland Chontal of Oaxaca, Mexico, Lan‐ Confusion about the Chontals persists in the guage Sciences 30, 291‐315. literature because the ethnonym ‘chontal’ comes from a Nahuatl word meaning ‘stran‐ 2. O’Connor. 2013. ¿Una huella del con‐ ger’, a term also applied to ethnic groups tacto? Verbos de movimiento en el chontal and languages in the Mexican states of Ta‐ de la Baja de Oaxaca. In Guerrero (ed.) basco and Guerrero, unrelated to the Verbos de movimiento en lenguas de Amé‐ Chontal community in Oaxaca. rica: léxico, sintaxis, pragmática. UNAM. No one knows exactly when Chontals arrived in the region. Archaeological sites near the Huamelula River as well as small figures and CONTACT ADDRESS other artifacts found nearby suggest that Loretta O’Connor, linguist settlements date from the Classic Period of [email protected] ancient Mexico (300‐900 CE). During this Transmission of the language was actively time, art forms emphasized social status, discouraged in the education system, and Peter Kröfges, anthropologist seen in detailed hairstyles, headdresses, despite recent efforts at bilingual education [email protected]