Por completo

While we were walking around Quixayá today, I was talking with Dominga about a NGO she is starting up to provide legal assistance to battered women. I asked her what kinds of services they were going to provide, and she said that they would receive battered women and try to resolve the situation, with possible recourse to the law if things were not settled otherwise. Very innocently, I asked if they would be providing counseling. She said that, yes, that would be very important because women need to be received by people who speak their language, who speak Kaqchikel—and she paused, and said, "quienes hablan por completo" (“who speak completely”).

Perhaps I am being too sensitive, but I felt that the comment was directed at my (as-of-yet incomplete) attempt to understand and speak Kaqchikel. It was the first time that any indigenous person had suggested that I would never be able to communicate effectively in Kaqchikel, and it cut me deep because it came from a person whom I admire and respect a great deal, a person who is very deeply involved in her peoples’ efforts to move out of poverty. The act of exclusion buried in her comment made me feel that my efforts to learn Kaqchikel are a waste of time, as if I am just doing it either for entertainment or some other foolish, selfish reason. Suddenly, I am not so sure if my learning Kaqchikel is of any value to anyone but myself—I already know that most gringos that I have met here think I am an idealistic, self-flagellating moron for wanting to learn, but I had convinced myself that I should keep trying because it is important to the marginalized people we are working with and for. But now, I think even Dominga considers it pointless. I am pretty sure that Dominga was directing the comment at me (I don’t think there are too many people other than me who would be described as speaking Kaqchikel “incompletely”; its more of a binary thing—if you’re indigenous, you either speak or you’ve lost it, and if you’re not indigenous, you don’t care enough to learn). But maybe I am over-reacting. I have noticed that some people understand language as something innate, something you are born with—maybe she thinks I will never speak well simply because I am not Kaqchikel, or Mayan, for that matter. Elena thinks that maybe Dominga’s comment was a response to the saturation of places like San Lucas with do-gooder gringos, where it becomes important to fiercely protect homegrown, grass-roots development efforts (such as Dominga’s new NGO) from well-meaning outsiders (like me?) who want to save the world in a year. In any case, I realized the need to try to get honest answers from key people about what they think of outsiders learning Kaqchikel. Is it potentially harmful, in that it could take away one of Kaqchikel peoples’ strongest and most enduring defenses against the constant onslaught of racist homogenization? If so, there is a harder question that I will need to ask myself—what do I do with the Kaqchikel I have learned so far, and what do I do about my plans to continue learning over the next 5 months?