War of the Words (fwd link)

[Phil Cash Cash]

War of the WordsThe politics and power struggles of language preservation
By MATTHEW J. WATSON<http://www.thecrimson.com/writer/1208445/Matthew_J._Watson/>,
CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

10 hours ago

This past April, Daniel Pedro Mateo went missing from the small Guatemalan
village of El Quetzal. His kidnappers demanded a ransom of 150,000
quetzals, about $19,000, from Mateo’s family. Nine days later, his mangled
body was found near his home village of Santa Eulalia.

Mateo was an outspoken activist on behalf of his native Q’anjob’al people,
a Maya group that lives in western Guatemala. In addition to campaigning
against various acts of what activists termed environmental
exploitation—such as a massive dam that would have displaced numerous Maya
people from their homeland—Mateo’s activism also extended to preserving his
native tongue. He was one of the founders of Snuq Jolom Konob, a bilingual
radio station with broadcasts in both Spanish and Q’anjob’al—a subversive
act in a country where indigenous languages are said to represent a threat
to the hegemony of the hispanohablante.

For Annie Gagliardi, a postdoctoral fellow in Harvard’s Linguistics
Department, Mateo’s death hit close to home. Much of her work focuses on
languages of the Caucasus and Guatemala, and she had previously done
research in Guatemala with Mateo's cousin, another linguistics postdoc at
Harvard. Mateo was murdered a few weeks before Gagliardi was scheduled to
return to Guatemala and meet him. “It’s a frightening pattern,” Gagliardi
says. “Here are these languages you care about, these communities you care
about, and the people fighting for them—they’re targets.”

Access full article below:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/11/12/arts-cover-language-preservation/
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