The Chiapas highlands or the central highlands of Chiapas, is a geographic, sociocultural and administrative region located in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico.
The Maya peoples are a large group of Indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. They inhabit southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. The overarching term "Maya" is a collective designation to include the peoples of the region that share some degree of cultural and linguistic heritage; however, the term embraces many distinct populations, societies, and ethnic groups that each have their own particular traditions, cultures, and historical identity.
The Mayan languages form a language family spoken in Mesoamerica and northern Central America. Mayan languages are spoken by at least 6 million Maya peoples, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize and Honduras. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized 21 Mayan languages by name, and Mexico recognizes eight more within its territory.
The Maya regions can be divided into three different eco-logical areas: Southern Lowland, Northern Lowlands, and highlands/pacific slope region. The northern area was important because of its salt production, limestone, and cacao production. The limestone was essential to the construction of the Mayan cities and sculptures. The highlands consist of volcanic areas that are surrounded by mountain ranges from the Chiapas to Southern Guatemala. The mountain peaks vary from 3,300 to 13,100 feet (1,000 to 4,000m). Additionally, the landscape is characterized by valleys with fertile land and large lakes. These characteristics made the region appealing to explorers who later exploited the locations abundant natural resources.[1]
The Maya civilization was a Mesoamerican civilization developed by the Maya peoples, and noted for its logosyllabic script—the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in pre-Columbian Americas—as well as for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system. The Maya civilization developed in an area that encompasses southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. This region consists of the northern lowlands encompassing the Yucatán Peninsula, and the highlands of the Sierra Madre, running from the Mexican state of Chiapas, across southern Guatemala and onwards into El Salvador, and the southern lowlands of the Pacific littoral plain.
History of the Ch'ol in Mexico
In 1554, the Spanish military first invaded Lacandon jungle, where the Lakandon Ch'ol and other indigenous groups lived. At the end of the 1550s, the Spanish invasion forced the Ch'ol and other Mayan groups into settlements called Reducciones. Eventually, when the reducciones were split, the Ch'ol were sent to the North, to Palenque, Tilá, and Tumbalá. The people sent to these regions were the ancestors of today's Ch'ol. The Ch'ol were forced to work on encomiendas until the Spanish crown gave them a document called the "cédulas reales" which granted them the land they had worked on for generations.
The Lacandon Jungle is an area of rainforest which stretches from Chiapas, Mexico, into Honduras and into the southern part of the Yucatán Peninsula. The heart of this rainforest is located in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas near the border with Guatemala in the Montañas del Oriente region of the state. Although most of the jungle outside the reserve has been partially or completely destroyed and damage continues inside the Reserve, the Lacandon is still the largest montane rainforest in North America and one of the last ones left large enough to support jaguars. It contains 1,500 tree species, 33% of all Mexican bird species, 25% of all Mexican animal species, 56% of all Mexican diurnal butterflies and 16% of all Mexico's fish species.
In the 19th century, President Benito Juarez established a system of agrarian ejidos with the intent of changing the traditional system of production in Mexico. To establish the system, Juarez took away land from indigenous tribes such as the Ch'ol. However, the ejidos did not provide enough natural resources to support the Ch'ol people. As a result, the Ch'ol began to move into the Lacandon Jungle. Today there is conflict between the Ch'ol and the Lacandon-Yucatec speakers as the Ch'ol continue to move into the land the Lacandones now claim as their own.
In the Mexican system of government, an ejido is an area of communal land used for agriculture, on which community members individually farm designated parcels and collectively maintain communal holdings. Ejidos are registered with Mexico's National Agrarian Registry. The system of ejidos was based on an understanding of the Aztec calpulli and the medieval Spanish ejido.
Language
The language that is called Ch'ol in English is referred to as "Lak ty'añ" means "our speech". The word Ch'ol refers to both the language and the people.
The Ch'ol language consists of three branches: Sabanilla, Tilá and Tumbalá. Although some linguists consider them as three different languages, they are commonly known as dialects of the same Ch'ol language.[2] Speakers of Tilá and Tumbalá can usually understand each other. In total, there are an estimated 120,000 speakers of the Ch'ol language. The Tilá speakers inhabit Chiapas, Tila, and while the Tumbala inhabit north central Chiapas, Tumbala, Sabanilla, Misjia, Limar, Chivalita.[3] Both dialects are spoken in Vicente Guerrero, Limar, and Chivalito.
Although most Ch'ol people are monolingual, those that speak Spanish have a variation called "Castia". This form of Spanish is characterized by:
Continued use of archaisms that are no longer used in other varieties in Spanish like: Cuartia, fanego, libra
Use of Vos instead of tu in second person singular
Phonetic transformation in the second singular: "i" is dropped and "e" is stressed. For example: Vos quereis = Vos queres
Frequent use of "lo" even when there is a masculine or feminine article: "lo hizo las tortillas" o "lo miro el rio"
Food and culture
The Ch'ol practice Christianity.[3] However, many Mayan traditions are incorporated into the Ch'ols' Christian religious practices (more so than in other regions of Mexico). For example "cave worship has been legitimized throughout the region and local curers alternate between churches and caves to gain their powers and carry out their functions. Earth owner, the Mayan cave god, and Christ have been reconciled, and cave ceremonies have continued to be performed since the conversion of the population to Christianity."[4]
The staple food of the Ch'ol people are corn, livestock (chicken, turkey), beans, squash, bananas, greens and other fruits. A source of income for some Ch'ol includes selling livestock, (like pigs, cows and chicken) as well as fruits; this income is used to purchase soap, medicine and other essential materials.
