Marina Beatriz Fernandez
[photo: Jo Hill, copyright 2006
WR411/10 ARG07DJ-66]
INGENIERO JUÁREZ, NORTHERN ARGENTINA — The school in Ingeniero Juárez of which Marina Beatriz Fernandez is Deputy Head is officially recognised as a Wichí school. Given that the area it serves is a mixed Wichí-Criollo area and there is considerable tension between the two groups (see Language-learning tensions among the Wichí and their neighbours), the status of Marina’s school means it has a slightly different approach from the one where Bety Diaz teaches and it also allows the Wichí here to feel they are more confident in standing up for their rights.
Fortunately, since the children here have grown up in a mixed community, most of the time they have few problems in relating to one another. Their parents, though, have come from separate villages and so retain the inter-group hostility bred in them a generation ago.
Aggressive
“We have tried to do some work with parents,” says Marina, “but we’ve found on the whole that the Wichí parents are more aggressive than the Criollo parents. And since this is an Indian school the Criollo parents just keep quiet.” A resource which the school has successfully taken up is the first ever Wichí-language magazine, produced by Asociana, the social branch of the Anglican Diocese in the province of Salta, as part of its Wichí literacy project. It was originally designed for adults, rather than schoolchildren, but it has been welcomed in the school – not least because Wichí children have virtually no books in their own language – and its benefits have been wide-reaching.
Creation
The theme of the first number is the Wichí language itself. It contains an article on the Creation story, another by Eduardo Perez, Asociana’s young Wichí teacher and promoter, describing why reading and writing Wichí is important to him, and a third article in another Wichí dialect about the importance of writing. Chris Wallis feels that a mixture like this can be used in schools, in families and by the community. He wants to produce it three times a year and the next edition has already been written. Marina says that every child in her school received a copy to work on with the bilingual Wichí teachers. “We asked the children to read as much of it as they could during one week,” she explains. “On the last day the teacher talked to them about the parts that had interested them. I don’t know whether it’s because in the magazine there are different dialects of Wichí, but some found certain parts easier than others.
Totally new
“What was good was that they hadn’t seen a magazine with upto- date news and information in their own language. They’d seen the Bible, but they don’t have this sort of regular publication. This was totally new – to have their own magazine.” Having an attractive magazine in Wichí, she adds, has boosted the language’s status and helped change the attitude of some children who would rather concentrate on Spanish, and let [their knowledge of] Wichí wither. “Many of them have said, ‘We don’t know how to read and write in our own language and we don’t want to.’ But having the material which brings news and information has helped. It has built up their self-esteem and now the Criollos have more respect for the Wichí for the same reason. “It’s a shame when some of the young people are ashamed of their own language and give more importance to Spanish,” she comments. “Your language is part of your history, it’s part of your culture, it’s part of your very being.
Benefits
“There were two young girls who told us beforehand that they didn’t know anything about Wichí, but when they saw the magazine they started to read it. We also told them about the benefits of learning a language for their own intellectual development, and the advantages that a bilingual person has over a monolingual person.” Without resources like the magazine, she says, and if the Bible weren’t in Wichí, the young people would risk losing their language altogether. “Many Wichí, especially those who live in the villages and in the countryside, are monolingual; even when they finish school they don’t have fluent Spanish, so having the Bible in their own language is the best way to share the Word of God. It would be very difficult for them to have a good grasp of God’s Word without having it in their own language. It’s different from some of the areas here in the town where the children are bilingual.”
(WR 411/10 - 05.07) [4 photos]