Mexico’s minority communities strengthened through the Scriptures

MEXICO — It was a two-day drive south from Mexico City, made longer by being delayed for six hours by a mudslide that had carried a section of the road down the mountainside. Mud channels along what were once paved roads held us up twice more. We arrived at the church almost half a day late, but found the congregation still waiting for us.

Efrain Amaro, Program and Fundraising Coordinator at the Bible Society of Mexico, was taking us to a small mountain village in the remote Quetzaltepec region. We were to attend a church service conducted in Mixe: Quetzaltepec, a dialect spoken by around 20,000 people and used in numerous village churches. The local congregants had recently received the first copies of the Mixe: Quetzaltepec New Testament. Attending would be one of the long-standing supporters of the translation, the Rev Hector Morales.

Mexico is a land of many languages. While Spanish is the official language, there are perhaps 100 indigenous languages, with many more dialects being used by more than 10 million citizens. Over the years, some part of the Scriptures has been translated into the majority of these native languages or their variations.

Achievement

But this achievement, by itself, has not been enough to make God’s Word easily accessible to Mexico’s indigenous populations. This is because many of the people who speak indigenous languages or dialects cannot read. Many have never even seen their native language written down.

This is why the Bible Society is emphasising the production of audio Scriptures. There are now nine indigenous languages in which audio Scriptures are available. But God’s Word is still unavailable to many of Mexico’s indigenous minorities. In many ways, these are the people who need God’s Word most: they are marginalised because they cannot speak Spanish. This language barrier cuts them off from the economic and political mainstream and the hope of a better life.

God loves them

Through the provision of Scriptures in their own languages, minority people groups learn that God loves them, that they are his children, that God speaks their language. During the last two years, parts of Scripture have been translated into more than a dozen of these indigenous languages.

And in the last few years, translations of the New Testament have been completed in two of the nine dialects of Mixe, a language group used by at least 100,000 Mexicans. Some people believe there could actually be up to twice as many speakers, but the fact that they live in isolated communities makes it very hard to produce reliable statistics.

Work on these translations was begun in 1951 by Searle Hooshagen of Wycliffe Bible Translators, but has been frequently interrupted for long periods. Mr Morales took up the task and began work on translating the books of Genesis and Exodus into Mixe: Quetzaltepec in the 1980s. By the end of that decade, Cirilo Cosme had taken on the challenge of completing the Old Testament. The Pentateuch was completed in early 2005.

First step

Whether the Scriptures are supplied in print or audio format, the first step is translation. Before the Mixe: Quetzaltepec translation was completed, the pastor of the small church we visited, the Rev José Romero, used to translate the Bible from Spanish. But now that God’s Word is available in their own language, people’s self-esteem is much higher, he says.

Honour and dignity