User:Velvetfacts/Yásnaya Aguilar

Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil (Ayutla Mixe, Oaxaca, 1981) is a Mixe linguist, writer, critical theorist, translator, linguistic rights activist and researcher based in the Mixe region of Oaxaca, Mexico. Her working languages ​​are Ayuujk (Mixe), Spanish and English. Aguilar has carried out projects that meet the needs of speakers whose language is in danger of disappearing.

Trajectory
Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil completed a Bachelor's Degree in Hispanic Language and Literatures at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and was received in 2004 with a thesis on the diachrony of the order of constituents in Spanish. Later, she continued her postgraduate studies in the Master in Hispanic Linguistics at UNAM. During her time at the university, she discovered her interest in the study of language and became interested in the grammatical study of her mother tongue, the Alto del Sur Mixe or Ayuujk.

Since 2011, she has been a contributor to the Este País magazine and author of the Ayuujk blog, in which she problematizes the linguistic policies that force speakers of native languages ​​to stop speaking their mother tongue to avoid being marginalized, and where she addresses reflections on literature and personal experiences about her experience as a speaker and student of an original language in an environment of homogenizing cultural policies.

She has participated and given colloquia, lectures, conferences and workshops in national forums such as the National Autonomous University of Mexico as well as in international forums. In 2018, she was invited by the Indigenous Government Council to offer a talk in Zapatista territory and in the presence of Subcomandante Marcos, today known as Galeano.

She was coordinator of Culture and Events at the Juan de Córdova Research Library, in the city of Oaxaca. She is currently a member of the Colegio Mixe, a group that seeks to carry out research on the Mixe language and culture, as well as disseminate them.

Linguistic activism
The linguistic work of Yásnaya Elena Aguilar has managed to integrate into the discussion of great analysts in different subjects, from anthropology, political science, indigenous law, philosophy, among others, because, when studying the ayuujk (mixe) language, reflects on the fact that the lack of a database of linguistic studies on indigenous languages, in contrast to the official language, is the result of a systematic problem in the relationship between the state and indigenous peoples; Above all because this homogenizing relationship on the part of the state produced a series of injustices that were implemented in the actions and discourse of said entity up to the present time in such a way that they became the institutional tool for interlocution with indigenous peoples, seeing them as backward communities which, therefore, according to the state, have to be integrated into the ideal of the modern progressive discourse of the nation-state, which to begin with has seen the indigenous language as an element of delay, this for Yásnaya Elena, has been a determining factor for the annihilation of languages ​​and in the same way, this has been a pattern of action at a historical and global level where every time, the speakers of indigenous languages ​​are fewer in a context where states were formed from submission.

She realized the relationship between the crises of indigenous linguistic systems in danger, with the social, economic and political factors of the context to which they are part, this has led her to position her reflections beyond linguistic expertise and has contributed important works to the field intellectual in order to position the importance of preserving languages ​​not only because of their importance in linguistic matters, but because it also implies facing all forms of abuse of the rights of peoples in their relationship with the agents of power who have tried to subdue them.

She has had important contributions on the reflection of translation flows to and from Minotarian languages: ""Traducir es un trabajo noble, generoso como pocos. No soy la primera en decirlo y tampoco será la primera que hable de las dificultades, las angustias y las preguntas, muchas veces sin respuesta, a las que se enfrenta un traductor. En el caso de muchas lenguas originarias el proceso se vuelve aún más complejo. Sin la ayuda de diccionarios, traducciones de referencia, gramáticas de consulta y otras herramientas necesarias, la labor se vuelve muy compleja, considerando además que estás lenguas pertenecen a familias lingüísticas ajenas a las lenguas indoeuropeas. El asunto se complica aún más cuando el texto es jurídico como sucede en muchos casos""

- Yásnaya Elena

On February 26, 2019, Yásnaya was invited to the ordinary session of the LXIV Legislature in the Chamber of Deputies within the framework of the International Year of Indigenous Languages, to deliver a speech in Mixe, in which she alluded to the state in the that are the indigenous languages ​​of Mexico. Within her message, she emphatically pointed out: “Our languages ​​do not die, they kill them. The Mexican State has erased them. The unique thought, the unique culture, the unique State, with the water of its name, erases them ”.

Border conflict in Ayutla
in June 2017, Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil publicly denounced the aggression that she and many people in her community suffered due to an ambush by armed groups hired by caciquile leaders and authorities of Tamazulapam del Espíritu Santo, after a dispossession of land undertaken against community members from Ayutla, where one of her fellow community members was killed and four women from San Pedro and San Pablo Ayutla were kidnapped, while others were injured. In the same way, she reproached the negligence of the Oaxaca government for taking actions that did little to help solve a social conflict that exists in the community of San Pedro and San Pablo Ayutla and Tamazulapam del Espíritu Santo for natural resources. She also denounced the responsibility of the government of the state of Oaxaca as well as the Secretary General of the Government, Héctor Anuar Mafud Mafud for the institutional omission after said social problems the community was left without drinking water, since the water tanks of her community as well as its pipes were destroyed by violent groups.

On March 31, 2020, there was a forest fire in San Pedro and San Pablo Ayutla, which once again highlighted the urgent need for water in the community. At this time, the town of Ayutla had been without water for more than two years (1,044 days) in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico.

Yásnaya Elena Aguilar has also been active in denouncing on Twitter with the hashtag #AguaParaAyutlaYA.

Works

 * Ää: manifestos on linguistic diversity, Ed. Almadia / Bookmate, 2020.

Essays

 * #Ayuujk: Useful languages ​​and useless languages?
 * "We without Mexico: indigenous nations and autonomy", in The future is today. Radical ideas for Mexico (Humberto Beck and Rafael Lemus, prologue and edition). Authors: Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil, Mario Arriaga Cuadiello, Alejandro de Cross, Fernando Córdova Tapia, Alejandra Dédalo Alons, Gabriela Jáuregui, Elisa Godínez, Luis Ángel Monroy-Gómez-Franco, Alejandro Hernández Tinajares, Luiciy Pedroza, Javier Raya, Estefanía Vela Barba ,. New Library, 2018.
 * "Poetry in Denied Tongues A Note on the Mixe Translation of a Mahmud Darwish Poem", in Interpretatio. Magazine of hermeneutics. UNAM, 2017.
 * "The linguistic is political (Putsktu'u: Ja putsk jëts ja tu'u)", in Tierra Adentro.
 * The Zoque language, coatora together with Jan Teje Faarlund / Aguilar Gil, Yásnaya Elena. General Directorate of Publications UNAM, 2017.
 * Condolerse, (South +) Authors: Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil, Marina Azahua, Elda Cantú, Amaranta Caballero Prado, Roberto Cruz Arzabal, Irmgard Emmelhainz, Verónica Gerber Bicecci, Mónica Nepote, Diego Enrique Osorno, Javier Raya, Ignacio Sánchez Prado, Alexandra Saum -Pascual, Ingrid Solana, Eugenio Tisselli and Sara Uribe, 2015.

Traductions

 * Returns from the "Indian" Speech (for Mahmud Darwish). Silvana Rabinovich (editor). UNAM, 2017.
 * Nëwempët matya'aky (Lauro Zavala, comp.), Ediciones del Ermitaño, 2014.