WEBVTT

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>> In [inaudible]
Palace, the high

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temple of Mexican
culture, poet Celerina

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Sanchez is reciting
in her native tongue

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[FOREIGN] It's part of

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the celebrations for

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international
mother tongue day.

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Here, it's an
especially big deal.

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Seven-and-a-half million
Mexicans speak one

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of the country's 68
indigenous languages.

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But not all is well.

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More than half of
them are in danger.

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>> If my language dies,

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I'll never know how
to name things,

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how to see the world
from my point of view.

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I wouldn't be
able to do that.

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>> The loss of
native languages

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hasn't happened
by accident here.

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Indigenous people have

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historically been
discriminated against,

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even punished for speaking

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their languages
in schools.

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Migration to cities or

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the US has also
taken its toll.

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Rene says he's now one of

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the only young people from

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his village in
the tricky region

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to still play
the old songs.

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>> [MUSIC].

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>> Things have to change.

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We shouldn't be thinking
that people are

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less for speaking an
indigenous language.

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I want to tell

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the world that
it's actually very

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valuable because it locks

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in all of our
ancestral knowledge,

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music, and medicine,
the things

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that we've been losing.

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>> Mexicans seem
to be coming

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round to that
point of view.

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Those taking the Nahuatl
poems handed out by

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officials in the Metro are

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keen to hang on
to their roots.

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>> It's important not
to lose our traditions

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and languages because
they're our inheritance.

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We've already
almost lost them,

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but we should teach

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our children to
value what we have.

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>> That's spilled into

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Mexico's artistic life,

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but it hasn't necessarily
got beyond that.

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There's increasingly
acceptance and

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support for cultural
events like this one.

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But linguistics experts

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and indigenous leaders say

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that it's in
the day-to-day

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that things still
need to change.

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For example, in hospitals,

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even in indigenous areas,

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there's often a lack
of interpreters,

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so people can't tell

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doctors exactly what's
wrong with them.

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The same in the judicial
system in which

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indigenous people
have been sent down

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without really
knowing what's

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going on in their trial.

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Those are the harder,

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less visible changes that

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the new government
will have

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to also engage with,

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if it wants the country

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to continue celebrating,

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not mourning its
mother tongues.

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John Holman, Al
Jazeera, Mexico City.