Guatemala is a country alive with linguistic diversity: over 21 Mayan languages are spoken there by the country’s majority Indigenous population.
And yet the existence of each one of these languages is threatened. Since the time of the colonial conquest in the 16th and 17th centuries, Spanish has become the main — and now official — language in Guatemala; its dominance in areas such as education, business, technology and international trade has deepened the vulnerability of Mayan languages, which are now increasingly spoken by older generations.
This is why Pedro Mateo Pedro has made it his life’s mission to preserve and revitalize such languages. An assistant professor, teaching stream, in the Department of Linguistics, Mateo Pedro is also a native speaker of Q’anjob’al — on of the Mayan languages spoken in the western highlands of Guatemala.
“I think as human beings we have the right to speak our language, to maintain our language, to live in our culture,” he says. “And when we talk about culture, we talk about language also. Language is a different way to look at how culture functions; it’s a window onto the world.”
Over the course of reading week last fall, Mateo Pedro took a small group of students to Guatemala as part of a course he teaches called Introduction to Indigenous Languages of the Americas (LIN202H1.) There, the students spent mornings in the town of Patzún learning Kakchiqel, a Mayan language spoken by some 410,000 people in the area. They also interacted with speakers of other Mayan languages.
In the afternoons and evenings, they engaged in a wide variety of cultural activities — trying local food, attending lectures and festivals, and interacting with local activists who work in areas such as technology, the arts and more.
I always ask, how can we connect and find ways to work with Indigenous people? In the case of the teaching materials we’ve developed, we’re helping each other. It’s kind of a win-win. We’re helping them with their needs, and they are helping us with our needs as researchers.
When Mateo Pedro brings students to Guatemala — this trip is his second — he places them with host families. “If they stay in a hotel, they’re just going to speak English,” he says. “And I really want them to have the experience of speaking Kakchiqel. These are families I know, who really want to help the students.”
“I’m so grateful to have had this experience,” says Chanel Ly, a member of University College who’s completing her third year as a specialist in linguistics with a minor in Spanish. “On November 1, for example, we got to spend All Saints Day with our host families, which is a very big holiday there. We visited the graveyard, I got to arrange flowers, and also watch the kites fly in the sky. This was unlike any other experience I’ve had when I’ve travelled. I really appreciate how much the family took care of me, and I still keep in contact.”
Ly was also inspired by a visit to an ancestral medicine workshop, and a session where participants crafted worry dolls — small hand-made figures designed to alleviate concerns and fears.
Mateo Pedro emphasizes that although languages such as Kakchiqel and Q’anjob’al are endangered, they are still actively spoken. Although Spanish is widely used, Kakchiqel “is there in the community all the time,” he says. “If you go to the streets, you go to the store, you go to the market, you are going to hear it.”
He himself did not learn Spanish until around the age of nine. “But I spoke a broken Spanish,” he says. “Even now my Spanish grammar is not good enough because of the way I was taught. It was with a lot of punishment.”
Mayan languages were suppressed for centuries in Guatemala. In colonial times, a Catholic priest named Diego de Landa was responsible for the burning of countless texts, effectively destroying the Mayan written language. And during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), Indigenous people in the country were victims of both physical and cultural genocide.
Since that time, Guatemala has experienced a great push toward cultural rehabilitation. Since 2010, schools are required to provide instruction in the Indigenous language of the region. Still, forces such as television, the internet and globalization continue to affect the preservation of these ancient languages. This is why linguistics experts such as Mateo Pedro are determined to preserve this key aspect of Mayan history.
In Patzún, Ly and other students learned the language through conversation and repetition; today, efforts are underway to create more and more educational texts. In April of 2024, Mateo Pedro published a significant grammar textbook in order to preserve and teach Itza’, a Mayan language that currently has less than 50 fluent speakers.
Mateo Pedro emphasizes the contribution of U of T students to the book. “I hope that such projects allow students to not only experience the language and culture, but also open up future opportunities for them in their career. For example, if they want to become linguists, or they want to work with Indigenous communities or languages.”
Most importantly, he continues to work with the communities themselves in the safeguarding of their linguistic history.
“I always ask, how can we connect and find ways to work with Indigenous people? In the case of the teaching materials we’ve developed, we’re helping each other. It’s kind of a win-win. We’re helping them with their needs, and they are helping us with our needs as researchers.”