Lenca Studies

Antu es el nombre de la lider de la realeza Lenca taulepa al timepo de la incursion de castellanos, segun la narrativa oral de la etnia. Esta lider fue muy celebrarad entre su clan, pero los reportes castellanos a la corona, nunca la incluyeron, debido a que en esos siglos, la batalla contra una mujer no se concideraba honorable . Para atraer admiracion y galardones como heroes, los castellanos mayormente reportaban batallas con lideres del sexo masculino. Aqui, damos a conocer la narrativa basica de los Lencas taulepas sobre su reina. Esto contribuye a la inclusion de geenro desde un punto de vista descolonizante. Esta es una narrativa de fuente primaria.

El texto aborda el origen histórico de las auxiliarías de la vara alta, un tipo muy común de cofradía entre los pueblos lencas que habitan la región occidental de Honduras. Se aborda la composición jerárquica de estas instituciones religiosas y las funciones que desempeñan dentro de la vida religiosa de estas comunidades. Finalmente, se revisan dos de las ceremonias más importantes organizadas por las auxiliarías lencas: el guancasco y las composturas.

La situación geografía de los municipios, por más de 150 años los ha mantenido al margen del desarrollo agroexportador del país denominada “la T del desarrollo”. Esto ha contribuido a una sociedad rural poco integrada y dispersa en términos territoriales, donde existe una alta concentración de pobreza.La pobreza en la Mancomunidad de Colosuca, tiene un matiz multidimensional, que no solamente la liga al poder adquisitivo de las personas, también se asocia a condiciones de vida que vulneran la dignidad de las personas, limitan sus derechos y libertades fundamentales, impiden la satisfacción de sus necesidades básicas e imposibilitan su plena integración social. En ese sentido, la pobreza va más allá de la falta de ingresos, e incluye salud y nutrición inadecuada, falta de educación y de conocimientos especializados, medios de sustento inapropiados, malas condiciones de vivienda, exclusión social y escasa participación ciudadana. El diagnóstico desarrolla la participación de la mujer de manera transversal, pues se considera que su inclusión debe ser vista como una prioridad para desarrollar organizaciones y gobiernos más inclusivos y democráticos.

An interim study summarising the state of knowledge of Honduran Lenca in August 2016 and outlining a proposal for an interdialectal codification (Unified Lenca). This is to be followed in coming months by a series of dialect profiles (see next item). For general information about Lenca, see http://tushik.org/

Objetivo: Determinar la prevalencia de caries, hábitos de higiene oral,
biotipo facial y la dieta alimenticia en la comunidad Lenca de la aldea
Mixcure, departamento de Intibucá, Honduras. Material y métodos:
Se aplicaron encuestas a 76 personas, en edades de 2-64 años, y
se realizó evaluación clínica intra-/extraoral. El estudio tiene enfoque
cuantitativo de alcance exploratorio descriptivo, diseño no experimental
trasversal. Resultados: El biotipo facial predominante fue el leptoprosopo
(43%). La comunidad Lenca de Mixcure presenta una dieta
alta en carbohidratos, hábitos de higiene oral pobres; frecuencias de
cepillado de una (42%) y dos veces al día (22%), así como el uso de
auxiliares de limpieza oral caseros tales como carbón y sal. Se encontró
presencia de caries en el 100% de la población estudiada, siendo
la dentición posterior la más afectada. El índice CPO-D para la población
en general fue de 13.9 (riesgo muy elevado). En individuos con
dentición permanente, el índice CPO-D fue de 16.27 con predominio
de caries en género femenino; en individuos con dentición decidua el
índice CEO fue de 6.45 y en dentición mixta el índice CPO-D fue de
19. Conclusiones: Los resultados demuestran una alta prevalencia
de caries en la comunidad Lenca de Mixcure, según criterios de la
OMS, debido a varios factores, entre ellos la poca atención odontológica
disponible en la región, la falta de nutrientes en su dieta, higiene
defi ciente que conlleva a la acumulación de placa bacteriana, y por
ende a una pérdida dental temprana y alteraciones funcionales.

I am currently working on the languages of El Salvador and Honduras known as Lenca, of which there are at least two and which constitute an isolated family. This started out as a quick side trip from Nawat, which I've worked on for over ten years, as Lenca no longer has speakers and I expected not to find enough material to do much, but I was encouraged to continue by the amount of data there was and interest expressed locally in pursuing reconstruction and recovery. Originally only focusing on El Salvador Lenca, the project broadened again when I started perusing the Honduran data and we were then approached by people in Honduras requesting help. In the course of my work, which began in October 2015, I have shared a number of interim reports or working papers with a small group of friends. Now I have decided to share a selection of these with a wider audience on Academia.edu. I will post the items that seem most interesting from an outside linguistic perspective, and would greatly appreciate feedback. Bear in mind that all these papers report on ongoing work in progress. For more information on Lenca and my work, please visit the TUSHIK website (tushik.org).

Three new essays on selected topics in Honduran Lenca phonology, preceded by a general overview of the present state of Lenca reconstruction and an overview of the structure of the language. Topics: allophones of obstruent phonemes; fluid vowels; the alternation e / ia. Feedback is welcome.

Honduras is home to a dozen or more indigenous and Afro-descendent groups, each with their own unique history, identity, and culture. Despite the fact that these groups make up roughly 20 percent of the Honduran population, they represent some of the most marginalized people in contemporary Latin America. Modern development projects and infrastructure, from the growth of the Honduran tourism industry to the construction of hydroelectric dams, have created a major threat against the environmental and cultural autonomy of indigenous populations in the country. Development in Honduras represents not only the commodification and destruction of environmental resources and indigenous territories, but deeply embedded issues of racial and ethnic discrimination perpetuated by the state. Drawing on case studies of tourism-based development projects impacting Afro-descendent Garífuna populations and of the effects of extractive industries on the indigenous Lenca people, this paper will outline how exclusionary development has influenced indigenous rights over time through international and state-based tactics of neoliberal multiculturalism and settler colonialism.

