In this chapter, I analyze commercial exchanges between P’urhepecha children and mestizo (i.e., people of mixed indigenous and Spanish descent) individuals at a market in Mexico. Markets are places of intercultural contact, and the linguistic and behavioral practices that take place there show how power and ethnic identities are negotiated and economic exploitation is realized (see, for instance, French 2001; Flores 2003; Placencia 2008). In order to challenge the inequalities that exist in the relationships between mestizo and indigenous populations, Mexican education authorities have implemented intercultural education, focusing on teaching students skills and values for coexisting in a multiethnic and multicultural society, and emphasizing the maintenance and development of the students’ native language and culture. I contend, however, that the components of this model – particularly Spanish-language instruction – should be further refined. I describe a literacy program in the P’urhepecha language that, despite its success, proves to be ineffective in preparing indigenous children to confront abusive encounters with mestizo people. I conclude by reflecting on the role of linguistic practices in the reproduction of conditions that maintain indigenous people’s subordinated position in Mexican society, and the need for a model of education that teaches children to face unfavorable situations.

Theoretical Framework

I approach my analysis from a critical perspective. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a branch of discourse analysis whose purpose is “to analyze opaque as well as transparent structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control as manifested in language” (Blommaert and Bulcaen 2000: 448). CDA is grounded in the analysis of linguistic forms because its goal is to study how language structure (re)creates social and power differences. Therefore, an examination of discursive practices and language structure can shed light on the pro­cesses of social structuring. Ideologies play an important role in social structuring, and discourse is one of the mechanisms through which ideology is produced and circulated. Van Dijk (2000, 2003a) defines ideology as a system of socially shared beliefs. Ideologies have several functions. They determine group membership, coordinate intra-group interaction and set its goals and actions in order to protect access to resources (be it economic, social, political, etc.). Ideologies also define “Others” and determine inter-group interaction with them. Since ideologies are not neutral, and they work to sustain the interests of the dominant classes by making unequal social systems appear natural, one of the main goals of CDA is to “denaturalize” these ideologies, in order to show how they relate to the social order (van Dijk 2000, 2003a).

Because of the interest of critical discourse analysis in language structure and use, it is necessary to explore how speakers create meaning during verbal interaction. For the purposes of this study, I will analyze how speakers use their discursive strategies (Gumperz 1982) and linguistic devices to position themselves during a key communicative event in Indigenous–Mestizo interaction: commercial transactions at markets. The discursive strategies speakers use reflect the type of social relationship they establish with their interlocutors and, at the same time, index power and social distance between them. Therefore, it is crucial to know how speakers manage their relationships during social interaction. I will incorpor­ate insights from Spencer-Oatey’s (2000, 2002) rapport management theory in my analysis. Rapport between people can be affected by face-threatening acts and behaviors that impinge on the rights of the interlocutors (Spencer-Oatey 2005: 335.) Thus, rapport management involves face management and the management of sociality rights, understood as “personal/social expectancies … reflect[ing] people’s concerns over fairness, consideration, social inclusion/exclusion and so on” (Spencer-Oatey 2000: 14). Spencer-Oatey’s concept of face goes beyond Brown and Levinson’s (1987) traditional idea, and it distinguishes between “quality face” (i.e., the desire to be seen positively in light of personal qualities) and “identity face” (i.e., the desire for people to acknowledge individual personal identities and roles).

On the other hand, according to Spencer-Oatey (2000) the management of sociality rights has two interrelated factors. The first, equity rights, refers to people’s belief about their entitlement to be treated fairly; therefore, costs and benefits between interlocutors should be balanced (i.e., cost–benefit component) as well as the extent to which one speaker imposes over the other (i.e., autonomy–imposition). The second factor, association rights, refers to the speakers’ freedom to associate with others, with different degrees of involvement (i.e., interactional association–dissociation) and concern (i.e., affective association–dissociation). The author proposes five interconnected domains of social management: (1) illocutionary, relating to the realization of speech acts; (2) discourse, concerned with the content and organization of interaction; (3) participation, related to the turn-taking mechanism of conversation; (4) stylistic, referring to the tone and register of interaction; and (5) the non-verbal, encompassing gestures, proxemics, eye contact.

Spencer-Oatey’s (2000, 2002) framework is a powerful tool for understanding how speakers negotiate their interactional goals and how power is played out during conversation. By critically analyzing linguistic practices during commercial exchanges between indigenous and mestizo individuals, I attempt to shed light on major processes of social structuring in Mexican society.

The data I present in this study are quasi-ethnographic observations of market exchanges between indigenous children and mestizo vendors. They were carried out as a part of a larger project¹ that explores the acquisition of bilingual literacy skills by P’urhepecha children. Although the trip to the market was originally planned to observe children’s use of the Spanish language in face-to-face interactions with mestizo speakers, it uncovered the need to explicitly prepare children for dealing with disadvantageous situations.

Talking about Indians, But Not with Them

There is a large body of literature that deals with the political, economic, linguistic, and social problems that affect indigenous populations in Mexico and Latin America; however, the number of works that explore actual speech between indi­genous and mestizos is much lower. The tradition of talking about indigenous peoples and not with them starts with the first contact between Europeans and native Americans. As Todorov (1987) points out, in his encounter with indigenous peoples Columbus did not attempt to establish an egalitarian relationship or to understand their cultural norms. On the contrary, Columbus projects his ideas about what Indians are or should be on the natives. Far from understanding the indigenous languages, Columbus interprets the tongues of the Indians based on his own knowledge of European languages and norms. Hoffmann (1997) questions why Columbus does not seem to have any difficulties communicating with the natives as documented in his travel logs; rather, he understands the meaning of both signs and words. Following Todorov, Hoffmann argues that Columbus does not find a gap between the world and the linguistic sign, and assumes language universals that ensure the comprehensibility of unrelated languages. Hoffmann also points out an element that is constant in the treatment of indigenous populations even today, that is, the necessity of teaching Spanish to indi­genous individuals so they can speak and communicate.

Throughout the history of Hispanic America, the tendency has been to ignore or even erase (both figuratively and physically) the indigenous populations. Most often, native peoples are spoken for by the mestizo and white mainstream majorities that assume paternalistic attitudes and claim to have the best interests of indigenous communities at heart, while relegating them to permanent tutelage (Zúñiga 1998).