Education and bilingualism
The growing interaction between Spanish speakers and Ch'ol speakers has created a desire for higher education and more job opportunities. The interaction has also heightened the need to learn Spanish and has caused the stigmatization of native languages including Ch'ol. However, the majority of Spanish speakers in the Ch'ol community are males, younger women, and children. Children learn to speak Spanish in primary school; they are taught in Ch'ol till fourth grade when instruction begins to be given in Spanish. In some rural villages, there are secondary schools, but for higher education most have to travel to a different town. However, the cost of doing so generally prohibits this. In México, education is mandatory through secondary school, but many Ch'ol students (especially girls) stop attending around the sixth grade due to early marriage and financial issues.[5]
Classic Maya is the oldest historically attested member of the Mayan language family. It is the main language documented in the pre-Columbian inscriptions of the Classic Era Maya civilization.
Lacandon is a Mayan language spoken by all of the 1,000 Lacandon people in the state of Chiapas in Mexico. Within Chiapas, Lacandon is spoken in Betel, Lacanjá San Quintín, Lake Metzaboc, Metzaboc, and Najá.
Mesoamerican languages are the languages indigenous to the Mesoamerican cultural area, which covers southern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize and parts of Honduras and El Salvador and Nicaragua. The area is characterized by extensive linguistic diversity containing several hundred different languages and seven major language families. Mesoamerica is also an area of high linguistic diffusion in that long-term interaction among speakers of different languages through several millennia has resulted in the convergence of certain linguistic traits across disparate language families. The Mesoamerican sprachbund is commonly referred to as the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area.
Yucatec Maya, called mayaʼ tʼàan by its speakers, is a Mayan language spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula and northern Belize. To native speakers, the proper name is Maya and it is known only as Maya. The qualifier "Yucatec" is a tag linguists use to distinguish it from other Mayan languages. Thus the use of the term Yucatec Maya to refer to the language is scientific jargon or nomenclature.
The Chʼol (Chol) language is a member of the western branch of the Mayan language family used by the Chʼol people in the Mexican state of Chiapas. There are two main dialects:
Mayan Sign Language is a sign language used in Mexico and Guatemala by Mayan communities with unusually high numbers of deaf inhabitants. In some instances, both hearing and deaf members of a village may use the sign language. It is unrelated to the national sign languages of Mexico and Guatemala, as well as to the local spoken Mayan languages and Spanish.
Joljaʼ is an archaeological site of the pre-Columbian Mayan civilization, located in the Chiapas highlands of central southern Mexico. Also known as Cueva de Jolja' in Spanish, the site is a cave which contains a painted mural and a number of inscriptions in the Mayan script which date back to the Early Classic period.
The Mam are an indigenous people in the western highlands of Guatemala and in south-western Mexico who speak the Mam language.
Mochoʼ or Motozintleco is a moribund Mayan language spoken by the Motozintleco people of Chiapas, Mexico. It is part of the western branch of Mayan languages. Mochoʼ speakers refer to their own language as qatô:k, which means 'our language'. Mochoʼ has a dialect called Tuzantec spoken in Tuzantan, Chiapas.
Tila is a town and one of the 119 Municipalities of Chiapas, in southern Mexico.
Jan de Vos van Gerven was a Belgian historian, who lived in Mexico from 1973 until his death in 2011. In 1995 he became guest-advisor to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) during the peace talks between the EZLN and the Mexican Government.
The Tzeltal are a Maya people of Mexico, who chiefly reside in the highlands of Chiapas. The Tzeltal language belongs to the Tzeltalan subgroup of Maya languages. Most Tzeltals live in communities in about twenty municipalities, under a Mexican system called “usos y costumbres” which seeks to respect traditional indigenous authority and politics. Women are often seen wearing traditional huipils and black skirts, but men generally do not wear traditional attire. Tzeltal religion syncretically integrates traits from Catholic and native belief systems. Shamanism and traditional medicine is still practiced. Many make a living through agriculture and/or handcrafts, mostly textiles; and many also work for wages to meet family needs.
The Lakandon Chʼol were a former Chʼol-speaking Maya people inhabiting the Lacandon Jungle in what is now lowland Chiapas in Mexico and the bordering regions of northwestern Guatemala, along the tributaries of the upper Usumacinta River and the foothills of the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes.
The Spanish conquest of Chiapas was the campaign undertaken by the Spanish conquistadores against the Late Postclassic Mesoamerican polities in the territory that is now incorporated into the modern Mexican state of Chiapas. The region is physically diverse, featuring a number of highland areas, including the Sierra Madre de Chiapas and the Montañas Centrales, a southern littoral plain known as Soconusco and a central depression formed by the drainage of the Grijalva River.
VictoriaReiflerBricker is an American anthropologist and ethnographer, known for her studies of Mesoamerican culture.
↑ Josserand, J. Kathryn; Hopkins, Nicholas A. (2005). "Lexical Retention and Cultural Significance in Chol (Mayan) Ritual Vocabulary". Anthropological Linguistics. 47 (4): 401–423. JSTOR25132352.
↑ Rodriguez, Lydia, Anthropologist. Personal Notes "Who Are the Ch'ol Maya." 2005
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