Zapotec

A sophisticated, state-of-the-art study of the remaking of Christianity by indigenous societies, Words and Worlds Turned Around reveals the manifold transformations of Christian discourses in the colonial Americas. The book surveys how Christian messages were rendered in indigenous languages; explores what was added, transformed, or glossed over; and ends with an epilogue about contemporary Nahuatl Christianities.
    In eleven case studies drawn from eight Amerindian languages—Nahuatl, Northern and Valley Zapotec, Quechua, Yucatec Maya, K'iche' Maya, Q'eqchi' Maya, and Tupi—the authors address Christian texts and traditions that were repeatedly changed through translation—a process of “turning around” as conveyed in Classical Nahuatl. Through an examination of how Christian terms and practices were made, remade, and negotiated by both missionaries and native authors and audiences, the volume shows the conversion of indigenous peoples as an ongoing process influenced by what native societies sought, understood, or accepted.
    The volume features a rapprochement of methodologies and assumptions employed in history, anthropology, and religion and combines the acuity of of methodologies drawn from philology and historical linguistics with the contextualizing force of the ethnohistory and social history of Spanish and Portuguese America.
    With a foreword by William B. Taylor. Contributors: Claudia Brosseder, Louise M. Burkhart, Mark Christensen, John F. Chuchiak IV, Abelardo de la Cruz, Gregory Haimovich, Kittiya Lee, Ben Leeming, Julia Madajczak, Justyna Olko, Frauke Sachse, Garry Sparks.

This study of the hieroglyphic writing system of Preclassic and Classic Monte Alban in the Mexican state of Oaxaca discusses the origins of writing in the Zapotec area and highlights the various academic perspectives (above all, those of Alfonso Caso, Gordon Whittaker, Joyce Marcus) with regard to aspects of this system.  In so doing, it provides a much-needed corrective to the work of Marcus, which unfortunately fails to give credit to such scholars as Robert Barlow and Whittaker, while frequently, but silently, incorporating their ideas.

The recent excellent work of Javier Urcid on the iconography of Zapotec Monte Alban deals tangentially with some aspects of hieroglyphic writing, primarily the calendrical system, as well, but is most concerned with Classic-period monuments. His work postdates this article.

En 1521, los mixtecos y los zapotecos tenían mas de 300 años librando guerras, y los mexicas tenían una guarnición militar en Huaxyacac, donde los españoles fundarían la ciudad de Guaxaca, hoy Oaxaca. El lienzo de Santiago Tlazoyaltepec es un autentico códice que el autor de este libro compara con otros mapas coloniales para explicar parte de la historia mixteca-zapoteca, marcada en dos sitios arqueológicos: Guixonachapa, zapoteco, y Chiyaunisa, mixteco, ubicados alrededor de la hacienda de Jalapilla, que los españoles construyeron justo en medio del camino que une Etla con la Mixteca, para separar a los pueblos y provocar conflictos agrarios que culminaron en 1965. Cuarenta años después de haberse resuelto este conflicto agrario, los actuales pobladores de Cieneguilla deciden iniciar una investigación histórica acerca de sus orígenes, lo que los lleva a conocer el lienzo que tiene grabado el nombre de su pueblo, ubicado en el Valle arenoso de San Andrés Ixtlahuaca, donde se encontraba la ciudad de Guixonachapa, gobernada por Bayuquemisa, uno de los siete caciques de Teozapotlan (hoy Zaachila), que instauro un dominio llamado Lachxigüi zaquerator en zapoteco antiguo, y que todavía en 1793, aparecía en los mapas de deslinde de tierras con la hacienda Jalapilla. La publicación de este libro fue posible gracias al programa de Apoyo a las culturas Municipales y Comunitarias (PACMYC) y forma parte del esfuerzo que día a día hacen los pueblos de Oaxaca por resconstituir su identidad cultural.