In the twenty-first century, most work on indigenous populations has not been done by them. The indigenous intelligentsia is simply too small, due in part to the educational, economic, and ethnic discrimination problems they have historically suffered (Gutierrez 1998), which has contributed to the native groups’ lack of voice in national life. Even in sociolinguistic research there has been a tendency to carry out cross-cultural and not intercultural studies. For instance, Curcó (2007) mentions that the first studies of linguistic politeness done in Mexico focused on indigenous languages in order to find politeness universals, while studies about Spanish were realized independently from their indigenous counterparts.

Most of the research on mestizo–indigenous interaction has been developed from anthropological and sociological perspectives that focus on explaining how social and economic structures reproduce the oppressed situation of native groups. There has been much less investigation of interethnic relations and the role of language in the reproduction of social inequality and indigenous subjugation. An area of linguistics that studies these factors is critical discourse analysis (CDA) (van Dijk 2003b; Heller 2001). Studies carried out under this framework have focused on analyzing discrimination and how it is perceived by minority individuals, reproduced in the press, and institutionalized in schools and the workplace. The methodology employed in CDA concentrates on analyzing discriminatory events as they are narrated by indigenous interviewees or expressed in the opinions of mestizo individuals. This methodology is common in analyzing discriminatory practices (e.g., de Cillia et al. 1999; Poblete 2003; Pilleaux and Merino 2004; Merino et al. 2008); however, there is little exploration of how verbal interaction reproduces power and discrimination in everyday, face-to-face interethnic communication (Placencia 2008).

Anthropological, sociological, and linguistic studies about racism in Mexico and Latin America have uncovered ideologies that position “the Indian” as inferior, unintelligent, poor, filthy, and uncivilized (Barabas 2000; Castellanos 2001) in opposition to their mestizo counterparts, who represent (high) culture, civilization, and hispanization. In Mexico, the concepts of mestizo and mestizaje relate to both a cultural and biological process, but also to an ideology promoted by the state after the Mexican Revolution. Mestizaje fostered a strong sense of nationalism founded on the idea of equality based on racial mixture. This racial homogenization discursively evened out social, economic, and racial differences and deflected social tensions caused by real ethnic and economic inequalities (Bartra 1989). Paradoxically, within the discourse of mestizaje a glorious indigenous past is recognized as the basis of national identity, while the living Indians are discriminated against. Bonfil Batalla (1994) argues that mestizaje (in both the cultural and biological senses) is not what has taken place in Mexican society, but rather a process of deindianization. Indigenous communities have been subjected to ideological mechanisms that have caused them to reject their ethnic affiliation, while adopting a more powerful – and state-sanctioned – self-identification. Mestizos consider themselves to be different from indigenous groups, but there is cultural continuity and shared biological background with that population. Thus, the concept of minority as applied to the indigenous people is not defined on quantitative terms only, but also by social and historical processes that are guided by the nature of political power (Pellicer 2006).

The ideology behind ethnic prejudice (re)produces intolerance and discrimination, despite recent advances in human rights and a growing recognition of the multicultural reality of the country.² However, van Dijk (2009) argues that racist attitudes are evolving in Latin America towards more conscientious and sensitive positions, but because of this, ethnic prejudice has become more difficult to identify in discourse. Despite this positive outlook, studies of Indigenous–Mestizo interaction consistently show a tendency: the subjugation of indigenous peoples. Thus, it is necessary to explore how such domination plays out in face-to-face everyday interactions and the discursive mechanisms used to accomplish it.

Interaction at Schools

One of the places where most intercultural contact between indigenous and mestizo people has taken place is in the schools. Schools have been used for achieving national unification through linguistic and cultural homogenization. In Mexico, education for indigenous groups has a long history that starts in the colonial period (1521–1821), but was consolidated as an official policy only after the Mexican Revolution (1910–17). Schools – as places of interethnic contact – indoctrinate indigenous students in the civic rituals that connect them to the nation (singing the national anthem, celebrating civic holidays) and teach the academic knowledge that is sanctioned by educational authorities (Montes 1995), but most importantly, schools Castilianize indigenous children.

Although bilingual education for the native communities has been a project since the 1930s, it has never, in fact, occurred. Hidalgo (1994) argues that indigenous education in Mexico has not been bilingual because its main goal has been acculturation and the subsequent assimilation of native populations. Schools use children’s languages in transitional ways at best. The symbolic violence (Bourdieu 1999) exerted by schools through the use of Spanish has been widely documented (López and Velasco 2000; Muñoz Cruz 2006) along with the consequent effects of children’s low academic achievement and ethnic identification problems. Interestingly, the people who have the most contact with native students and the most influence are teachers. Indigenous teachers have gone through a schooling process designed to westernize them. Instead of acting as intercultural bridges with mestizo society, teachers function as acculturation models for their students, who see in the teaching profession one of the few jobs that allows them upward social mobility.

The failure of indigenous education, joined to the action of indigenous activists and the influence of anthropological studies about the importance of children’s culture in the education process (e.g., Philips 1983; Paradise 1987, 1994a, 1994b; Vogt et al. 1996), created a shift of paradigm towards bilingual-bicultural education. But despite the fact that bilingual-bicultural education represented an attempt to change assimilationist models, it continued to place the responsibility of becoming competent in both languages and cultures on the indigenous students. Bilingual-bicultural education failed because of the lack of official support (Hamel 2008b). In the early 1990s, a new model of intercultural education emerged in Latin America. In the case of Mexico, intercultural education is a policy implemented from the top down because the indigenous population is increasingly becoming a political actor in national life. In addition, Mexico’s participation in the globalized world and neoliberal economy has caused in-migration/ internal migration to urban centers and emigration to the United States, which has increased intercultural contact.

