Unfinished Histories of Sonora Mexico's Folklore Archive

FAIN: HB-267886-20

Miriam Lily Melton-Villanueva
University of Nevada, Las Vegas (Las Vegas, NV 89154-9900)

Research and writing leading to a book on unpublished Spanish language folktales collected in Sonora, Mexico between 1975 and 1976.

The only folktale collection for the Ures region of Sonora, Mexico, remained unknown in an American folklorist widow’s garage for decades. This incredible collection includes 172 Spanish-language indigenous-influenced stories originally collected in 1975-1976 by Ronald Melton, who died before he could finish his dissertation at UCLA. In response to the destruction of cultural heritage materials worldwide, I translate these yet unpublished stories from five different towns in a high desert/ mountain-foothill region of Sonora, into English. I seek NEH support for one year of full-time research to publish a book project consisting of: 1)an analysis of the archive’s textual ethnohistorical data; 2)contextualization of the archive with new oral histories conducted with Lily and doña Anita, the two surviving assistants; and 3)translate Sonoran folktales. This new data analytically reclaims “stories” as histories, disrupting hidden hierarchies of power in traditional archival practices.

Associated Products

Unfinished Histories of Sonora Mexico's Folklore Archive 1975-6 (Book)
Title: Unfinished Histories of Sonora Mexico's Folklore Archive 1975-6
Author: Miriam Melton Villanueva
Editor: Kristen Buckles
Abstract: In response to the destruction of cultural heritage materials worldwide, this book offers bilingual reference to extant selections of 172 Spanish-language indigenous-influenced folktales originally collected in 1975-76 from five different towns in a high desert/ mountain-foothill region of Sonora, in the original local Spanish alongside English translations. The only extant folktale collection for the Ures region of Sonora, Mexico, remained unknown in a widow’s garage for decades. Historian Miriam Melton-Villanueva, charged by her mother to publish her late father’s fieldwork, found unsettling power dynamics behind the production of Sonora Mexico’s Ures-Region Folklore Archive. Unseen labor, found hidden in the dissertation draft for UCLA became a path in which to enter the archive, into the stories of the Mexican hands that helped make it possible. Despite her mother’s initial objections, the author re-centers authority on the women who co-created it, catalyzing silenced networks of shared power germane to interpreting today’s social upheaval.
Year: 2023
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Type: Single author monograph
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Unfinished Histories of Sonora Mexico's Folklore Archive 1975-6 (Book)
Title: Unfinished Histories of Sonora Mexico's Folklore Archive 1975-6
Author: Miriam Lily Melton-Villanueva
Year: 2023
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Type: Single author monograph

Autonomous Nahuatl Language Revitalization Practice in Bilingual Communities of Mexico (Article)
Title: Autonomous Nahuatl Language Revitalization Practice in Bilingual Communities of Mexico
Author: Miriam Melton-Villanueva
Author: Abelardo de la Cruz
Author: Ofelia Cruz Morales
Abstract: Abstract. Because efforts to preserve traditional languages can exclude community identity and linguistic realities, decolonial approaches rightly seek to minimize the effect of Spanish on Nahuatl. Here we offer reflections on research that propose the inverse – a study of the way historical Nahuatl speakers adopted Spanish is discussed as a decolonial strategy to support Nahuatl revitalization in the present. Indigenous scholars De la Cruz and Cruz Morales have for years helped shape revitalization programs in their respective Nahuatl-speaking Chicontepec communities in the Huasteca Veracruzana of Mexico. While implementing projects produced in consultation with their own communities and with foreign academics alike, the coauthors have begun to question who is being served by language revitalization materials. Instead of dictionary-style references emphasizing standardized Nahuatl, local oral knowledge within spoken Nahuañol can be reclaimed to serve as a basis for autonomous, self-sustaining Nahuatl learning and teaching. Examples draw on historical grammatical structures, many still present in the local Spanish as actually spoken in Mexico today. Methodologically, notarial records written by Nahuatl-speakers in the nineteenth century offer evidence of the autonomous adoption of colonial tongues (in this case, Spanish). This historical process illustrates how to consider the Nahuatl grammar underpinning today’s local Spanish as valuable, an intelligent modification of Spanish according to Nahuatl structures. The authors propose that varied expressions of Nahuañol (in this case as spoken in Nahuatl-speaking communities) facilitate recognition of Nahuatl ideas and grammar; local speakers of all ages already use the rules. Community member-researchers facilitate the replacement of Spanish with Nahuatl, practicing Nahuatl without being “taught” and without needing to read – a process that invites exercise of Nahuatl in its local diversity. Keywords: Nahuatl Language
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.56791/lr.v1i3.20
Primary URL Description: International Journal based in Chile
Secondary URL: http://Vol. 1 Núm. 3 (2022): Vitalidad, Desplazamiento y Revitalización de las Lenguas Indígenas Latinomericanas
Access Model: Open Access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Vitalidad, Desplazamiento y Revitalización de las Lenguas Indígenas Latinomericanas
Publisher: Lenguas Radicales 1 (3) 31-43

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