Artículo a publicarse en el número 54 de la revista Desacatos (mayo-agosto de 2007)
Resumen: El propósito de este artículo es entender de manera integral el papel que tienen los palos del telar de cintura, específicamente el instrumento conocido como machete o tzotzopaztli, dentro de una serie de relatos de comunidades zapotecas del sur de Oaxaca, en los que personajes como naguales y vírgenes tutelares utilizan dichos palos como armas para pelear y defender a los pueblos. En nuestro análisis recurrimos a la revisión de una serie de imágenes de códices mexicas donde aparecen diosas asociadas con el tejido y la guerra. Otras fuentes importantes para nuestro análisis son escenas de códices mixtecos, así como objetos arqueológicos de los Valles Centrales de Oaxaca. Esto se hace con el fin de aportar elementos que enriquezcan el planteamiento de la relación simbólica entre el tejido y la guerra en Mesoamérica. Palabras clave: tradición textil, diosas del tejido, guerra y tejido, zapotecos del sur.

Como muestra, se incluye el capítulo 1 de la versión revisada en español de mi libro "The Invisible War: Indigenous Devotions, Discipline, and Dissent in Colonial Mexico" (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), publicado por la Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca, El Colegio de Michoacán, CIESAS, y UAM.

Social media is used by speakers of languages big and small. For languages with a small number of speakers, social media may offer opportunities not easily available elsewhere, such as low-cost publishing and distribution of text. Furthermore, smaller languages are often devalued by surrounding communities—in these situations, the use of language in global media, such as Twitter, can have additional layers of impact and can be a form of language activism in itself.

—non-final version—


for published version see:


Lillehaugen, Brook Danielle. 2019. Tweeting in Zapotec: social media as a tool for language activists. In Jennifer Carolina Gómez Menjívar and Gloria E. Chacón (eds.) Indigenous Interfaces: Spaces, Technology, and Social Networks in Mexico and Central America, 202—226. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ISBN: 9780816538003.


Resumen: Dentro de la perspectiva etnohistórica Cocijo, deidad zapoteca del Rayo y la lluvia, estuvo estrechamente vinculado con el culto al agua, al maíz e incluso a la tierra. Tanto en la iconografía arqueológica como en referencias en fuentes coloniales es posible identifi car su continuidad como dios regente de los fenómenos pluviales y la agricultura. En el presente, dentro de la ritualidad agrícola de muchas comunidades zapotecas de la parte sur de Oaxaca, al Rayo se le concibe aún como la entidad sagrada generadora de la lluvia, la fertilidad y el crecimiento del maíz y los demás cultivos. Las peticiones y ofrendas que se hacían en los momentos importantes del ciclo ritual agrícola –petición de lluvia, siembra, bendición de la milpa y cosecha– eran dirigidas a esta entidad. Por tanto, en el presente artículo intento hacer una revisión del complejo del culto agrícola, partiendo de un enfoque etnohistórico, para entender la vigencia del Rayo en el contexto de la vida ritual de los zapotecos del sur de Oaxaca, México, tomando como referencia, sobre todo, los casos de las comunidades de Santiago Xanica y Buenavista Loxicha. En ambas comunidades esta ritualidad agrícola desapareció en algún momento del siglo XX, junto con el cultivo de maíz, debido a la implantación de un monocultivo de café. Palabras clave: ritos agrícolas, culto al Rayo, zapotecos del sur, cosmovisión zapoteca Abstract: Within the ethnohistorical perspective, Cocijo, the Zapotec deity of lightning and rain, was closely related to the worship of water, maize, and the earth. Just as in archeological iconography, also in colonial sources it is possible to identify the continuity of Cocijo as the regent of pluvial

- Estudio iconografico del Lienzo de Analco, documento colonial perteneciente a los aliados indígenas del barrio de Analco en Villa Alta, Oaxaca. Esta tesis realiza un análisis intensivo y multidisciplinario de los elementos pictóricos del manuscrito para poder otorgar una lectura tentativa del mismo, situando el documento y su contenido en un contexto histórico, asi como abordando la naturaleza de la conquista de la Sierra Norte Oaxaqueña.