Paradoxically, Mexico City is the place with the largest indigenous population in the country, but despite its demographic importance, the Indian presence has been ignored (Oehmichen, 2007). Most of the indigenous population in Mexico City is found at the bottom of the economic ladder. Men work as bricklayers, gum-and candy-sellers on the street, and in every low-paying, informal job they can do. Indigenous women are also part of the workforce, finding employment as domestic workers, street vendors, or even beggars. Horbath (2008) mentions that factors including low education levels, gender, age, and language relegate indigenous individuals to the worst types of work. Indigenous workers are mostly employed in informal jobs and with little or no possibility of upward mobility. Indigenous children are a particularly vulnerable sector. In general, for every mestizo child attending school there are two indigenous children not enrolled. Indigenous children have higher illiteracy levels (13.5% than 2.4% of mestizo children), and higher levels of grade repetition than mestizo students (11% vs. 5%). The likelihood of an indigenous child finishing elementary school (grades 1–6) is only 51%. The situation gets worse for the indigenous population once children are out of elementary schools. Between the ages of 14 and 19, 73.7% of indigenous teenagers do not continue their studies (INEGI 2004).

According to the GDF (Mexico City’s Governmental Office), in 2002 a total of 10,785 indigenous children between the ages of 6 and 14 years old were attending school in Mexico City. This number represents 95.17% of a total population of 12,519 native children of school age. Compared to the national average (91.7%), Mexico City’s numbers are better; however, there are severe problems that make this percentage much less impressive. Indigenous children in Mexico City have high levels of absenteeism, desertion, and overall low educational achievement. Indigenous children are uprooted from their communities and thrown into schools that are not prepared to deal with their linguistic and cultural characteristics. In addition, their parents’ low faith in and lack of knowledge about the school system and the value of education for achieving upward mobility contribute to students’ desertion and academic failure. Furthermore, children must contribute to their families’ incomes, so they engage in a periodic migration cycle, in which they return to their villages during the harvest time and then move back to Mexico City (or to other urban centers). This cycle contributes to the problems that children experience in school, but at the same time, helps them to maintain their ethnic identity and ties with their communities. Most importantly, the immigration cycle allows the maintenance of the mother tongue to a certain extent (Rebolledo 2008). Even though indigenous children are exposed to greater interaction with the mestizo majority, indigenous communities continue to maintain ways to reproduce their culture and to create pockets for the survival of the native languages (see Paradise 1987; Bertely 2000; Pellicer 2006).

Schools do not provide a safe shelter for indigenous tongues to develop and cultures to be maintained. Barriga (2008), in her analysis of an urban school with a significant number of indigenous students, found that mestizo children ignored the multicultural reality of their school, while indigenous children were not offered the conditions to develop their ethnic identity. Barriga argues that the indigenous presence at the school was erased. Teachers and the principal did not acknowledge the existence of indigenous children and ignored the cultural and linguistic needs of their students. The mestizo children were aware that their classmates were able to speak “funny” (i.e., speak another language), while the indigenous children (all bilingual) refused to speak their native languages at school, or spoke them only with their indigenous peers on the playground. Barriga describes a very common situation in schools where “mixed” populations of students interact. That is, there is de facto interculturality, but it doesn’t crystallize into a balanced, egalitarian relationship between the dominant mestizo majority and the indigenous children.

The type of intercultural education implemented in Mexico focuses on reducing the educational gap between mestizo and indigenous students by addressing the cultural and linguistic suitability of instruction. Contrary to previous models that emphasized homogeneity, teachers are supposed to take advantage of their classroom’s diversity (e.g., ethnic, linguistic, gender) so students can learn about the multicultural condition of the country and respect it. Intercultural education places special emphasis on the role of the native languages in the learning process; therefore, both literacy in indigenous tongues and bilingual education are essential parts of the curriculum. Even though there are some strong criticisms (see Nery 2004; Fuentes 2008, 2010; Fuentes and Nieto 2010) of intercultural education, Rebolledo (2008) argues that it has yielded positive results, although these have yet to be studied.

In the case of Mexico, there are few successful bilingual education programs. For instance, Rebolledo’s project (2007, 2008) with indigenous bilingual children in Mexico City has attempted to implement a program that sensitizes teachers to their students’ linguistic and cultural differences. The program also strengthens the use of children’s native language (i.e., Hñähñö) as means of instruction, which, it is hoped, will help revitalize the language. Perhaps the most developed bilingual program is the one designed and implemented by a group of indigenous teachers from the P’urhepecha group (see Hamel et al. 2004; Hamel and Francis, 2006). However, these projects are the exception rather than the rule,³ and intercultural instruction is more concerned with educating in values as a way to counteract the effects of social and institutionalized racism.

The calls for intercultural education for both indigenous people and the mestizo majority are numerous (e.g., Chapela 2005; Schmelkes 2001a, 2001b, 2002). For indigenous students, it may help them strengthen their identity and eventually recover/reverse the loss of the native languages and cultures. For the majority, intercultural education may help to make them sensitive to cultural difference so they can appreciate and respect it. I have questioned the over-emphasis on values of intercultural education elsewhere (Fuentes 2010) because, as I will show, not even a strong bilingual education program can help children successfully interact with the mestizo majority when there are unequal conditions that facilitate the subjugation of the indigenous language speakers. In order to illustrate this, in the following pages, I describe an indigenous education program that has been successful in teaching literacy skills to P’urhepecha children; at the same time, however, students are ill-equipped to deal with mestizo people during the commercial exchanges which constitute an important communicative event in the life of indigenous communities.

The San Isidro and Uringuitiro Curricular Project

The San Isidro and Uringuitiro curricular project is unique since it is one of only a few cases in which a program that is based on the native language has been implemented. The indigenous towns of San Isidro and Uringuitiro are both situated in the municipio⁴ of Los Reyes in the state of Michoacán, Mexico. The towns are related and share their history and culture. San Isidro is the larger one, with approximately 1,645 inhabitants. The main economic activities are logging, farming, and animal husbandry, although many inhabitants migrate periodically to urban centers, or even to the United States to work in agriculture.

In both towns, the dominant language is P’urhepecha, although there are different levels of bilingualism, particularly among men, who make frequent trips to Spanish-speaking cities to look for jobs. Children are mostly monolingual in P’urhepecha, but some have limited proficiency in Spanish. Both towns have elementary schools, while San Isidro also has a pre-school, a dormitory attached to the elementary school, and a telesecundaria (access to televised secondary school classes).

