Archives West Finding Aid

Mario E. Chávez-Peón Herrero received his PhD in Linguistics from the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada). His research focuses on the phonetics, phonology and morphology of the Oto-Manguean languages and explores the normalization of the written language in Zapotec and Chinantec. He currently coordinates the Nanginá project of linguistic documentation and dialectology of the Mazatec language in partnership with the National Institute of Indigenous Languages.

The Zapotec languages are a group of around 50 closely related Indigenous Mesoamerican languages that constitute a main branch of the Oto-Manguean language family, and is spoken by the Zapotec people from the southwestern-central highlands of Mexico. A 2020 census reports nearly half a million speakers, with the majority inhabiting the state of Oaxaca. Zapotec-speaking communities are also found in the neighboring states of Puebla, Veracruz, and Guerrero. Labor migration has also brought a number of native Zapotec speakers to the United States, particularly in California and New Jersey. Most Zapotec-speaking communities are highly bilingual in Spanish. (Source: “Zapotec languages” Wikipedia. Date Accessed: 02/07/23)