UCLA

Since the early 1900s, Zapotec intellectuals from Juchitán, Oaxaca began to work towards their goals of preserving and revitalizing Zapotec language and culture through the creation, publication, and dissemination of various bilingual literary magazines. From Roads to Iguanas: Tracing Contemporary Zapotec Literature argues that these magazines are sites of resistance and (re)creation where the editors and contributing intellectuals enact kab’awilian strategies as they negotiate with the nation state, and create a pathway for their own historical, linguistic, and political autonomy, ensuring Zapotec futurities in the process. The first chapter, “‘Por la cultura Zapoteca’: Neza and Zapotec Intellectuals in Postrevolutionary Mexico” delves into the first bilingual newspaper created and published in 1935 Mexico City by a group of UNAM students. The publication is read in the context of the post-revolutionary nation-state, the students were heavily influenced by the nationalization of Indigenous culture and therefore made a claim to their Isthmus Zapotec identity with a focus on philosophy, history, and politics. The second chapter, “‘Retomando el camino’: Neza Cubi and the Start of a Cultural Movement” explores the second literary magazine, Neza Cubi, created in Mexico City in 1968 by two Juchitec intellectuals. This magazine makes a connection to the first and establishes a literary genealogy between the first generation of intellectuals and the current one, creates a Zapotec history in opposition to official national history, and begins to think through a Zapotec approach to politics in Juchitán. The third and last chapter, “‘La iguana no muere’: Guchachi’ Reza, Ethnic Pride, and Political Resistance” centers Guchachi’ Reza, the longest-running Indigenous independent bilingual literary magazine published in Latin America, from 1975-1998. This chapter explores the way that Zapotec intellectuals began to open their publications to other social movements happening in Mexico and Latin America, think beyond the Zapotec for Indigenous solidarity, explicitly tie their language to politics, and highlights the culmination of a Zapotec history that resulted in a heroic vision of Juchitán and Zapotecs within the nation. Analyzing these magazines gives us insight into Zapotec thought, epistemologies and ontologies, histories, language revitalization movements, and autonomy, all pathways to Zapotec futures.