Pan-Hispanic hegemony, linguistic policies and indigenous rights in Mexico

Abstract

In spite of the enactment of the General Law on Linguistic Rights of Indigenous People in Mexico in 2003, discrimination and linguistic inequality still exist in the remainder of various forms of operation of pan-Hispanism, a concept we will approach on the basis of sociolinguistics studies carried out in Spain, as well as from a postcolonial point of view. Starting out from the notion of glottopolitics, this article addresses the language policies in Mexico deriving from two traditions: castilianization and indigenism. The goal is to better understand the complexity of the Mexican sociolinguistic process in different periods of historic relations of domination and exercise of power: linguistic ideologies and tensions between speakers and institutions.

Keywords: dominant languages, dominated languages, pan-Hispanism, linguistic rights.