Editor's note: This article was produced by a student participating in the course J473 Strategic Science Communication, a collaboration between the School of Journalism and Communication’s Science Communication Minor program and the Research Communications unit in the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when a field supervisor tried to explain distancing protocols to dozens of blueberry harvesters on a large farm outside of Woodburn, Oregon, in Spanish, no one understood.
The workers spoke Northern Mam, one of at least 282 distinct languages from Mesoamerica, which includes the southern half of Mexico and northern Central America. The supervisor assumed they all spoke Spanish.
It’s ongoing situations like this where Mesoamerican people lack language appropriate information that Professor of Anthropology Lynn Stephen and her research team are working to prevent. So far, building on findings on Mesoamerican Indigenous languages identified in the Oregon COVID-19 Farmworkers Project, they have documented 51 different Mesoamerican languages spoken in Oregon.
Stephen has teamed up with fellow professors Gabriela Pérez Báez (Linguistics) and Kate Thornhill (UO Libraries), Anthropology doctoral students Liesl Cohn de Leon and Lidia Muñoz Paniagua, and community-based organizations including the Oregon Law Center, Bienestar, Arcoíris Cultural, and Plaza de Nuestra Comunidad to launch a project documenting linguistic diversity, knowledge, curing and caring strategies, and recommendations for inclusion from Mesoamerican communities in Oregon.
“When you learn a new language, you learn a new world,” Stephen said.
The project is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and runs from 2024-2027. Two other organizations, Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), and Coalición Fortaleza, participated in a pilot phase of the project funded by the Ford Family Foundation.
Language is vital to the preservation of the culture, identity, knowledge systems, medicinal and caring information and strategies of the Indigenous groups from Mexico and Guatemala that have made Oregon their new home. More than 300 languages are spoken in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean today. The Zapotec language family, for example, includes dozens of different languages. In some communities in western Guatemala in the Department of Huehuetenango, there are three or four different languages spoken.
These languages preserve a community's history, knowledge, and culture and transport that knowledge into new places with the people who speak them. In one county in Oregon, Stephen’s team has documented 29 different Mesoamerican languages spoken. In one workplace, people can speak six or seven different languages.
Indigenous workers from Mexico and Guatemala power the agricultural and forestry industries in Oregon, putting food on the table for Oregonians. Mesoamerica has incredible linguistic, cultural, and geographic diversity with language families that are all unique and can be traced back thousands of years, some as early as five thousand years ago. They far predate the Spanish language, which was not present in Mesoamerica until Spanish colonialism, dating back to the beginning of the 16th century.
Stephen’s team is focused on raising awareness about the forced homogenization these distinct language and culture groups face when immigrating to the United States when they are lumped together as “Hispanics” or “Latinos” and assumed to speak Spanish. Documenting specific languages is crucial for accurate interpretation in clinics, schools, courts, and other institutions and to educate the public about the knowledge that Indigenous peoples bring with them.
“There is distinct knowledge captured in those languages connected to each unique landscape these people are coming from,” Stephen said. “When you lose the language, you also lose the knowledge.”
One of the first steps in accurately reporting the diversity of languages found in the distinct Oregon communities was to run a survey. Stephen’s team passed out hundreds of postcards in these communities that directed speakers to take a short Qualtrics survey. The community-based organizations on the team did crucial work in helping to collect 240 completed surveys. The survey asked community members to explain where in Mesoamerica they are from, as well as to detail the distinct language that they speak, where and who they use it with. As a second part of their research activities, the team carried out 44 in-depth oral histories with different Mesoamerican Indigenous languages speakers, learning about the history of their language use, memories of daily life routines, landscapes and territory, and detailed knowledge of plants and different kinds of medicinal cures and food preparation practices.
The team is working with the InfoGraphics Lab at the UO to generate public education materials for the broad public, and specific information sheets targeting different kinds of service providers including not only linguistic information, but best practices linked to the experiences and recommendations of Mesoamerican Indigenous language speakers.
The team is also preparing what they call knowledge narratives, which capture the plant and medicinal knowledge people bring with them as well as some of their life experiences. These knowledge narratives will be used to educate service providers, particularly in relation to healthcare, heat and smoke exposure, and birthing practices. The knowledge narratives will also provide documentation for participants of the knowledges their communities bring with them. The project website will document specific plants, what they are used for, and integrate photographs and videos.
One of the largest issues the speakers of these distinct language groups face is inaccurate interpretation and information. Often, the legal, health, and other systems will assume that every immigrant from Mesoamerica speaks Spanish when that is far from the truth. Stephen said that often, “Because of the stereotypes and lack of information people have about Indigenous languages and peoples, they think an Indigenous person is going to understand every Indigenous language. The information you need to do accurate interpretation is specialized to a very local level. That is one of the key things you need to provide accurate interpretation and information.”
This leads to legal, health, and safety issues because, as Stephen said, “When you are in a medical or legal situation, their rights are not being represented because people are only understanding 20% of the information they are being given.”
These unique languages deserve to be preserved and celebrated in Oregon. They have been developed to accurately communicate the distinct knowledge of each individual landscape in Mesoamerica.
“Each language holds the knowledge and expertise of hundreds of years of cultivating the land and learning what plants are medicine, which are food, and how to correctly use them,” she said.
Stephen’s findings are already informing how Oregon institutions think about language access and cultural identity. Her research is a call to reimagine public services—not just for Spanish speakers, but for the Indigenous languages spoken across Mesoamerica and now spoken in Oregon. By documenting the diverse languages of Mesoamerican communities in Oregon, Stephen and her collaborators are not only preserving centuries of knowledge but also affirming the dignity and identity of the people who carry these languages with them.
As their research continues, Stephen hopes to show the importance of these languages as living legacies that should be heard, preserved, and celebrated.