The project’s main goal is the development of literacy skills in P’urhepecha as a way to improve children’s low academic achievement due to the use of Spanish in the classroom. Teachers have focused on developing a curriculum that uses P’urhepecha as the language of instruction and cultural content selected by the community. The use of the mother tongue allows the children to learn the national curriculum for elementary schools, which has been re-shaped by the teachers and community to satisfy their own educational needs (Alonso and Nieto 2006). Children also receive Spanish as a foreign language classes, starting in first grade. The project teaches Spanish as a subject that requires designated time in the classroom, special pedagogic materials and methodology, and specific teaching skills and discourse from the teachers (Hamel et al. 2004). Spanish as a foreign language is not taught at other indigenous schools, mainly because of the lack of teacher training and the nonexistence of the subject in official curricula. For these reasons, the San Isidro–Uringuitiro curricular project represents cutting-edge work in bilingual education for indigenous communities. However, while the project emphasizes L1 and L2 language instruction, it does not focus on teaching strategies to interact with the mainstream mestizo majority (Alonso 2004, personal communication).

The environment at San Isidro and Uringuitiro schools is different from that of other indigenous schools. Indigenous children are usually timid and participate little in class discussions, and when addressed by strangers, they refuse to talk, and look away. The children of San Isidro and Uringuitiro schools, in contrast, are active participants in the classroom. They ask and answer questions and volunteer to participate in school activities. With few exceptions, the teachers maintain very good rapport with their students, which can be seen both inside and outside of the classroom, where the teachers play with their students and obviously care about those who are more needy (e.g., giving them food, helping them wash their hands, giving them toys). The teachers attribute the good relationship with their students to the fact that they are part of the children’s community and share the same cultural code. Paradise (1994a) identifies this cultural compatibility as one of the factors that makes indigenous schools successful, because both teachers and students are able to interact in culturally appropriate ways, which contributes both to learning and to creating trusting relationships between children and adults.

The use of the native language as the means of instruction has allowed the children to develop their self-esteem and increased their motivation to stay in school. Compared with other indigenous children, the students from San Isidro and Uringuitiro are noticeably less shy⁵ with strangers and more willing to interact with visitors, even in P’urhepecha. Indeed, several times visitors were addressed by children; when they realized that their interlocutors did not speak P’urhepecha, the children would either switch to Spanish or continue speaking their language, producing very interesting examples of negotiation of meaning.

Because both teachers and researchers were convinced of the benefits of their bilingual program, they were interested in observing how the children were able to use the Spanish they had learned. The opportunity to observe real-life interactions was easily available, because both communities maintain ties with the neighboring mestizo town of Patamban. Every Thursday, Patamban holds an open-air market where the residents of San Isidro and Uringuitiro go to barter and sell their products. Thus, the trip to the market would not be strange for the students, who had accompanied their parents in the past, and even would have some experience in trading.

The teachers requested permission from the parents of fifth-and sixth-graders, because they wanted to see what the most advanced students could do. One Thursday morning, the students showed up with bundles of firewood, produce, and poleo tea. Poleo is a much-sought-after plant because of its medicinal properties and because it grows in the mountains, which makes it difficult to obtain. When the students found out about the upcoming trip to Patamban, they formed groups to go to the nearby woods to gather sprigs of poleo with the hope of selling them or trading them for goods. After all the students and bundles were loaded in our pick-up trucks and vans, teachers and students took a trip on a dirt road to Patamban.

Interaction at the Market

French (2001) argues that markets are, in fact, the best places to study indigenous–mestizo relationships in Guatemala. The same observation applies to Mexico.

Markets have been part of the indigenous way of life since long before the arrival of the Spanish. As Cortés (2005) narrates, the Tlatelolco market rivaled those of Europe because of its variety and organization. For the indigenous peoples, markets represented a center not only for economic exchange, but also for social, political, and interethnic interaction. In the twenty-first century, markets are still important places for economic exchange and intercultural contact. Flores (2003) argues that markets have influence on the sociolinguistic situation of a country and contribute to the shift to Spanish. Because the language of commerce is Spanish, indigenous vendors are forced to learn that language in order to participate in trade. In addition, the indigenous languages borrow vocabulary related to commerce from Spanish, instead of coining their own words. Thus, markets in Latin America can be seen as a microcosm of the larger society, where ethnic relations take place and ethnic identities are imposed, negotiated, and resisted.

Although markets do have social functions, their main purpose is economic. Flores (1984, 1985, 2003) analyzes the way in which markets, as capitalist systems, contribute to the economic exploitation of indigenous and peasant groups. For the indigenous groups, the logic of workforce, production, and circulation of goods is oriented towards subsistence, while for mestizo groups, it is profit-based. Indigenous peoples are forced to participate in an economic system that puts them at a disadvantage because they are not able to compete with large producers and merchants who control prices and monopolize exchanges in the marketplace. In this tangle of economic interests, ethnic conflict is played out through a series of linguistic behaviors that reveal social and ethnic hierarchy and impede communication.

In his study of markets in Chiapas (Mexico), Köhler (1980) found that commercial transactions between Indians are ruled by courtesy. Disagreements about the price, quantity, and quality of the products are negotiated while also paying attention to maintaining “face” (Spencer-Oatey 2000, 2002) for both buyers and sellers. The opening of a transaction involves greetings, and closings include leave-takings and thanks for the service dispensed. As Firth (1972) has pointed out, greetings have the function of acknowledging a person as socially acceptable. By greeting their interlocutor, indigenous sellers and buyers recognize their identity and value as a person. Overall, transactions occur symmetrically, without imposing one over the other, but by coming to an agreement through negotiation.

On the other hand, commercial transactions between mestizos and Indians are marked by inequalities. Pronouns and forms of address are used to mark dominance in the interaction. Brown and Gilman (1972 [1960]) in their study of pronoun usage in Italian, French, and German, identify the use of T (familiar form) and V (formal form) with dimensions of power and solidarity. Usually, indigenous sellers and buyers are addressed by the pronoun tú or vos,⁶ which correspond to the familiar form, while indigenous sellers or buyers use usted (formal form). Flores (2003: 644–5) describes an instance in which a mestizo middleman approaches an indigenous vendor and talks to her using usted. But then he pointedly shifts to tú. This shift in footing (Goffman 1981) serves to assert his dominance in the transaction. Other nominal forms of address include the use of words that put mestizos in power or patronizing positions such as patrón (boss) or mamita (little mother), while mestizos use vocatives (e.g., cholo, indio) whose main purpose is the de-personalization of the individual in order to transform her/him into a member of an undifferentiated group. For instance, Placencia (2008), in her study of racism in everyday forms of interaction describes how indigenous women complain about being called María, regardless of their actual name, since mestizos act as if all indigenous women are named María. Thus, the non-reciprocal use of pronouns and forms of address linguistically indexes the subjugated position of the indigenous people in the national society.

