On the verge of silence: Why Oaxaca’s biodiversity needs Indigenous languages to survive
Text by Magdalena Rojo
Photography by Noel Rojo
Illustrations by Aminta Espinoza Ulloa Félix
Edited by Ruby Russell
Multimedia editing by Gabriela Ramírez
We are facing a global crisis of biodiversity loss that has been called planet Earth’s sixth mass extinction. At the same time, it is estimated that a language goes extinct every two weeks. These two processes are intertwined.
As forests and grasslands are replaced by monocultures, sustainable ways of life that depend on complex ecosystems vanish. As plants and animals die out, the words to describe them fall out of use. As languages are lost, conversations rooted in reciprocity with nature fall silent.
Oaxaca is a rich topography of cloudforest, arid valleys and coastal ecosystems. More than a third of the population speaks one of more than 170 language variants belonging to 15 Indigenous families; many of them are endangered.
But Mixe, Zapotec and Chinantec communities are striving to keep both their languages and their land alive. Healers and farmers, children and elders, continue to address nature not as a resource but a relative.
“We never speak to Mother Nature in Spanish,” says Eugenia Villegas Villegas, a teacher from Totontepec Villa de Morelos who is on a mission to revive her mother tongue in homes, schools and rituals.
Every word spoken is an act of restoration, a promise that regeneration begins not only in the soil but in the stories we choose to tell.
After a Canadian mining company challenged a Zapotec community’s Indigenous identity, recalling the ancestral names of sacred landmarks helped reinvigorate their connection to the land – and defend it from extractive industries.
Medicinal wisdom is embedded in Indigenous Mixe languages. By sustaining their mother tongue and practices involving herbs and healing rituals, Mixe people keep alive a cosmovision in which they speak to Mother Earth.
In a remote community enveloped in cloudforest, a whistled form of the Indigenous Chinantec language is perfectly adapted to the land and its weather. But who needs whistles when you can use WhatsApp?
