Languages at the Edge: the Failure of National Homogenization
Author: Frida, Student Ambassador in Mexico, is passionate about languages and is writing a series of articles on the precious yet fading or dying languages of the world.
After Mexico gained its independence in 1821, it emerged from Spanish rule as one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse countries in the world. Dozens of Indigenous languages were spoken across the region. Since the 19th and 20th centuries, the promotion of Spanish as the official language for citizenship, governance, and national identity started. This transformation was not only about the language, but also political. Yet, language was used as one of the primary tools for the construction of a unified national identity. Daily tasks were requested to be done exclusively in Spanish, resulting in the displacement and marginalization of Indigenous languages. However, this initiative of national homogenization never really succeeded. Indigenous communities have persisted despite centuries of assimilationist policies, showing the limits of the state’s attempt to impose cultural unity. The survival of Indigenous languages demonstrates that Mexican identity has always been shaped not by uniformity but by cultural plurality.
The need to create a national identity emerged immediately after independence. The new Mexican empire struggled with a vast territory marked by regional divisions with cultural and linguistic diversity. Political leaders wanted to transform this heterogeneous population into a coherent political community. Influenced by European ideas of nationalism, elites often thought that national unity required cultural and linguistic standardization.
Spanish was established as the language of colonial administration, and progressively, was promoted as the language for education, governance, and public life. However, Indigenous languages continued to be widely spoken in rural regions, but they were no longer recognized as legitimate languages of public life. Instead, they were now associated with poverty, inferiority, and social marginalization. By framing Spanish as the “language of progress and civilization”, it allowed political elites to reinforce social hierarchies, feeding this idea of “superiority”, in which these people felt that their language and culture were superior to minorities.
These ideas were especially influential in the Porfirian era (1876–1911). In which Porfirio Diaz pursued rapid modernization, seeking to transform Mexico into a global economic network. This vision enforced the idea that Indigenous communities acted as obstacles to development. Educational reforms promoted castellanización, forcing Indigenous populations to adopt Spanish in order to participate in national institutions. Even though these policies were presented as mechanisms for the prosperity of social mobility, they enormously contributed to the systematic devaluation of Indigenous peoples.
Anthropologist Guillermo Bonfil Batalla later explained this process by comparing what he called México imaginario and México profundo. According to him, political and intellectual elites built an “imaginary Mexico” based on the Western ideals of modernity: a nation that was urban, Spanish-speaking, and culturally aligned with Europe. However, this vision ignored the reality of what he called “deep Mexico,” the Indigenous civilizations that had existed way before colonization and that continued to shape the everyday life across much of the country. In this sense, Indigenous cultures were not disappearing; if not, they were excluded from the official definition of the nation. Policies that promoted Spanish while discouraging Indigenous languages reflected the attempt to make Mexico fit this imagined model of “modernity”, even though Indigenous societies remained an essential part of the country’s social and cultural foundations (Bonfil Batalla, 1996).
The Mexican Revolution of 1910 changed the way Mexicans understood their national identity. After the revolution, the new government tried to redefine what being Mexican really meant. One of the key ideas of this period was indigenismo, a cultural and political movement that talked about the importance of Indigenous communities in the history and identity of the nation. Instead of being seen as inferior, artists of the era started to capture Indigenous peoples as fundamental to Mexican culture, past, and identity. Artists played a crucial role in spreading this new vision of the nation. Through the muralist movement, painters such as Diego Rivera and David Alfaro created multiple murals that showed the Indigenous communities’ way of life. These murals helped with the representation of Indigenous heritage as a central part of the Mexican identity, contradicting the idea that it should be something hidden or forgotten.
Nonetheless, the revolutionary state continued to prioritize Spanish as the dominant language of the republic. Indigenous languages were now celebrated as part of Mexican history, but rarely valued as equal in the national political life. According to Alan Knight, indigenismo was more of a program to empower Indigenous people, rather than a movement to fully integrate Indigenous populations into the national culture, which was obviously dominated by the Spanish language and Western institutions (Knight, 1990).
In the 20th century, tensions after the economic and political transformations started to rise, as they exposed the limitations of the national integration project. Indigenous communities continued to experience economic inequality and marginalization. That is why, in 1994, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) emerged in Chiapas, confronting not only economic policies, but the historical exclusion of Indigenous communities in the nation. Zapatistas argued that true democracy was about the recognition of Indigenous autonomy, languages, and traditions (Harvey, 1998). This movement demonstrated how the attempt to build national unity through cultural assimilation had failed to eliminate Mexico’s cultural diversity.
The persistence of Indigenous identity can be observed across all the country, such as the Huasteca region. Tenek people, mainly located in San Luis Potosí and Veracruz, have preserved their culture and language after centuries of facing the Spanish-speaking national culture. The Tenek language belongs to the Mayan language family, and continues to be spoken among thousands of people. The survival of the language demonstrates how Indigenous people were able to maintain their culture even when facing the structures of the modern Mexican state.
The Tenek language is more than a linguistic tradition; it represents all the historical processes that have shaped Mexico since its beginnings. While the state tried to construct a national identity based on the Spanish language and Western ideas of modernity, Indigenous communities, such as the Tenek, kept on preserving their own cultural systems and forms of knowledge. This is why it is so important to preserve not only the language but their culture; by documenting the Tenek language, understanding how these historical dynamics continue to influence contemporary Mexican society. By recording the voices, stories, and experiences of members from the Tenek community, the way in which Indigenous languages remain an essential part of Mexico’s cultural and historical landscape can help with the preservation and recognition of Indigenous communities.
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