Yásnaya Aguilar’s fight to end colonial erasure through language

Original watercolor for Ojalá by Zinzi Sánchez.

Interview • Ana María Betancourt Ovalle • June 11, 2025 • Leer en castellano

Yásnaya Aguilar’s essays begin all at once. Her essay “We weren’t always Indigenous” starts with an act of resistance. She writes in Ayuujk, the language of the Mixe people, an Indigenous community of approximately 100,000 in the highlands of eastern Oaxaca, Mexico. 

“Akäts, ka’t y’ayuujk, ka’t ja ayuujk tkajpxy. Pëmëte’ep ää ayuujk mejts mkajpxy, ka’t ëjts nnëjäw, ja’y ëjts nnëjäw ku akäts mejts.” 

She goes on to offer a translation.

“Systems of oppression serve up many flavors of identity on a platter, ready for consumption. I didn't know I was Indigenous until I moved to Mexico City. I didn't know I was Indigenous until I learned Spanish.” 

Aguilar is a Mixe author, activist, and translator who has fought to preserve endangered languages, including her own. Her relationship with the Spanish language is complicated. As a child in Oaxaca, her elementary school teachers would hit her hands with a ruler every time she spoke Ayuujk and scold her, telling her she should only speak Spanish. 

She studied Spanish and Latin grammar while pursuing a degree in Hispanic Language and Literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 2004. That’s when she realized she didn't even know how many vowels the Ayuujk language had. 

“Studying linguistics made me ask more questions about my own language and learn about writing processes and reclaiming language in my region,” Aguilar said in an interview with Ojalá at Lehman College in the Bronx. “That's when learned how poetic phenomena occurred in my own language.” 

According to The Language Conservancy, the number of languages spoken worldwide has been steadily declining since 1950. On average, nine languages disappear every year; one every 40 days. The Mixe language family, which includes Ayuujk, is among those at risk.

New republics, destroyed languages

Before the arrival of the Spanish in Mexico, only the tlacuilos—scribes in the Valley of Mexico and the Mixteca region—knew how to read and write using pictograms. Indigenous communities transmitted their stories mainly through oral tradition rather than writing. 

Colonization threatened not only oral traditions but also Native languages and Indigenous practices. After Mexico's independence in 1821, teaching Indigenous languages in formal education was banned, putting them further at risk. 

Aguilar advocates for multilingualism and argues we should explore why languages disappear. 

“For a language to disappear, the human rights of the people who speak it must be systematically violated,” said Aguilar. “I'm interested in languages, but I'm more interested in their speakers. Languages will naturally exist if there is no oppression.” 

On February 28, Aguilar traveled to New York from Oaxaca with her husband, musician Benjamín Kumantuk, for a concert and dialogue on the importance of multilingualism. The same day, Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring English the official language of the United States. 

In the United States, approximately one in five people—some 67.8 million people—speak a language other than English at home, according to the Census Bureau. 

Aguilar’s stance on these policies and their implications is clear. 

“Decisions like Trump's imply a series of violations of linguistic rights and, therefore, of the human rights of immigrant populations,” she said. “Any future with hope is multilingual. If the future is monolingual, it is fascist.”

Keeping language alive

Aguilar keeps Ayuujk alive through what the Western world calls literature, but she prefers to refer to her work as verbal pieces or poetry. She rejects the label of literature because her creations go beyond paper: they are not institutionalized, they are not sold on the market, and they live on in the memory of those who hear them. 

“When we publish materials written in Mixe, we need to create readers. First, we need to teach people to read in Mixe, and then produce and distribute books among those readers,” explains Aguilar. “The state does not teach us to read and write in our own language, and we can’t simply distribute books if there are no readers.” 

Aguilar, 43, has written 10 books, including This mouth is mine, and A stateless us (Un nosotrxs sin Estado). Through her work, she questions who nationalist and colonialist political discourses benefit and considers how to challenge them through non-hegemonic languages. But she hesitates to call herself a writer. She prefers to be known as a storyteller or simply as a woman with a gift for words. Her work rarely fits the Western notion of the author as poetic genius. 

"What people call oral tradition, I prefer to call the tradition of memory. Stories don't disappear when someone stops telling them. They live on in the collective memory,“ she said. ”Every time a story is retold, it’s transformed. Unlike in Western literature, where any intervention could lead to a copyright claim." 

For the Mixe people, storytelling is inextricably linked to music and the visual arts. Stories work like instruments in a vast melodic composition. Together, Aguilar and Kumantuk share the same mission: to preserve and maintain Mixe culture and identity. 

“Our project is part of a musical revival in the region, where traditional Mixe sounds and stories interact with global influences, such as European electronic music,” said Kumantuk, a French horn player who seeks to create dialogue among musical traditions. “This gives us hope because it shows we are not frozen in the past: we are creating for local and global audiences.” 

As Aguilar’s work gains recognition, her language reaches new platforms. Digital publishing allows her to connect with communities facing monolingual violence around the world , but it also exposes her to spaces where Ayuujk is exoticized. That's why she sometimes likes to invent, as she did in We Were Not Always Indigenous. 

“I like to write false translations. Many publishers ask me for bilingual work, but they don't really care about my language; they see it as a fetish, an accessory,” said Aguilar. "So when they ask me for bilingual writing, I change the meaning in Mixe. And since they're not paying attention, they don't even notice."