Ángel Eduardo Balam Chi studies fifth grade at the Emiliano Zapata Bilingual School in Dzalbay, Temozón, and a few days ago he won second place in the short story contest written in the Mayan language organized by the State Human Rights Commission (CODHEY).
Pedro Ku Balam, the child’s teacher, said Ángel is an example of preservation of the Mayan language not only because he speaks it, but also writes it despite the fact that he has been told on repeated occasions to prioritize communicating in Spanish over the Mayan language and it has been his grandparents who have encouraged him not to be ashamed of his language.
“Dad tells him he has to speak Spanish because it’s more important. He tells him: ‘don’t speak Mayan’. But Angelito is also guided by his grandfather, who continually tells him that Mayan is important and that it should be strengthened, and that’s how the idea for the story was born,” the bilingual education teacher commented in an interview.
He mentioned that the story written in Maya, with which Ángel won second place in the Codhey story contest, is about the protagonist’s father not agreeing that his son should accompany his grandfather to the cornfield because he only learns Maya, a language that is useless, and on the contrary, he prefers to take him to the municipalities to speak in Spanish.
For this reason, Ku Balam pointed out the importance of preserving the Mayan language, because the language is disappearing, even in small communities because the new generations make their children speak in Spanish, something that worries him as a teacher and that is why he contributes his didactic knowledge for its preservation.
“As a teacher I see the concern that the language is disappearing, I worry about my students learning to speak and write, despite the fact that Mayan is complex. In the Mayan language course, children read and write Mayan, share different experiences with their grandparents, in other words, the school becomes a space for the promotion of Mayan,” he said.
For his part, Ángel Eduardo told Quadratín Yucatán that he feels proud of his origins and of speaking Mayan, and he also took the opportunity to send a message to the children of the state’s Mayan communities. “Never leave, let everyone speak and don’t pay attention (to criticism), you write and dedicate yourself to the language you speak”.
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