In addition to pronoun use, another part of discourse that is manipulated by the mestizo speakers is the tone of the interaction. As noted by Köhler (1980), commercial transactions between indigenous people are marked by courtesy; however, interactions between mestizos and Indians are a lot less courteous and very often take the form of a confrontation, with the mestizo buyers aggressively bargaining or even threatening to call the authorities in order to negotiate/impose a better price for the merchandise (see for instance Seligman 1993). At the illocutive level, this is mainly realized through the use of directive speech acts, unmitigated questions and the rejection of what Flores (2003) calls the validity claims of the seller, that is, the seller’s arguments about the fairness of the price of the merchandise and its quality.

Perhaps the most complex form in which domination is enacted is in the participation domain, through the manipulation of conversational mechanisms (Sacks et al. 1974). In this sense, the studies by Flores (1984, 1985, 2003) clearly demonstrate how mestizo middlemen use their discursive resources to exert power over indigenous vendors. In his analysis of a commercial exchange between a mestizo intermediary and an indigenous seller, Flores shows how the former monopolizes the conversational turn-taking mechanism to such an extent that he would often answer his own questions about the price of some goods in subsequent adjacency pairs. Because mestizo speakers do not allow indigenous sellers to take the floor, the sellers are often reduced to using monosyllabic answers and non-verbal responses (e.g., nodding, pointing). During these interactions, power is also exerted through the use of Spanish. Indigenous sellers and buyers are forced to interact in Spanish in the marketplace. For speakers with low proficiency in this language, negotiating in Spanish represents a challenge that is further complicated by the rate of speech, which is manipulated by the mestizo middlemen, and so the indigenous sellers participate minimally during the bargaining process. Fast conversations and the control of the conversational mechanics allow mestizo merchants to be in command of the commercial exchange, which in turn reinforces the subordinated position of the indigenous people and the role of Spanish as the language of prestige and economic mobility.

Symbolic violence and domination are also exerted at non-verbal levels. If the bargaining process fails, the mestizo buyer may choose to simply take the merchandise and throw money at the indigenous seller without speaking a word. In the literature regarding indigenous markets, reference to the infamous atajadores (i.e., mestizo people who block the access of indigenous sellers to the marketplace) is frequent (Paré 1975; Favre and Cusminsky 1985; Cervone 1999; Flores 2003). Atajadores prevent indigenous individuals from knowing the actual values of their merchandise at the market and force them to sell their products at much lower prices, resulting in higher profits for the mestizo buyers. Since atajadores often do not engage in any bargaining process, indigenous sellers are forced to do business with them, which represents a violation of their association rights, that is, the speaker’s freedom to affiliate with others (Spencer-Oatey 2000, 2002). Indeed, indigenous merchants would be able to get better prices if they were able to accept the best bid, but because of their limited language proficiency the manipulation of the discursive resources by the middleman and the symbolic and actual violence of the latter create an unequal situation that reinforces the economic exploitation of and discrimination against indigenous people.

Overall, studies of indigenous–mestizo interactions at market uncover the role of linguistic practices in the reproduction of domination of indigenous groups. During verbal interaction, there is little or no concern about the identity and face quality of the Indian sellers, and their equality and association rights are continually violated. The discursive strategies used by mestizo middlemen are focused not on cooperating in order to maintain good rapport, but on affirming their dominance over indigenous peoples. The deliberate impoliteness of mestizo people can be seen as one more mechanism of domination that is enacted in both the language and the behavioral practices of the mainstream mestizo merchants and buyers. Arriving at the opposite conclusion in her review of politeness studies in Mexico, Curcó (2007) argues that one of the main concerns of mestizo speakers is maintaining the positive face of their interlocutors, despite potential conflictive implications. From the data presented above, it is obvious that the same concern does not apply to their indigenous interlocutors, but rather their domination is paramount. Such subjugation is based on ideological grounds in which mestizos – no matter how culturally related to the indigenous population they might be – are thought to be superior.

The study of the interactions between indigenous people and mestizos in the marketplace indeed shows a bleak panorama of crude dominance and exploitation; however, there are also indications that this is not the complete story. As Scott (1990) has pointed out, subordinated groups find ways to resist. Lack of proficiency in Spanish is a disadvantage for the native people, but at the same time, they are able to communicate with their peers in their native languages, thus leaving the mestizo people out of the loop (see, for example, Cervone 1999; Levi 1999). Studies by Seligman (1989, 1993) have shown that indigenous women in Peruvian markets actively challenge the abuse that their mestizo counterparts try to exert on them by manipulating the tone of the conversation, using symmetrical pronouns and even returning threats and insults. Thus, indigenous vendors very openly assert their equality and association rights (Spencer-Oatey 2000, 2002). By behaving in this way, these indigenous women defy ideas about “the good Indian” (i.e., one who is obedient and submissive) and official policies of national integration.

The increasing importance of the participation of indigenous groups in national life has also helped change the attitudes of indigenous peoples themselves. In addition, governmental authorities have enacted legislation to prohibit discrimination against indigenous groups.⁷ These factors have helped change some commercial practices; nonetheless, mestizo dominance is still widespread, and discrimination runs rampant at markets. Nowadays, indigenous migration has resulted in most intercultural contact taking place in urban settings; however, markets still have significance in the life of indigenous people at both the economic and the social level. Markets are the places where children will learn to trade by watching their parents (Köhler 1980). Because most indigenous children are forced to work to contribute to the family income (Weller 2000), very often by trading, it is very important to provide children with skills that help them cope with unfavorable conditions.