- Iconographic study of the Lienzo de Analco, a colonial document belonging to the indigenous allies of the barrio de Analco in Villa Alta, Oaxaca. This thesis carries out an intensive and multidisciplinary analysis of the pictorial elements of the manuscript in order to provide a tentative reading of it, placing the document and its content in a historical context, as well as addressing the nature of the conquest of the Oaxacan Sierra Norte.

Voice registers are linguistic registers in which the primary marker is an acoustic quality of the voice layered on a stretch of talk and used in speech situations to stereotypically define social roles, stances, and activities. I present a brief history of the development of the concept of voice registers and synthesize current scholarship on conversational uses of falsetto, creaky voice (vocal fry), breathy voice, whisper, and stylized intonations, developing a framework for their cross-cultural discourse analysis. I also discuss some of the implications the discourse analysis of voice registers has for our understanding of Language more generally and its evolution.

The walls of Structure J at the Zapotec centre of Monte Albán incorporate monuments, probably carved during the Pe ceramic phase (300–100 bc), bearing distinctively formatted hieroglyphic inscriptions. Alfonso Caso suggested that hieroglyphic compounds on those monuments name regions conquered by Monte Albán. Many scholars accept an elaboration by Joyce Marcus on this proposal—that some of those compounds denote identifiable places outside the Valley of Oaxaca—and see the inscriptions as evidence for the territorial extent of an expansionist, Monte Albán-centred empire in the Late to Terminal Formative periods (300 bc–ad 200). This paper argues that Marcus’ proposed decipherments are implausible because they are structurally inconsistent with one another and with Zapotec scribal conventions for recording toponyms in other inscriptions. The Structure J texts remain undeciphered. Therefore they cannot now serve as evidence for the nature and reach of the Monte Albán polity, and generalizations about state formation that relied on Marcus’ readings need to be reconsidered.

This thesis investigates the interaction between different prosodic patterns in Quiaviní Zapotec (Otomanguean), and accounts for them both at the phonetic and the phonological level. In it, I examine an array of complex patterns along multiple dimensions, including metrical structure, tone, and phonation types; as well as how these patterns interact with the fortis/lenis distinction, and syllable structure. Within the framework of Optimality Theory, my analysis sheds light on the phonetics-phonology interface and emphasizes the need for a theory with moraic structure.

Después de examinar los antecedentes históricos y las interpretaciones previas sobre las vasijas efigie, la parte medular de esta obra se centra en un profundo estudio de la iconografía desplegada en las piezas. Se presenta aquí un minucioso análisis de los componentes del atavío de los personajes, donde las máscaras jugaban un papel fundamental, así como algunos glifos calendáricos asociados, posiblemente de carácter nominal. Además, se destaca la presencia de otros elementos glíficos, identificados con el bulto sagrado, el maíz, la sangre o el agua, y la estrecha relación de estos últimos con la fertilidad. La frecuencia de su representación en las vasijas efigie, parece indicar la importancia central de estos conceptos en la cosmovisión y la vida ritual de los antiguos zapotecas.

Privileging functionalist approaches—based on descriptions of natural discourse and independent from formal grammatical models—, this collected volume gathers original contributions on the syntax-pragmatics interface in Spanish as well as in indigenous languages of the Americas, and explores related topics like topical continuity or Preferred Argument Structure.

To date, no research has focused on indigenous Mexican youth and their adaptation to U.S. schools, which includes their educational experiences associated with academic achievement.  This dissertation examines high school students in an immigrant community of Los Angeles, California, comprised of Zapotecs who are identified as “indigenous peoples” based on their pre-Columbian traditions, customs, and language.  As part of this examination, the study juxtaposes Zapotec and mestizo youth.  Mestizos are persons of mixed racial ancestry, commonly of mixed European and Native American ancestry and from Latin America.  Using statistical analyses (e.g., path analysis) and in-depth semistructured interviews, the researcher, through this mixed methods study, which used a sample of 76 Zapotec and 168 mestizo students, sought to determine the relationship between identity, cultural orientation, and academic achievement.

