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Art and Language, panel discussion 14.4.99
Paneeli/ Panel y discusión /Panel discussion: The discussion is a part of the larger Mexican cultural event which is hosted by the Media Lab UIAH, the Department of General Linguistics, University of Helsinki and the Helinä Rautavaara Museum, Espoo. The whole programme:
Näyttely/ Exhibición /Exhibition:
Kutsu/ Invitación / Invitation
Työpaja/ Taller /Workshop:
Paneeli/ Panel y discusión /Panel discussion: LANGUAGE, ART and PEDAGOGY by Frances Karttunen A traditional Mesoamerican way of instructing children and reinforcing cultural knowledge and values for adults is through riddles. This type of discourse was once common in European cultures too, but it has fallen into disuse. Adult-directed riddles are extensively documented from indigenous Mexico in the 16th century, and the practice has survived as an indigenous form of discourse to the present. In their efforts to encourage Nahuatl-language maintenance in communities where the language is endangered, Jose Antonio and Cleofas have decided to use some modern popular technology like videos (which have become ubiquitous in even very remote towns), some low-tech but also nontraditional media such as coloring books, and MOST IMPORTANT, the traditional mode of indigenous discourse--the riddle--illustrated with pictures in a traditional art form, the amate painting. Amate is the inner bark of the Mexican fig tree, and it has been the traditional paper of Mesoamerica for at least 2000 years. The precolumbian codices of the Mayas, Mixtecs, and Aztecs were painted either on finely processed leather or on amate paper with a smooth white covering of lime. The modern amate-painting style owes much to the motifs of pottery decoration, but it has expanded to typically include scenes of community life. The completed amates are full of detail and fun to look at for a long time. They provide a lot for children and parents to talk about and return to, which promotes Nahuatl-language use in the home. The topics of the riddles are embedded in traditional lifeways, so when children and parents use the books together, they talk about the items of traditional homes, celebrations, work, etc. This offers an alternative to commercial mass culture that is brought in from the outside. The coloring books invite the children to learn some of the technique of amate art for themselves, choosing the colors and accustoming their eyes and hands to the lines and shapes while also thinking about the riddles and stories. Bilingual illustrated books of riddles are also a means of educating non-indigenous Mexicans about the native peoples of their country. The amates are popular as tourist items and have become prized by collectors, so Mexicans in general hold them in positive regard, which is not true for indigenous culture in general, which is either held in contempt or impossibly romanticized in Mexico. The Nahuas have begun to use their amate paintings subversively. They paint colorful, apparently "cute" scenes, that--when one examines them in detail--show violence towards indigenous people and destruction of their lifeways (such as the consequences of the huge hydroelectric dam project, which threatened to inundate indigenous communities, their agricultural lands, and their cemeteries as well as unstudied archeological sites in the Rio Balsas river valley. Because the wealthy collectors are often from the USA and Europe, they have begun to caption them in English as well as Spanish and Nahuatl. So the amates, which were once strictly pictorial, have become multilingual. Indigenous activists have been using the strong collectors' market for amates to disseminate information about social injustice towards the people who paint the amates.
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