Bety Diaz teaching at the school in the Wichí village of
Santa Maria
[photo: Jo Hill, copyright 2006 WR411/7 ARG07DJ-279]
SANTA MARIA, SALTA PROVINCE, NORTHERN ARGENTINA — Bety Diaz has experienced the Wichí literacy project both as a learner and as a teacher. Bety, 34, has been a teacher at the local kindergarten in Santa Maria for 11 years. She finds the work difficult because the five-year-olds are unable to concentrate on anything for very long.
It is the task of the kindergarten to prepare children for the first year of primary school. By the time they move on they should know their numbers from one to five, their vowels in Spanish and be able to write their names.
Blame us
“We’re getting near the end of the year,” she says, “and they don’t all know their names and the numbers yet. So they get to the school and the teacher there has to start all over again. And, of course, they blame us for not preparing them properly.” In the higher grades, she adds, there are children who are just not interested in school at all – some may come only two or three days a week – and they don’t get good results. Bety herself benefited – in 2002 – from Asociana’s Wichí literacy project. “In the village that I come from, the people don’t use the Bible in Wichí, so I didn’t know anything about reading or writing in Wichí. But when I came to Santa Maria I began to see that the Wichí here used the Bible in Wichí, and I began to learn to read and write in Wichí. Then we had Asociana’s pilot project here in the school. We learned to read and write well. It really went into my head and it wasn’t difficult!” Convinced that it is important for children to be literate in their own language, she took part in a pilot project designed to teach first- and second-year primary school children to read and write in Wichí.
Atsinha Kotso, the daughter of Wichí
promoter Eduardo Perez
[photo: Jo Hill, copyright 2006 WR411/7
ARG07DJ-370]
Learned quickly
“We didn’t try it for very long, but in that short time I could see that it wasn’t difficult for the children. It’s difficult for them in the Spanish language, because they don’t understand it. But because they know the Wichí language, words and sounds, they learned very quickly; we didn’t need as much time as we need to teach the letters and numbers in Spanish. It was much quicker.” Although more than 80 per cent of the children at Bety’s school are Wichí, there was so much resistance from the Spanish- speaking Criollos to teaching to read and write in Wichí in the school that she and the other bilingual teachers had to give up. “I can’t do anything on my own initiative,” she sighs. “It all depends on the other (non-Indian) teachers I work with. There are schools where they consider the Wichí language important and value it, but here they don’t. Maybe in the future...”
Wild fruits
Vociferous opposition to the wider teaching of Wichí comes from the Criollo people. These non-indigenous people of European descent have extensive cattle-herding interests in areas where the Wichí live, which leads them to oppose the Wichís’ struggles to get legal title to the land on which they hunt, collect wild fruits and honey, fish and grow limited crops. Wichí people also frequently say that the Criollo are prejudiced against them; they describe how the Criollo tell their children not to associate with Wichí children at school. And the pilot Wichí-teaching project from which Bety benefited was criticised by the Criollos, who could not see any point in it.
Bilingual
Although the Wichí language is not being taught officially at her kindergarten for the time being, a new education law has been passed that makes it obligatory to have bilingual education in Indian communities. As often with such matters, there is a huge gap between the passing of the statute at national level and its implementation locally. In anticipation, however, Asociana has produced a series of Wichí children’s books. Bety has seen and approved them and the school director where she teaches in Santa Maria has already asked Chris Wallis, director of the literacy project, to help him explore the question of bilingual education. Eduardo Perez is another person who was taught how to read and write in Wichí by Asociana. He now works as a promoter and teacher of the Wichí language and teaches others in Santa Maria, including his own family. He and his wife, Fany, have three daughters, Nisejlhiya, Amos Chey’a and Atsinha Kotso. Chris Wallis describes Eduardo as one of the best and most promising promoters of the Wichí language in Santa Maria. Asociana is encouraging Eduardo and others like him to provide ‘informal’ literacy teaching in the Wichí language not in the schools but in their own communities.
Children at the school in the Wichí village of Santa Maria
[photo: Jo Hill, copyright 2006 WR411/7 ARG07DJ-285]
Use our language
Eduardo says that the most important thing is that the people know the letters for writing: from that basis the rest follows. “I don’t want our language to disappear, so that’s why it’s very important to teach. When the children go to school, everything is in Spanish, so they don’t understand. Even for me Spanish is difficult. So we need to use our own language for learning. When I left secondary school I didn’t know how to write in my own language and I felt ashamed. And my elder brother, who was trained by Asociana to read and write in Wichí, had some textbooks so I started looking at those. Then I went on a course run by the Asociana project. “When I started to learn my own language I was very happy because I felt that it was a real achievement. I can now read and write in my own language, and I can also teach others.” He is now trying to teach some of the smaller children who are learning Spanish at school.
Mouse and Parrot
“There are some letters and sounds that are the same both in Wichí and Spanish, but there are others that are different and that’s what I can help them with. I’m approaching it through the sounds. I make drawings to demonstrate the different sounds. For example, for ‘A’ I use the word ‘Ama’, which means ‘mouse’. And for ‘E’, I use the word for parrot, which is ‘ele’. He calls Spanish “the Criollos’ language” and traces a lot more of the Wichís’ problems to the Criollo as well. “They are taking our language and they are also taking away our land,” he declares. “The Algarrobo tree is very important for the Wichí. It’s important for the diet of the people. In many places now the Criollos are closing off the woods where the Algarrobo tree grows, the fruit of which we eat. And another problem is with health. We go to the health clinic, but there aren’t many medicines. They give us painkillers, but if we go and there is a Criollo nurse, they don’t really take much care in looking after the Wichí people.” Like Bety, he believes that learning to read and write their own language is important not just for daily purposes but in a broader and longer-term sense as the medium for the preservation of the culture. “We need books that talk about what’s in the forest and what’s in the river and all the natural resources. We need books that talk about our ways of living in the past and present. The language is the basis of everything. I want my children to know that they are Wichí and I want them to know their language well. Then when they’re bigger, they’ll know what they want and they’ll go out and find it. But the basis is their language.” Carlos Garcia is one of the older people in the village who have also been instrumental in encouraging others to learn to read and write Wichí. He is a council member at the local church and is involved in solving some of the village’s social problems. He seems to take a milder view of the Criollos.
Wichí teacher Eduardo Perez with his niece and daughters
[photo: Jo Hill, copyright 2006 WR411/7 ARG07DJ-331]
It’s not right!
“There’s nothing wrong with the Criollos and there’s nothing wrong with their language,” he says. “But their language is for them, and we have our language. What’s not right is that if our children go to school, like Eduardo, when they finish all they know is how to read and write in another language. It’s not right! They’ve got to be able to read and write in their own language, just as the Criollos know how to read and write in theirs. “So what Asociana is doing with the literacy project is very good and that’s helping us.
Real enemies
“It’s very difficult for the Criollos to come together with us,” he adds, “because in the past we were real enemies. They used to kill us and we killed them, so it’s difficult for them to unite with us. “But when we received the Word of God we threw away all our weapons. You come to my house, you’re relaxed, you can see that there are no weapons here. But the Criollo hasn’t received the word of God and he’s still got his weapons, he’s still got a gun. So that’s why it’s very difficult for us to come together.”
(WR 411/7 - 05.07) [10 photos]