Afro-Hispanic Linguistic Remnants in Mexico: The Case of the Costa Chica Region by Norma Rosas Mayén

Abstract

Reviewed by: Afro-Hispanic Linguistic Remnants in Mexico: The Case of the Costa Chica Region by Norma Rosas Mayén Álvaro Ramírez Rosas Mayén, Norma. Afro-Hispanic Linguistic Remnants in Mexico: The Case of the Costa Chica Region. Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2021. Pp. 189. ISBN: 978-84-9192-170-7. The Afro-Mexican population of the Costa Chica region of southern Mexico, that unjustly remained invisible since the end of the colonial period, has lately drawn the attention of scholars, generating many ethnological and anthropological monographs. Norma Rosas Mayén’s Afro-Hispanic Linguistic Remnants in Mexico: The Case of the Costa Chica Region is the latest study that brings to light the rich cultural landscape of this geographical area. She, however, shifts the focus to the linguistic heritage found among the Black population of Collantes and La Boquilla in the state of Oaxaca, two of the nearly thirty-seven Afro-Mexican towns of Costa Chica which straddles the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca. The book comprises six chapters and an appendix. The first three chapters center on socio-historical, theoretical, and methodological matters. While the last three take up the analysis of linguistic data the author gathered during her field work. In the opening chapter, Rosas Mayén lays out a brief history of the presence of Afro-Mexican Spanish in Mexico, emphasizing our lack of knowledge concerning the language of the slave population due to their oral tradition and illiteracy. The few written examples that exist come from colonial legal documents and literary texts such as “villancicos” written by writers from the dominant class, perhaps as imitations that ridiculed the language of the slaves. Nonetheless, the author is interested in exploring the degree to which a creolized variety of Spanish existed and whether there are remnants in Mexico. Additionally, Rosas Mayén cites the urgency of researching and recording this Spanish dialect as globalization and migration are quickly transforming the linguistic characteristics that define “el español negro de la Costa Chica.” Like many other Indigenous languages in Mexico, she believes this Afro-Mexican Spanish is in danger of extinction. In Chapter 2, “Creole Genesis and the Rhizomatic Linguistic Model,” the author briefly reviews seven theories of the etiology of Creole languages highlighting their theoretical advantages and disadvantages. She underscores the lack of agreement among scholars on the genesis of Creole; then, moves on to postulate theories that explicate the absence of creolized Spanish in the colonies. Next, she traces the socio-historical trajectory of Papiamentu in Curaçao concluding that it is a Creole language that emerged from a mixture of Portuguese and other languages in West Africa. From there, it migrated to Curaçao with the slaves, New Christians, and Sephardic Jews, where it was lexified toward Spanish. Rosas Mayén finishes by positing a view of language based on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s rhizome theory. She proposes that languages exist in a rhizomatic ecological system that privileges a horizontal structure of connections linking them all together. Thus, allowing for linguistic development with multiple points of connection. Rosas Mayén proposes that this model can best help appreciate the multilinguistic origins of Papiamentu and other Afro-Spanish varieties such as those found in la Costa Chica. [End Page 641] In the following chapter, “Methodological and Historical Remarks,” the author refers to the scarcity of studies of Afro-Mexican Spanish in the Costa Chica. Then she presents a thorough explanation of the methodology she employed in her study and a description of the subjects and geographical area where she conducted her research. She closes by giving a brief history of the Afro-Mexicans in Oaxaca. Interestingly, Rosas Mayén contrasts the folkloric version the people tell of their arrival on a ship from where they claim to descend, and the quasi-historical information known. In this point she appears to contradict herself when she asserts Blacks arrived from West Africa, yet later she posits that scholars have not been able to specify exactly from where Afro-Mexicans of this region originate. Chapter 4, “Phonological Characteristics of Costeño Spanish,” details the sounds that distinguish this costal variety of Spanish. Rosas Mayén notes an...