Tsotsil Voice

Tsotsil Voices

Oral tradition has always been company for people in the whole world. Stories sitting around the fire, next to our old ones, during work time. Spoken words have been our memories, like the talking heart of each culture.

This tradition of telling stories and singing to life started long ago with prayers as also with invocations to the gods of nature, with love songs and songs of human dispair, with demands for justice or with reports against injustice.

All this universe was long ago reflected in the written word. Popol-Vuh and the Chilam Balam from Chumayel are its background record, the origin and history of the original people in Mexico.

And so, following that tradition, three poets signal their own time, with their own words and dreams. They belong to the tradition of all poets in the world. The universe is in its words, together with mankind, its hopes and regrets. Nothing is unaware of the approach they put forward. They are there as watchers of time, as heirs of space.

The poet Ruperta Bautista, a tsotsil woman who, with community wisdom, shares in her poems different universes in a same world. Her language is intense and well defined. Mother earth lives now an eclipse which will soon forsake her. Every hope is worthy of having its song, and Ruperta Batista sings to that hope.

The poet Manuel Bolom Pale, also tsotsil, speaks in an abstract way. With a new and contemporary voice he pleads and sings to silence, but not to a calm and contemplative silence, but to a thoughtful and wise one. The silence that gives answers and asks questions which are needed for the existence of mankind.

And our next tsotsil poet Andrés Lopez Diaz, a young and war cry voice. He is a critic and a genuine observer of his history, his poems will soon be memories of these days, the sign against this time. His poetry states an identity which was despised for many years and which now in his texts has a new and essential sparkle, as the song of this poet is.

The three poets are children of great changes, witnesses and contributors in projects which furnish the place the original Mexican languages to have the place they deserve.

Fortunately the way in which written poetry in Mexico is perceived is changing. And things are not the same after the first of January 1994.

Now there is poetry published in languages like Tsotsil and other early Mexican languages, there are also meetings of writers and intellectuals belonging to the original people in Mexico, and better still, there are readers of these languages.

It is important to share with these three young poets and translators in Tsotsil their unique version of their own life. It is also important to consider their poetic work in different ways. Nature,which is an important part of their lives, is there in each of their verses.

Ruperta, Manuel and Andrés are a leading example of young Mexican poets in Tsotsil language who from their country and environment, march together with the other poets in the world.

Marco Fonz de Tanya. Mexico, 2008

[Traducció de Marta Uberos]