Trading at the Patamban Market

Patamban is a town located in the municipio of Tangancícuaro, in the western state of Michoacán, Mexico. The town is located in the volcanic plateau known as la Meseta P’urhepecha. According to Ragone and Marr (2006), the several municipios on the Meseta are home to some 800,000 people. Twelve percent of the population is P’urhepecha-speaking. This area is of particular importance in the history of bilingual education in Mexico. In 1939, Morris Swadesh from the Summer Institute of Linguistics created the “Tarascan Project,” whose objective was to create methods for developing literacy first in P’urhepecha followed by the teaching of Spanish. Although the region has been the target of bilingual educational policies for a long time, the native tongue still coexists with Spanish in a diglossic situation, which has caused different levels of vitality and language shift.

Patamban is situated in the highlands, in the heart of the Patamban mountains. The town is referred to by educational authorities as a town of indigenous heritage, but not as an indigenous community, because of the degree of language shift that has taken place since the 1960s. According to the 2000 population census, only 2 people out of 3,526 inhabitants of the town were monolingual P’urhepecha speakers (INEGI 2001). In addition to the linguistic shift to Spanish, the town is also losing its distinctive indigenous cultural traditions. For instance, young people have stopped wearing traditional garb in favor of westernized jeans and T-shirts, while women are gradually discontinuing their use of pinstriped blue shawls, which for a long time served as a marker of their ethnic identity (Gouy-Gilbert 1987).

Romaine (1992) has stated that factors weighing heavily in the maintenance of languages include the geographic location of a town, its degree of isolation or accessibility, and official educational policy toward minorities (among others). Patamban is a good example of the effect of these factors in language maintenance and shift. In the 1990s, the state government built two paved roads that connect the town to the nearby cities of Zamora and Tangancícuaro. This improved communication resulted in extensive contact with Spanish-speaking towns and new opportunities for traveling and commerce. In addition, tourists started pouring into town during the religious celebration of Christ the King. However, a perhaps more important factor that has contributed to the identity change of the town is migration to the United States, because the money remitted by migrants to their families has made possible the acquisition of goods and access to westernized lifestyles (Moctezuma-Yano 2002). Nevertheless, the town still produces ceramics in traditional ways, and this continues to be its main industry.

The market is located in the town’s central plaza. As in many Latin American countries, the plaza is surrounded by the church, the elementary school, the town hall, and several small shops and stores. Loudspeakers blare out music in Spanish and, occasionally, traditional songs in P’urhepecha. Outdoor vendors set up their stands in the plaza and along the surrounding streets. Merchants sell a variety of wares: meat, produce, dairy, clothing, shoes, music CDs, furniture, ceramics, and even traditional remedies. Although many vendors are from Patamban, mestizo traders from Zamora also come to the market to sell their merchandise because many potential clients do not have the means to travel to the city. The lingua franca in the market is Spanish, although the indigenous practice of bartering is still used.

When the children arrived, they spread out across the market in small groups or individually. Teachers and researchers⁸ followed them around at a distance, observing the way students carried out their commercial exchanges. Interestingly, children did not attempt to use Spanish to communicate with the vendors:

In this exchange, the mestizo woman exercises her power over the child. The opening of the exchange is not a greeting, which would be expected if the buyer were an adult, particularly a mestizo adult. Greetings play important functions in interaction. They serve as indexes of the social status of the interlocutors, their identities and ranks (see Duranti 1997). By not greeting the child, the vendor signals to the child that he or she is not someone who deserves to be treated deferentially, and affirms the vendor’s superior position.

The question that the woman asks, “What do you want?”, is unmitigated. According to Caffi (1999), mitigation reduces risks for the participants in an interaction, for instance contradiction, loss of face, and conflict. A direct question such as this signals impoliteness, and little concern for maintaining face. Placencia (2008) reports instances in which mestizo sellers use this type of question when addressing indigenous buyers, instead of polite forms such as “What do you wish?” which are used to address mestizo clients. Impolite language is used by mestizos as a way to “talk down” to indigenous buyers, who are not deemed worthy of the sellers’ attention. The woman in this example did not seem interested in verbally engaging with child, since she did not attempt to ask further questions. Also, there is no negotiation, because the child, in fact, does not say a word. It is the woman who asks questions, gives commands and, eventually, decides the value of the sprigs. Although the interactional goal was accomplished (i.e., the barter of goods), it was an unequal exchange, or rather, an imposition. The child was reduced to using body language (i.e., pointing) to indicate what he wanted, and to obey the command of the woman (i.e., to take only two tamales). At the end of the exchange, it was obvious that the child was not pleased, but he was not able to complain or would not do so.

The fact that the vendors used their discursive resources to take advantage of the children was quite evident in the events we observed. It was also very clear that children did not use their Spanish skills, even the ones who had the highest proficiency levels. Rather, children preferred to approach vendors and allow them to open the exchange, and followed the merchants’ commands with very little or no negotiation:

As in the previous example, the woman exerts her power over the child by using her discursive resources. The exchange is opened by the woman, who notices the child, and addresses him directly using an unmitigated question. She does not greet her client, but rather focuses on the merchandise that the child is trying to sell. By initiating the exchange, the woman ensures her strong position since she is providing the topic of conversation (i.e., asking what the child wants to sell). This implies that in the subsequent adjacency pair the child has to answer the woman, which allows her to take the third turn to further inquire about the merchandise or initiate price negotiations. However, this is not what happens, because the child just hands his bundle to the vendor. There are no attempts at negotiation because the woman immediately asks the child which heap of peaches he wants. Again, by talking first, the woman ensures that she keeps control of the floor and the topic of the exchange. That is, asking the child which pile of peaches he wants and not how many. In this sense, although the woman appears to be negotiating with the child by asking a question, its illocutionary force is that of a command: telling the child to take only one heap of peaches. The child tries to gather the peaches he wants, but the woman further limits his options, both physically (by grabbing his hand), and discursively. The woman first tells the child that the peaches he wants are not good and offers him another heap, and then she asks a question. By asking a question, the woman signals to the child her willingness to interact with him, and probably to negotiate, but immediately she answers her own question positively. The woman monopolizes the turn-taking mechanism of conversation by answering her own questions in subsequent adjacency pairs, thus reducing the child’s participation to non-verbal language (i.e., pointing). In addition, the question–answer sequence is performed rapidly, further reducing the child’s opportunities to take the floor. Flores (2003) reports that mestizo middlemen use the same discursive strategy to limit the participation of indigenous sellers in negotiating prices of goods. Despite the woman’s attempts to control the child’s interactional goals, the child asserts his wishes by saying “no” and pointing to the peaches he wants. The woman reacts to his resistance by increasing the volume of her voice, commanding the child to take the peaches and ultimately handing them to him. By increasing the volume of her voice, the woman signals both her annoyance (which possibly has threatening effects on the child) and the end of the exchange, which is actually closed by her forcefully giving the child the heap of peaches he did not want.

These events are examples of the way the mestizo vendors used their discursive resources and physical actions to manipulate in their own favor their interactions with indigenous children. In the previous section, I presented some data that showed the role linguistic practices have in the reproduction of dominance over and discrimination against indigenous peoples. The same conclusion can be reached here. The vendors showed little concern with establishing an interaction between equals with the children, or even in achieving a fair exchange. Quite the contrary, there was no negotiation. As noted by Flores (2003), commercial exchanges have three parts: opening, negotiation, and closing. In the cases presented here, the opening was not initiated by a greeting; rather, the vendor used unmitigated questions to ask about the children’s merchandise, with little regard for the children’s personal valuation in the interaction, or the ability to maintain face. In both cases, negotiation is absent. In the first case, the woman simply indicates to the child that he can take some tamales. In the second example, even though the vendor addressed the child, it was not a real attempt to negotiate, but rather a discursive strategy to achieve the vendor’s goals. During interaction between equals, it is expected that both speakers have the same access to the floor and turn-taking mechanisms, because cooperation is expected. This is not what happened in my observation. The vendor’s rate of speech effectively monopolized the conversation, which limited the child’s opportunities to negotiate. The child’s only attempt to bargain with the vendor was cut short by her speaking loudly to him. The closing of both encounters was not co-constructed either. There were no thanks or leave-takings, and the vendors just handed the children whatever they wanted to, without regard for the children’s wishes or the actual exchange value of their goods. In barter markets, such as Patamban, the price of the merchandise tends to be regulated by the authorities of the market, so people know what to expect when participating in commercial exchanges. However, the teachers who observed their students indicated to me that vendors were taking advantage of the children, since a bundle of poleo springs could be worth up to 10 pesos. At the time this observation took place, the child should have gotten about two kilograms of peaches, instead of a small heap of four or five pieces of fruit.

Most of the commercial exchanges between indigenous children and mestizo vendors corroborate the findings of studies analyzing markets. These exchanges show an interactional pattern and also an institutionalized form of economic exploitation of indigenous individuals. In the case of children, such exploitation is even more marked because, by virtue of their age, they are already subordinated to adults. Youngsters (be they mestizo or indigenous) are treated non-symmetrically by adults, as Placencia (2001) found out in her analysis of service encounters at a hospital in Bolivia. In her study, both young mestizos and indigenous adults received less polite treatment from the staff (as shown by pronoun use, commands, and requests, among others) than adult mestizo clients. But I believe that indigenous children may suffer more abuse because of their age, ethnicity, and limited Spanish proficiency. The latter heavily weighs on the children’s ability to cope with unfavorable situations. When children are able to use their mother tongue, they are better able to negotiate or at least withdraw from exchanges that may hurt them economically. For instance, during our trip to Patamban, three children approached a stand where a mestizo vendor displayed small toys, trinkets, and novelties. One of the children picked up a key-chain and asked, “How much?” The vendor answered the child, who proceeded to talk to his peers in P’urhepecha. They all looked at the key-chain and the child then returned it to the vendor because the price was too high.

The subjugation of indigenous peoples is realized through different verbal and non-verbal mechanisms and across different discourse domains. As Spencer-Oatey (2000, 2002, 2005) has pointed out, speakers use their discursive resources to manage their relationships and to achieve their interactional goals. The communicative events that I have analyzed here showed an unequal relationship, in which children suffered from symbolic violence and economic exploitation that were based on both ethnic and linguistic grounds. These two factors weigh heavily in discrimination against native peoples (Castellanos 2003; Castellanos et al. 2009), and the case presented here is no exception. At the illocutionary level, subjugation was enacted by vendors’ use of commands and unmitigated questions, showing little concern for children’s maintaining face and relegating them to an inferior position during interaction because they were reduced to following orders. Mestizo vendors also demonstrated little interest in indigenous children’s goals and controlled the topic of conversation (discursive domain). Indeed, sellers focused exclusively on obtaining the best exchange value for their merchandise and avoided greetings, leave-takings, and other rapport-enhancement acts that might be expected during interaction between equals. Furthermore, mestizo vendors’ tone in the conversation (stylistic domain) strengthened their dominant position during interaction by manipulating the volume of their voice, which had threatening effects for the children. Finally, mestizo vendors monopolized the conversational mechanism (participation domain) to such an extent that indigenous children had little or no opportunity to take the floor and were forced to resort to non-verbal language (i.e., pointing, nodding). Overall, commercial exchanges between indigenous children and mestizo vendors show that the Patamban market is an environment that has unique dynamics, but it does not escape wider social realities. Vendors knew that these children were indigenous and had limited proficiency in Spanish. In contrast, the vendors were adults and speakers of Spanish. Their age gave them power over children, and their knowledge of Spanish, the lingua franca of the market, provided them with the discursive resources and symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1986) needed to impose their interactional goals without regard for those of the children. Thus, the linguistic practices that take place in the market (re)produce the subjugated situation of indigenous peoples in Mexican society and reinforce the status of Spanish as the language of commerce and power, ultimately contributing to the displacement of indigenous languages in favor of Spanish.

Language and Domination: The Extent of Intercultural Education

The trip to Patamban triggered a conversation among indigenous teachers about the children’s failure to use their Spanish and the best way to prevent their abuse because of this. The main focus of the discussion was the need not only to teach that language to the students, but also to give them the “tools” to better interact with mestizo people in real life. The debate among these indigenous teachers showed that they had assumed that children would be able to interact and negotiate with mestizo speakers if they had a good knowledge of Spanish. That is, they expected pragmatic competence to follow grammatical competence.

