>> In [inaudible] Palace, the high
temple of Mexican culture, poet Celerina
Sanchez is reciting in her native tongue
[FOREIGN] It's part of
the celebrations for
international mother tongue day.
Here, it's an especially big deal.
Seven-and-a-half million Mexicans speak one
of the country's 68 indigenous languages.
But not all is well.
More than half of them are in danger.
>> If my language dies,
I'll never know how to name things,
how to see the world from my point of view.
I wouldn't be able to do that.
>> The loss of native languages
hasn't happened by accident here.
Indigenous people have
historically been discriminated against,
even punished for speaking
their languages in schools.
Migration to cities or
the US has also taken its toll.
Rene says he's now one of
the only young people from
his village in the tricky region
to still play the old songs.
>> [MUSIC].
>> Things have to change.
We shouldn't be thinking that people are
less for speaking an indigenous language.
I want to tell
the world that it's actually very
valuable because it locks
in all of our ancestral knowledge,
music, and medicine, the things
that we've been losing.
>> Mexicans seem to be coming
round to that point of view.
Those taking the Nahuatl poems handed out by
officials in the Metro are
keen to hang on to their roots.
>> It's important not to lose our traditions
and languages because they're our inheritance.
We've already almost lost them,
but we should teach
our children to value what we have.
>> That's spilled into
Mexico's artistic life,
but it hasn't necessarily got beyond that.
There's increasingly acceptance and
support for cultural events like this one.
But linguistics experts
and indigenous leaders say
that it's in the day-to-day
that things still need to change.
For example, in hospitals,
even in indigenous areas,
there's often a lack of interpreters,
so people can't tell
doctors exactly what's wrong with them.
The same in the judicial system in which
indigenous people have been sent down
without really knowing what's
going on in their trial.
Those are the harder,
less visible changes that
the new government will have
to also engage with,
if it wants the country
to continue celebrating,
not mourning its mother tongues.
John Holman, Al Jazeera, Mexico City.