Launching the Project to Support the Revitalization of the Potn and Pisbi Languages in El Salvador

Launching the Project to Support the Revitalization of the Potón and Pisbi Languages in El Salvador
Translation posted 21 January 2017 22:33 GMT

On Friday, 26 February 2016, the Salvadoran National Coordinating Indigenous Council (CCNIS, for its initials in Spanish) started an unprecedented process of revitalizing the Potón and Pisbi languages in El Salvador, with the aim to promote the identity of the Lenca and Kakawira peoples through their languages. The project, which is funded by the Rising Voices organization, involves several young indigenous people who develop digital materials for the promotion of languages in their communities, which have traditionally been marginalized. Participants were taught the use of technological tools that will enable them to convert printed language teaching materials into a digital format. In addition, the beneficiaries will be trained in Indigenous Communication strategies and editing programs that will allow them to continue with the rescue, strengthening and revitalization of their native languages.

The CCNIS considers that with the disappearance of unwritten and undocumented languages, humanity would not only lose a great cultural richness, but also ancestral knowledge contained, in particular, in the indigenous languages. In addition, we, the Indigenous Peoples, must meet the new challenges brought by the use of technologies, meaning that we must have a strategy to strengthen and disseminate our cultural practices, our social and community processes, while taking into account that the access to television broadcasting, the development and publication of audiovisual content for indigenous communities is difficult, therefore, inequitable.

There is great potential for the country to know the real situation of Indigenous Peoples and their cultural and territorial dynamics. This would define the information to which the entire Salvadoran society would have access, but it is important that it does not include “the Indigenous” as only subjects from which to profit, but to respect their right to self-determination. It would also allow us, Indigenous Peoples, to be the ones who create our own content, as well as to produce and disseminate them on equal terms.

In the Constitution of the Republic of El Salvador, Article 62 says that: