Paul Malandra

“Sin idioma, no hay el pueblo.” Without language, there is no community, no people, no tradition. The words above were spoken by a Mapuche man in the south of Chile about the importance of retaining his ancestral language. There are millions of indigenous people in Latin America, and dozens of unique languages spoken for generations. Much has been written about how these languages are at risk or endangered, and about how language conservation is critical to the preservation of a culture. My focus, however, is on the reasons why we study languages and how this paradigm is upended by the experience of indigenous populations.

Language is more than a set of symbols marking concepts and objects, with a Spanish word easily exchanged for one in English, French, or Chinese. The average introduction to Spanish textbook would translate pueblo to town, but the Spanish word contains the weight of history, with the meanings of tradition and community as well. In English, with celebrate linguistic innovation, christening words of the year, twisting nouns into verbs, and importing and exporting phrases from popular culture and other languages. Latin American Spanish contains many loan words from indigenous languages, such a guata for stomach (from Mapudungun) and guagua for baby (from Quechua). Discovering these differences, nuances, and novelties, where literal translation does not suffice, is a part of the thrill of learning a new language. The expression of language not only defines but also creates the world of the language that its speakers inhabit. In this way, every day I spend in Latin America, every word I learn and phrase I hear, I am involved in a process of opening myself to new interpretations of reality. This is why we learn languages, in order to discover in everyday conversations and to access and communicate with new cultures and peoples.

Yet for the indigenous peoples of Latin America, the process of language learning is completely distinct. They learn their languages to preserve rather than discover and are fighting outside influence, rather than embracing it. If the Mapuche language, Mapudungun, is not the first language of children today, then the Mapuche people must, in essence, learn their culture instead of absorbing it. In this way, language learning is for the Mapuche an existential process through which they recreate an ancient culture and, in part, reject the culture in which they are immersed. Indeed, while everyone in the Mapuche community I visited could understand Mapudungun, only the adults could speak it fluently. The language native to the Mapuche people is not the native language of many modern Mapuche.

I asked an older Mapuche woman, showing us how she dyes wool, if she spoke Mapudungun, and she responded, in Spanish, “I was born here. I was raised here. I was married here. My husband is Mapuche. I am Mapuche. I speak Mapudungun. I sing in Mapudungun.” Her language, like her husband and home, is intrinsic. Talking to this woman I realized the fundamental difference between why we study languages. I study Spanish to look outward and onward, to question and confirm myself, and to break away from my familiar. The indigenous peoples in Latin America speak to find familiarity in a world populated by difference. She speaks Mapudungun to retain her past, and in learning her language discovers her own existence.

Take a tour of any city in Latin America, and on it you will find a prominent cathedral. Travel off the traditional tourist trail and you will stumble upon a religious festival, a makeshift shrine or simply a small crucifix hanging in a bedroom. To many, these may seem like signs of dogmatism or overt religiosity. Indeed, the stereotypical perception of religion in Latin America is that it is doctrinal, fervent, and above all, Catholic. However, through my experiences in Chile and Ecuador, I have seen that in reality they are just different ways of expressing the same religion as a cultural phenomenon that exists in the United States. In my experience, a prominent difference between the public religion experience in Latin America and the United States is one of symbolism, and misunderstanding results for a failure to comprehend the symbols of one another.

Religion in Latin America is a cultural beacon no different in theory than the religion as a culture phenomenon that exists in the United States. For example, in the United States, it is not uncommon for non-practicing Catholics to identify their neighborhoods by parish communities that they do not regularly attend. In this way, what a foreigner perceives as fervent religion is not so. Does the town come to the festival honoring the Virgin Mary because of deeply held religious beliefs or because it is a social and cultural tradition? Is the difference black and white or shades of gray? In both cases, religion serves as a community force resulting from historical or cultural processes that have been captured by or have co-opted an institutional force, in this case Roman Catholicism.

Nevertheless, upon my return to the United States, I have been asked many times if my host family attended Church, if I had to go to with them, and how their religious beliefs colored my experience. It seems that a consistent fear, or at least concern, among new host students is that their family life in Latin America will force them into uncomfortable religious situations as their more liberal or agnostic views clash with the more conservative faiths of their host families. Indeed, the stereotype of a traditional dogmatic Catholicism in Latin America exists in spite of the enormous influence of the decidedly un-traditional liberation theology in the region. The idea that the Catholic Church exerts undo influence over public policy is also rebutted by recent policies, as Argentina approved same-sex marriage over strong objections of the institutional Church.

Thus, religious misunderstanding between the United States and Latin America seems to truly derive not from qualitative or dogmatic differences but from those that are perceived – the symbols of each region’s religious traditions – and is much more a cultural phenomenon than a religious one. The implications of this were particularly helpful to me in my cultural immersion process. For example, once I started to perceive the religious differences I saw as those of symbolism, I was able to view public and private religious art not as an imposition of religion on society but as a manifestation of the culture in which I was immersed.