A prototype dialect study of Lenca from the Honduran locality of Similaton, also serving as a template for studies of other dialects of HL scheduled for later this year. Includes a review of the primary documentary sources used to reconstruct HL, plus a discussion of why others will not be used. The general aim of these micro-studies is to accumulate relevant information for the construction of a proposed Unified Lenca for use in language recovery in Honduras. A first textbook of Lenca Unificado Moderno for adult learners in Honduras will be released in 2017. See the Preliminary Proposal document for the precedents, linguistic context and background information.

The Lenca languages are postpositive; noun phrases are followed by determiners and postpositions, and verbs by inflections and subordinators. The function of one particular postpositive morpheme attested in Guajiquiro dialect, ne, has proved more difficult than others to pinpoint; though it often follows a noun phrase, attempts to identify it as a postposition or a determiner failed to account well for the data of the text corpus. Subsequently I adopted the hypothesis that ne might be a discourse particle of some kind such as a topic marker. I will look here at the reasons why it seemed reasonable to explore this possibility, and once the hypothesis has been shown to be worthy of serious consideration, a more detailed survey of its uses is undertaken. A set of tests are then proposed to put the claim that ne marks topics under more rigorous scrutiny. Satisfied that this is the right characterisation of the morpheme, I conclude with a look at some new questions that this raises about Lenca and a tantalizing glimpse at what may be yet another postposed discourse particle. I thought this "story" was worth writing because it not only teaches us something about a little-studied language but illustrates some aspects of the tortuous process of corpus-based linguistic analysis of little-known languages in an interesting way.

Latin America is a region central in debates over what it means to be "developed." The neoliberal reform era introduced Western models of "progress" in the region, resulting in dependency on "developed" countries and significant wealth disparity within Latin American society. These disparities are particularly problematic for the region's most marginalized groups, indigenous populations. For the Lenca people of La Campa, Honduras, development has created socioenvironmental challenges resulting in differential benefits among community members. Development projects in Lenca communities are intended to improve quality of life, but complex sociopolitical forces embedded in these projects have often had variable outcomes. This paper explores how Honduran development initiatives impact the lives and livelihoods of indigenous groups with a specific focus on Lenca potters. Drawing on a body of literature on economic development and national identity in Honduras and ethnographic fieldwork results from summer 2019, this paper argues for the variable impacts that can arise due to socioeconomic and political forces embedded in development.

This paper focuses on various social movements which have created networks of resistance against the privatization and the centralization of freshwater resources. Most water conflicts around the world are centered around the unequal access to water, a natural resource which is becoming increasingly scarce. As Rodríguez-Labajos and Martinez-Alier have argued, the rise of water conflicts is also ‘related to changes induced in the availability of water in quantity and quality desired by the rich and powerful’ (2015: 551). In regard to these topics, I asked myself: How can social movements emerging from water conflicts promote more equitable alternatives of water management in Honduras?

“We’re fighting for our lands, for our water, for our lives,” said an indigenous woman from Colombia, describing her work as an environmental defender. She spoke at a December 2019 workshop on Gender, Peace and the Environment held in Bogotá, Colombia, that brought together social, environmental, and legal scholars and practitioners—including indigenous women—to discuss women, peace, and security issues.

Indigenous women and girls are making significant contributions to the parallel Women, Peace and Security (WPS) and Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) global agendas. With their traditional knowledge of natural resource management, they can offer valuable insights on how to cope with the negative impacts of climate change. Yet, they are often the targets of violence.
Read the rest of it here:  https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2020/02/unsung-sheroes-climate-action-global-peace-security-agendas/

Chilanga Lenca, once spoken in El Salvador, has an enclitic morpheme or suffix pa which occurs with both verbal and nominal predicates but is also found in positions in sentences where it cannot signal a predicate. This report focuses on what might be the function of non-predicative-pa, and explores the hypothesis that it signals a background topic ("antitopic") following the verb. Elsewhere I have shown that in Guajiquiro Lenca (formerly spoken in Honduras) there was an enclitic morpheme ne which marks topics. To appreciate the function of Chilanga-pa posited here it is necessary first to understand the language's basic grammatical structure to a degree that I have only recently achieved in order to contextualize sufficiently the posited process. Hence this report marks a breakthrough in our knowledge of Chilanga syntax, rather as the discovery of ne a few months ago did for the Honduran variety.

This paper proposes a reevaluation of the Pro-WEAI mixed methods tool set to be applied to a context-specific case of women’s empowerment in household decision-making among indigenous female craft producers in western Honduras. Based on the results of ethnographic fieldwork from a summer 2019 feasibility study in an indigenous Lenca municipality in western Honduras, this paper will propose a revised, more open-ended quantitative survey tool as well as a qualitative life history interview approach to study how women’s participation in craft production influences empowerment. Specifically, this proposed methodology will address the following long and short term research questions: i) if women’s participation in craft activities increases income among Lenca women (long term), ii) if women’s participation in craft production increases decision-making power for women in the household (long term), iii) if pottery production is becoming a primary income-earning livelihood among women in Lenca communities (intermediate) iv) if greater gender equality at the community level is created by participation in pottery production (long term), v) if access to trainings and other craft knowledge resources among both women and men contributes to greater participation in craft activities.