In this dissertation I address the timing of and interrelatedness between initial Early Formative period (2000–1500 BCE) transitions in residential mobility, subsistence, and social organization in Mesoamerica. I approach these topics using evidence from the La Consentida Archaeological Project (LCAP), a multi-season field and laboratory investigation of the site of La Consentida on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. Based on six radiocarbon dates (1947–1530 cal B.C.), La Consentida represents the earliest village site ever discovered in coastal Oaxaca, and likely in much of Pacific coastal Mexico. According to these dates, the site has produced some of the earliest ceramics and mounded earthen architecture known in Mesoamerica. In this dissertation, I argue on the basis of changes over time in earthen architecture, ground stone tools, and house construction that the community grew more sedentary over the course of site occupation. Based on studies of faunal remains, human dental pathologies, isotopic indicators, and food processing technology, I conclude that the community ate a broad diet but consumed more maize than did contemporaneous groups in other Early Formative period occupation areas, such as the Soconusco region of Chiapas and Guatemala. Culinary preferences may have changed at La Consentida, however, with a shift over time from consuming maize in beverage form to processing flour on stone mills that prompted increasing dental attrition. Anthropomorphic ceramic figurines from the site demonstrate a diversity of social roles, suggesting that the community was heterarchically complex from very early in its history. Obsidian sourcing and evidence of ceramic formal and decorative styles similar to those from other Formative period sites in West Mexico, the Valley of Oaxaca, and Central Mexico indicate La Consentida’s broad interaction sphere. The very early dates associated with ceramic vessel fragments from La Consentida may complicate current models for the adoption of ceramic technology in Mesoamerica by suggesting an early tradition developing along the western Pacific coast that was contemporaneous with the Soconusco region’s Barra phase (1900–1700 cal B.C.). These various lines of evidence demonstrate that La Consentida was a community in transformation during one of the most fundamental moments of socioeconomic change in the ancient Americas. Research at La Consentida is relevant to key archaeological debates concerning Archaic to Formative period transitions in settlement, subsistence, and social organization. Evidence from the site is beginning to support arguments for gradual adoption of sedentism, early consumption of significant quantities of maize, and the importance of heterarchical distinctions in the birth of Mesoamerican social complexity.

At first glance, interaction between ancient polities of unequal sociopolitical complexities suggests a situation of dominance. Yet, as archaeologists continue to broaden their focus from major centers to peripheral regions, such an assumption is no longer tenable. It is increasingly apparent that there exists great variability in the archaeological record when it comes to the dynamics of interregional interaction, particularly when processes of agency are taken into account. The manipulation of foreign goods and symbols by individuals provides one explanation of how interaction between unequal partners may have been reciprocal rather than asymmetrical.

La fundación del sitio de Monte Albán en una posición estratégica en la cima de un cerro y en el centro del Valle de Oaxaca se dio en un escenario de una gran inestabilidad social y una marcada interacción conflictiva entre sociedades complejas locales de jefaturas rivales. Esta acción pudo haber sido el resultado de una decisión deliberada tomada por líderes agresivos, misma que desembocó en el desarrollo de la formación urbana y estatal más temprana de Mesoamérica. Consideraciones políticas y militares deben de haber jugado un papel crítico en este episodio rápido de profundas transformaciones culturales de carácter cualitativo producidas en el Valle de Oaxaca. En este artículo delineamos los factores que desencadenaron el proceso de urbanización en Monte Albán y las motivaciones que convencieron a un gran número de personas a mudarse a este centro de nueva creación. Se describen aspectos de su organización urbana y se discuten la naturaleza de la guerra y de las murallas, a la luz de determinadas estrategias de liderazgo adoptadas por la elite gobernante del emergente Estado zapoteca.

