Recently, I was in an online class where the teacher, Carlos*, an indigenous speaker of Yucatec Maya, which is spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, shared some history about the language.

Known as maaya t’áan to its speakers, Yucatec Maya is one of some 30 Mayan languages in the Mayan language family. As is the case with many indigenous languages post contact and colonization, there is a lot of colonial language (in this case, Spanish) intrusion into Yucatec Maya. This is partly due to the power held by the colonizers to impose the colonial language and erase indigenous cultures. It is also partly due to the fact that colonization uprooted indigenous ways of life, bringing in new social orders, cultural and religious concepts, political and economic structures, and even invasive plants and animals that all require words and ways of speaking not originally present in the indigenous language.

Carlos was explaining an interesting phenomenon that has emerged in the Yucatán: the tension between jach maaya and xe’ek’ maaya.

Jach maaya can be understood as “pure Maya,” and it’s a way of speaking Maya that does not use Spanish words. To avoid using Spanish, jach maaya speakers have to either dig up really archaic Mayan terms that many modern speakers do not know or they have to invent words and phrases in order to describe something. For example, in reference to airplanes, they invented the term péepen k’áak’ (literally fire butterfly) in order to avoid saying avión, the Spanish term that is far more commonly used and understood by Maya speakers.

In contrast, xe’ek’ maaya can be understood as “mixed Maya,” which draws on Spanish terms but “mayanizes” them. For example, the word for grandmother in xe’ek’ maaya is áabwela, mayanized from the Spanish word abuela. This is the Maya actually used by most of the 770,000 speakers today.

Carlos went on to explain that jach maaya is promoted mostly by local speakers who have high educational attainment or professional status, such as attorneys. They want to “legitimize” Maya by using only the “purest” form. In doing so, many everyday speakers of xe’ek’ maaya are actually made to feel inferior. They say things like “my maaya is not good” or “I am just a campesino so I speak broken maaya.”

“The promotion of jach maaya is really not good” said Carlos, sharing that he was on the side of xe’ek’ maaya. After elaborating more on his opinion, he opened the floor up for discussion.

I was excited. This was a very interesting case study about language, colonization, social structure, and relational power dynamics - all topics I love and spend much of my time thinking about. I had many thoughts running through my head and was taking a moment to organize them when a white man in class jumped in and said, “well, when two languages meet, they always borrow from each other, that’s just a fact. So jach maaya doesn’t make sense.”

Then he stopped talking. That’s it. This white man felt the need to jump in to give such an inaccurate and not nuanced take. For what? Just to hear his own voice and take up space? And the sheer confidence with which he said that…I was internally screaming.

I decided to respond. I could feel my heart beating faster as I started speaking. “Hi everyone. First, I want to thank Carlos for providing us with such a thought-provoking explanation of this linguistic tension.” Right after I said that, my internet connection dropped and I got cut off from the call. NOOOOOO!! I said to my computer. I was antsy and frustrated. Thankfully, it was temporary and just a few seconds later, I reconnected to the call. I rejoined the call only to hear the white man speaking on some other point, or rather, lack of point.

Now I was furious.

Then, another woman of color chimed in, “hey, I believe Sole was still talking.” Invigorated by the life-affirming energy of having a woman of color support me, I jumped in and said, “Thank you! Yes, I was still speaking and I would like to finish.” I looked straight at the white man. Yes, this was via the computer screen, but I knew that he knew that I looked right at him, because his face turned white(r). “I want to share that I find it incredibly dismissive and ignorant to say ‘when two languages meet, they always borrow from each other.’" I was not mincing my words. The white man’s face fell. I did a dramatic pause. “It’s dismissive because it doesn’t take into consideration any examination of power. The history of colonization contains the theft of land, resources, language, and culture - it is not simply a ‘meeting’ of two languages. In terms of the tension between jach and xe’ek’ maaya, there is also an imbalance of power, where people with more access to power and resources are promoting jach maaya, seemingly as an effort to decolonize. But their effort to decolonize is to pretend that colonization never happened. Decolonization and pretending that colonization never happened are not the same thing. The latter is dismissive of history. In this specific case, they are also making present day indigenous speakers feel inadequate in their own indigenous identity and language skills, which is harmful.” I finally took a breath. Carlos was smiling so much and told me thank you. I smiled.

Take that, white man.

After class, I texted my friend in all caps and called him on the phone to recount the whole story. During the phone call, my voice cracked. I started crying, "I feel like this was a representation of all the moments when a white person was dismissive of me, and today, I got to take the mic back,” I exhaled loudly. “Oh, you should have seen the look on his face when I said ‘and I would like to finish’ and when I deliberately slowed down so everyone could hear me say ‘I find it incredibly dismissive and ignorant’ - oh my god, that look fueled me. The look of shock that I, an Asian woman, was f-cking putting this fcker in his place.” I was sobbing on the phone at this point, “I feel like this was for my people, for my ancestors who were silenced, erased, killed by white men, who couldn’t speak up as they experienced violence. This moment, however small, is for them.”

“I hear you,” my friend said gently, “it’s not small.”

Did the look on the white man’s face heal my lineage?

Not completely, of course. But I know the impact traveled like waves, reverberating up and down the line. It allowed me to reach back in time, touching on some of the soul wounds in my lineage. And that is more than I could ever ask for from a 90-minute zoom call.

*name has been changed