You can’t love what you don’t know: art exhibit brings indigenous languages into the light

The Duke Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies welcomes Gabriela Badillo to Duke in November as an artist in residence as part of our Linguistic Justice in the Americas series.

Badillo will be in residence November 4-10 and will open the exhibit “68 voces, 68 corazones (68 Voices, 68 Hearts)” and give a talk on the series of short animated films she created with her production company Hola Combo.

A reception and artist talk will be held at 5:30 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 6 in the Spanish Language Program house (2122 Campus Drive).

“68 Voces” is a series of posters which tell the stories of 68 indigenous languages of Mexico in tales and legends told by their speakers in colorful animated drawings, such as the Huasteco tale of “How Did the Rabbit Get to the Moon?” (Cómo llegó el conejo a la luna (Spanish); T’ilab: jant’inij ti ulit’s an ko’y al a it’s (Huasteco/Tének).

Mexico recognizes 68 national languages, 63 of which are indigenous. But there are small populations of other indigenous speakers whose languages are not as well known.

Badillo began the project 10 years ago to show the richness of these 68 voices, under the premise that “You can’t love what you don’t know.” The posters were produced based on the art in the short animated films Badillo and her company produced.

“These stories seek to help promote pride in being part of an indigenous community, full of cultural wealth and traditions, as well as respect towards these communities and cultures within the general society, and contribute a grain of sand to combat discrimination,” Badillo said. “We hope that this project becomes a tool that helps everyone in their own communities, as well as institutions, and that it can help conserve the wealth that all of these universes represent; the wealth of our country."

The animated short films from the “68 voces, 68 corazones” have been shown throughout the North Carolina Latin American Film Festival, which strives to bring indigenous storytellers into the conversation about Latin American and Caribbean culture.

After seeing the Náhuatl language film "Cuando Muere una Lengua (When a Language Dies)," Duke freshman Anthony Ayala said, "When you connect the narration with the beautiful images of the animation, you can actually feel the loss [of a language]."

Badillo will give a talk about the project at the Wednesdays at the Center series at 12 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 6 in the Ahmadieh Family Conference Hall in the John Hope Franklin Center (2204 Erwin Road) in Durham. Lunch will be served.

She will also hold a workshop with local Chatino speakers, hoping to include them in the project. She will be joined by Dr. Hilaria Cruz, a linguist and assistant professor at the University of Louisville. Dr. Cruz helped develop a writing system for Chatino, spoken around Oaxaca, México, and by large communities in the Southeastern United States, especially in North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama.

The talk and reception are free and open to the public, sponsored by CLACS and the Department of Romance Studies at Duke. For more information about the visit of Gabriela Badillo and Hilaria Cruz, contact Liliana Paredes, Ph.D (lparedes@duke.edu).