This paper provides a detailed description of inflectional classes of verbs based on TAM-marking morphology in Coatec Zapotec. This description is then used as a standard for comparison with other Zapotec languages spoken in the Southern Sierra region of Oaxaca, Mexico, which is considered by the author to be a diffusion zone. A comparison of 10 varieties belonging to four languages finds that the most diverse TAM-marking systems are found in the western part of the Southern Sierra while the system of inflectional classes greatly simplifies as one moves eastward. Contact and diffusion are considered to be crucial in the retention or loss of conservative features and the spread of innovations such as nasalization of certain prefixes.

The Central Zapotec languages share the innovation of a progressive aspect prefix in /ka-/ which contrasts with a habitual aspect /r-/, which is the reflex of a Proto-Zapotec
imperfective prefix */tyi-/. Early instances of this innovative progressive aspect prefix can be found in colonial Zapotec texts from the sixteenth century, and the geographic dispersion
of Central Zapotec languages with this form argues that the innovation must date to some centuries prior to A.D. 1300, and that this morphological characteristic is a key marker
that distinguishes Central Zapotec languages from other members of the Zapotec family

This contribution suggests to look at the figure of Quetzalcoatl – in the Teotihuacan iconography as in the later Aztec one – by analyzing imaginary beings and the representations of hybrids in Mesoamerica as an analogical transcription of real beings according to the principles of formal analogy. After going through a review of the perception processes entering in the way the names of species are built in natural languages, we apply these processes to iconographical materials that combines distinct beings – or parts of beings –, this enables us to interpret their occurrences on feather headdresses or as mythological figures.

En este trabajo se propone una escala de grados de laringización que considera, además de los tipos de laringización que resultan de la interacción
entre las válvulas del tracto vocal laríngeo (cf. Edmonson y Esling 2006), el tipo de anclaje temporal de los rasgos laríngeos y la extensión temporal del anclaje con relación a la extensión temporal de la porción modal de la vocal. Además de Justificar la escala en virtud de las distintas manifestaciones fonéticas
de los dos tipos fonológicos de voz laringizada que existen en la lengua de estudio (el zapoteco de San Pablo Güilá), los hechos anteriores se formalizan bajo el marco de la Teoría de la Optimidad (Prince y Smolensky 1993).

En el marco de una maestría en Historia del Arte, se discute de manera amplia el huipil de Yalálag como objeto, como imagen y como prenda. A través de una metodología de interlocución y análisis conjunto de archivos me adentro en conversaciones con tejedoras ancianas de la comunidad de la que formo parte.

En el presente trabajo examinaré el sistema tonal y la glotalización en la voz de dos hablantes de zapoteco del municipio de Santo Domingo de Morelos, estado de Oaxaca. Como un primer acercamiento de análisis fonológico con el fin de evaluar el actual afabeto establecido por el IEEA de Oaxaca (Instituto Estatal de Educación para Adultos) 1 , responderé las siguientes preguntas de investigación:

¿Por qué escribir en una lengua que (casi) nadie lee? * Twitter y el desarrollo de literatura Brook Danielle Lillehaugen, Haverford College; [email protected] 7 de abril de 2016; Coloquio sobre Lenguas Otomangues y Vecinas VII: Juan José Rendón

el texto más antiguo en zapoteco 227 El tExto más antiguo En zapotEco michel R. oudijk La llegada de los españoles a lo que llamaron la Nueva España significó el inicio de un proceso histórico doloroso y traumático para los pueblos indígenas de es tas tierras. La trágica disminución de la población por las enfermedades traídas de Europa, la difícil adaptación al nuevo sistema económico y político impuesto por los colonizadores, y los profundos cambios -pero necesarios-en la cosmovisión con el fin de explicar la nueva situación, hicieron que los indígenas comenzaran un proceso de ajuste psicológico de tal complejidad que es difícil de imaginar o captar para nosotros, los investigadores de hoy en día.

The Prehispanic ballgame was an important ritualized sport and shared cultural tradition throughout much of Mesoamerica, and has long been linked to local and regional sociopolitical relationships between different communities and social groups.  The widespread popularity of ballgames prior to the Conquest can be noted in many different ways, and the persistence of games through the centuries to the modern day demonstrates their continuing importance for indigenous and mestizo communities.  However, the role of the ballgame in local and regional politics would have varied over time as different places and people innovated and reacted changing social and political circumstances.  The Nejapa subregion of the eastern Sierra Madre del Sur, where multiple ballcourts of various types where recently documented, was a multicultural and multilingual boundary zone.  The presence of several ethnolinguistic groups with possibly distinct social identities, who were alternately hostile and cooperative towards each other, would have greatly impacted local and regional political machinations and how people made sense of their changing world.  Because of its very nature as a competitive sport requiring at least two teams to play, the ballgame would have been one way to negotiate movement across different social and cultural boundaries.  How ballgames would have been used as a social or political strategy, would have changed over time through the decisions and actions of the people who hosted, played, and watched these games.
In the present dissertation, I examine the spatial attributes of the ballcourts in Nejapa, and the distribution of both the structures and their attributes on the physical and social landscape from the Late Formative through the Postclassic (DATE BCE – CE 1521) in order to assess the degree to which the ballgame was interwoven, or not, with local and regional community politics.  While traditional methods such as excavation can be time intensive and cost-prohibitive, collecting mapping data and analyzing it using Geographic Information System (GIS) is a non-invasive method that can be used to explore ballcourts and the ballgame at the regional scale.  In this dissertation, I explore the ballcourts using a synthesis of in-depth geospatial analyses, archaeological survey and excavation data, and ethnographic information gathered from local communities to understand what distribution patterns of ballcourts and their attributes reveal about the ballgame, social relationships and political organization in the Nejapa region and the southeastern Sierra Madre del Sur.
Analysis of the data shows that there is both a remarkable degree of similarity but also some marked differences in the Nejapa ballcourts from the Late Formative through the Postclassic, suggesting that were shared ways of playing and perhaps even similar rule systems but that communities still constructed their courts according to their specific needs and preferences.  In other words, I argue, there were local traditions of shared practices or traditions such that communities could negotiate rules and play techniques between then.  Based on both the material and linguistic evidence as well as the different ballcourt types present here, I conclude that people in Nejapa were potentially making connections to various ethnolinguistic groups and regions farther off, resulting if not in mixed, heterogeneous communities, then in relationships that frequently crossed ethnolinguistic boundaries that many have previously treated as being more static or impermeable. 
Nejapa’s strategic position along critical trade corridors and its rich alluvial land made it an attractive location for many people, who through their shared experiences of living in this frontier region forged new identities that at times were communal or contrasting while at the same time exposing them to novel ideas and practices that were differentially adapted and innovated.  Over the course of history we have periods in Nejapa where multiple courts were in use, and control of the game may have been decentralized, and other periods in which there was only one court and access would have been controlled by the leaders of the communities that built them, signaling different strategies for employing ballgames and their associated ceremonies depending on the particular social and historical circumstances in which they were played.  Despite these changes, the game still had a critical role to play in the local and regional politics of the various heterogeneous communities of Nejapa.  Overall, the dissertation demonstrates how GIS technology can be used to investigate ballgames and ballcourts as social fields and spaces at different spatial and temporal scales.

This paper draws on both elicited and conversational data to present the range of  grammatical devices for marking agency and verb valence in Lachixío Zapotec, a West Zapotec language. In addition to syntactic valence related to the number of arguments taken by a verb as part of its argument structure, and the intransitive/ transitive pairing of predicates related to causation, morphophonological and pronominal alternations in the language are shown to mark agency, defined as how active a subject is in producing an event or its outcome. This marking appeared invariant when elicited, but is shown to be varied creatively in conversational interaction.