18 Ventôse CCXVII

Tea is great, tea is delicious. Coffee however, will forever be my drink.

I’m thinking I may be an ok person to know: I like candy, I like cuddles, and I like friends.

I’ven’t written a story in a long time, I actually don’t think anything I’ve ever written really constitutes a story.

Exams were looming, and now I have my first midterm this afternoon. I doubt I’ll be leaving the library today except to go to class and for the occasional break.

Summer calls me.

I’ve been thinking a lot about language and semantic gaps; I’ve been coming across parts of my life that are difficult to describe in conventional language. Often, there are no words to describe things i consider critical or foundational parts of my life. I think a lot also about linguistic privilege and what it means to be part of a radical community that has its own manners of speech, linguistic conventions, and terminology. Also, we reclaim words and use them in counter-normative ways that are confusing if not off-putting to a casual listener.

While I can understand where issues of alienation and elitism/cliquishness are very important to address (particularly when it comes to “bullshit intellectual” jargon and elitist academic language), I also think it’s critical to recognize that as “radicals” we’re not only trying to fight capitalism or some oppressive institution or another, we’re also creating a culture of our own. All cultures, including radical cultures, revolutionary/insurrectionary cultures, and cultures of resistance require their own language through which it can be transmitted. I think Zapatismo is a great model of how struggle can be applied to cultural fields equally as it is to politics. Like they say, our word is our weapon.

One place where I keep coming up against semantic gaps is in how I understand my personal relationships with others. While the categories of “acquaintance, friend, girl/boy-friend” are broadly functional, I know it’s impossible to categorize my relationships according to any standard typology. In politics, of course, there is always the trusty, friendly, and super-functional “comrade.” I know some folks don’t like to use it because of perceived communist/Soviet interpretations, but I understand the word as falling within a general leftist or far leftist tradition. In Spanish I like both the direct equivalent and cognate camarada (gender neutral, despite the -a) an the more general compañera/o. In Arabic, there’s rafiiqah (رفيقة), the politicized equivalent to ṣadiiqah (صديقة). However I still make pretty extensive use nonstandard words such as comradical, only partially tongue-in-cheek.

26 Thermidor CCXVI

Anthropologists are the awesomists. This article does a short profile on someone who’s doing meaningful work in anthropology and linguistics. My grandpa met this man, Crecencio García Ramos, in 2004 on a visit to Xalapa, Veracruz. He told him that his grandson (me) was trying to learn Totonac, so he sent me two books, a Vocabulary and a collection of stories, as first readings in the language.

Since then, he’s published several more books, including story anthologies, a phonology, and an orthography (spelling) manual. He’s also published the first Totonac-Spanish Dictionary. He’s a co-founder of the Academia de la Lengua Totonaca, a linguistic regulation body of Totonac speakers and academics from the Universidad Veracruzana. His efforts have led to a new standardized Totonac alphabet and spelling system, and an increased pan-Totonac awareness of linguistic heritage. García Ramos is currently working on an encyclopedia of the Totonac world to preserve culture that may be lost when elders die before their traditional knowledge is recorded.

Currently, several trade and adult education schools, including Kgoyom (run by a powerful regional political group, the Organización Independiente Totonaca) teach the language. A bilingual public school has recently launched and is beginning to show results.

Totonac communities are developing their language and defending it from Spanish-speaking prejudice, and are working with indigenous scholars, like García Ramos, to recover their cultural heritage and affirm their identity.

Politically, like many indigenous and working people in Mexico, many Totonacs identify solidly with the Left. the OIT has previously allied itself with the social-democratic Partido de la Revolución Democrática and won several county and local seats. Now that they are well-established, they are striking out on their own and refusing to used for political gain by national parties. Many others are part of the Otra Campaña and are affiliated with the EZLN. Zapatistas in the region have founded “La Otra Totonacapan” to defend communities against commercialization of their culture and tourism-related exploitation.

Defending their land and their language, Totonac people like Crecencio García Ramos are making sure Totonac culture survives. Like Ramos says in “Kxlakatitayan xla kilichiwinkán: En defensa de nuestro idioma”:

Our language is saved by the Totonac people who still speak it daily. Let us try at least to speak it well, and write it even better, with pride, so that we’ll remain a different people.