Yaganiza's priest, Father Baltazar Reyes,
says he doesn't mind his parishioners
reading a Bible written in Zapoteco. But he calls evangelical
Christians 'the separate brothers'
and worries about their affect on village harmony.
The Catholic church is more than the physical center of the pueblo of Yaganiza, high in the Sierra Norte of the
Mexican state of Oaxaca. Catholicism is intricately woven into the
identity of this indigenous Zapotec village. Local traditions from long before
Spanish conquerors arrived have been incorporated into Catholic
ritual. Cemented into the church wall are stones from a pre-Hispanic
building with Zapotec markings on them. For centuries, the
town has required all residents to help take care of the church
and take part in its ceremonies. In Yaganiza and pueblos like it, residents will tell you that the Church
is the glue that holds the community together.
So ten years ago, when one of Yaganiza's 900 inhabitants refused to
help pay for an upcoming fiesta, town officials balked. The man
argued that because he was an evangelical Christian, he shouldn't
have to contribute to a celebration that includes heavy drinking,
raucous dancing and Catholic ceremonies—all anathema
to his religion. Soon other evangelicals joined his cause,
and 40 families were saying they, too, would not pay for fiestas
or do town service in the Catholic church. Town Hall responded by throwing the men in jail and depriving their families of basic services: clean
water, access to collective land and use of the village mill.
Indigenous activist Abel
Montes is concerned about conserving traditions he sees
as the core of his people's identity.
"According to the Mexican constitution, we can't obligate
anyone to believe in what we believe, but that wasn't the situation,"
says local indigenous rights activist Abel Montes. "We weren't
defending the Catholic religion. We were fighting for the harmony
of the internal life of the community."
Rebecca Long, of the Dallas-based group SIL International (formerly
the Summer Institute of Linguistics), waited until after the
controversy died down to come to Yaganiza and begin translating
the New Testament into the local variant of Zapoteco.
SIL International aims to increase native language literacy worldwide,
but evangelical Christianity is what motivates its translators:
the group has completed 500 translations of the New Testament and
1,000 more are in progress. Long wanted to make the words of the Bible
accessible to those in Yaganiza who don't speak Spanish—but she
says she did not want to fuel the conflict between evangelicals
and Catholics. So only after Yaganiza's evangelicals reluctantly signed a promise to comply with the pueblo's traditional obligations
did Long make her way to the community.
Her presence has been controversial since the moment she arrived.
"It does threaten the status quo," Long admits. "We
don't have anything like this in our own culture, where everybody
from this town has lived here for generation after generation after
generation. It's their land, it's their town, it's their language."
Rebecca Long works with a native Zapoteco speaker. In some places, translators
for SIL International have gained popularity because
they've given medical aid. Long says her
job is harder now that the government has opened
health clinics.
Seventy-year-old Elena Caballero is thrilled that Rebecca Long
has come to town. Caballero is a member of Yaganiza's Pentecostal
church. She says Long's translations of biblical texts have been
invaluable to her: not only does she now understand what God is
telling her, she says, but she knows what she wants to say to God.
But some of Caballero's Catholic neighbors feel differently. The local Catholic
priest, who only speaks Spanish, says he wouldn't mind his parishioners
having copies of the Bible in their own language, even though Catholic
doctrine discourages individuals from interpreting the Bible on
their own. What he objects to, he says, is the lessons evangelicals
take from the Bible.
"Here we understand the word of God, but as a way of creating
community," he says, "to strengthen customs that they
are letting disappear."
Rebecca Long and members of Yaganiza's evangelical community sing from hymnals in the Zapotec language.
But the Zapoteco language has been under pressure since long before the Evangelicals arrived. Decades ago, teachers
punished students who spoke the language in the classroom.
In Yaganiza and in indigenous pueblos across the country, public
schools aimed to drum Spanish into the minds of indigenous children
in an effort to unify the country. There are pueblos not far from Yaganiza in which hardly anyone can
remember the local dialect.
Education policies have changed in recent years; now officials encourage bilingual instruction. But materials are in short supply. Rebecca Long has collected and published local folk tales, riddles and songs. Yet the schools have not taken advantage of her work. Local school director Salvador Galindo says this makes him sad. He and other officials are struggling
to find the resources to write and publish children's texts in local
dialects. But most are suspicious of Rebecca Long and SIL International. They fear that the group is trying to convert
residents to evangelical Christianity. And they are
wary of outsiders threatening the town's traditions.
All kinds of people with all kinds of ideas come to
Oaxaca's mountain pueblos. One Pentecostal preacher traveled from miles
away to lecture on the evils of short hair; some locals return from
stints in the United States determined to transform the way the villages are run.
They all force the communities to weigh which traditions are worth
keeping and which they can let go. While Rebecca Long is helping to save
one of Yaganiza's most cherished traditions, her very presence
endangers others. And that means more difficult choices for Yaganiza.
Elena
Caballero