The indigenous education setting in Mexico represents a challenge for any teaching approach to second/foreign languages and its pragmatic component because it deals with historically oppressed populations. Most approaches to teaching pragmatics focus on avoiding miscommunication due to pragmatic failure. Such failure is thought to be the result of faulty pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge. Teachers and researchers assume that interactants cooperate to achieve their transactional goals in a socially appropriate way that leads to harmony. Thus, politeness theory⁹ plays an important part in teaching pragmatics (see Bou-Franch and Garcés-Cornejos 2003). However, the market scenario shows that harmony and face wants are not the main concern of people whose primary goal is taking advantage of individuals who are perceived to be socially inferior. On the contrary, speakers strategically manipulate their linguistic and discursive resources to dominate conversation and achieve their economic goals. In this context, the teaching of Spanish takes on a whole new dimension.

Zimmermann (2004) argues that teaching Spanish in indigenous schools should be based on sound methodology, but it also must take into account the subjugated sociolinguistic situation of the native tongues. Intercultural education in Mexico – at least at the discursive level – has emphasized bilingual instruction. However, the way Spanish should be taught is still unclear, since officially there are no pedagogic materials for teaching it in schools. Spanish is not a specific subject in the program of studies, and indigenous teachers receive little training in teaching Spanish as a foreign language. Nevertheless, the Secretariat of Education has specified that the communicative method has to be followed in the classroom and that teaching languages should not “exclusively focus on … phonological or morphosyntactic aspects, because it must contribute to the mastery of diverse verbal and non-verbal uses that individuals commonly use as speakers, listeners, readers and writers of texts of diverse nature and intention” (CGEIB 2006: 80).

The teaching of values is the core of the intercultural program because one of the goals of intercultural education is to create an ethical change that ultimately alters the way in which mainstream society interacts with subordinated groups. Therefore, social conflict and intercultural dialogue have an important role within the curriculum. The objective of intercultural dialogue is the solution of conflicts that emerge from the coexistence of distinct cultural groups whose different interests and ideologies may clash. Dialogue is seen as an opportunity for development, because the resolution of conflicts leads to mutual enrichment and to the confrontation of unfair social structures (CGEIB 2006: 53). At the pedagogical level, children are supposed to develop negotiating skills that allow them to come to agreement without dominating their peers. To foster these negotiation skills, teachers must create an environment in the classroom in which students feel comfortable and free to communicate and cooperate, but above all, it requires that children acquire analytic abilities and knowledge for solving conflicts and achieving solutions. This view of dialogue adopts a non-conflictive or equilibrium approach that presupposes cooperation between the parties in conflict, and overlooks the role of actual economic conditions and dominant ideologies that work to maintain the status quo.¹⁰

The market scenario shows that this approach to intercultural education is insufficient. Children in subordinated conditions do need to acquire specific negotiating skills to deal with situations in which they are being exploited. The indi­genous teachers are aware of the need to prepare children to face the real world. In the following excerpt, the principal of the San Isidro school answers my questions regarding how to better prepare children to interact with mestizo people in view of the market episode:

The teachers’ concerns about how to teach children to interact in real life reflects a common debate in the field of language teaching: how to teach conversation and the best ways to instruct pragmatics. Richards (1990) identifies two common approaches in second-language instruction: (1) The indirect approach, in which conversational competence is achieved by engaging learners in conversational interaction, and (2) the direct approach, in which the skills and strategies necessary for interacting are taught to students. Indigenous teachers’ decision to teach pragmatics indirectly has important consequences for teaching Spanish in indigenous communities. First, it implies that Spanish native speakers should be in close contact with indigenous students so the latter are able to engage in conversation. As I have shown above, when there are mixed populations (i.e., mestizo and indigenous) in schools, native children tend to be ignored or even worse, denied (Bertely 1998; Barriga 2008). Second, native speakers should be aware of the pragmatic component of their language and be able to teach it to indigenous children. Certainly, this would not be the case with mestizo students, or even their teachers, who receive very little training in teaching Spanish. The General Coordination of Intercultural Bilingual Education, which is in charge of implementing the intercultural educational model in Mexico, has suggested some pedagogical strategies for incorporating indigenous children’s linguistic and cultural background in the classroom, but they are focused on raising children’s awareness about respect to diversity (see CGEIB 2006: 78–80).

Even though teachers think fostering oral skills will help children to interact with mestizo people, I argue that the “key” should be in the form of direct, critical education that makes children aware not only of the mechanics of conversation, but also of the ways people from the dominant majority use language to achieve their goals; it should reflect the socio-historical conditions that have created indi­genous peoples’ subordinated position. Critical reflection on these factors has been shown to produce positive effects on individuals’ ethnic identity and even sociolinguistic change (see Gasché 1997; Muñoz Cruz 2006), and would probably contribute to more organized resistance and social action in favor of ethnic minorities. In this context, the pragmatic component of language teaching has an important role to play. It is beyond the scope of this work to specify the characteristics that such pragmatic instruction should have, but I suggest it has to help children cope with situations in which language is deliberately used to exploit or discriminate against them.

Conclusions

Indigenous–mestizo interaction is commonly an asymmetric situation. Traditionally, mestizo people have been dominant because of higher status that is founded on economic and social, but most importantly ideological reasons. The market is a scenario where ethnic conflict is played out through a series of linguistic behaviors that reveal social and ethnic hierarchy and impede communication between equals. The discursive strategies that mestizo speakers used in this study reflect how they position themselves vis-à-vis their indigenous interlocutors in terms of social rank, power, and social distance. These strategies also create unfavorable economic exchanges that contribute to indigenous children’s economic exploitation and subjugation. Under these circumstances, we need to question whether the intercultural education model furthered by Mexican educational authorities is sufficient and appropriate for preparing indigenous children to deal with unfavor­able conditions.

NOTES

1 Enrique Hamel (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Campus Iztapalapa) is the director of the “Indigenous Community and Intercultural Bilingual Education” project. I thank him and the teachers of the San Isidro and Uringuitiro Schools for their generosity and continuous support during the realization of this study.

2 Since the 1990s, the constitutions of countries such as Bolivia, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Mexico, among others, have included provisions about intercultural education and the linguistic and cultural rights of their ethnic minorities (López and Küper 1999; Moya 1997, 1998; Hamel 2008a).

3 Hamel (2008b: 320) reports that grass-roots education initiatives are increasing. These projects are focused on developing bilingual literacy skills in school children.

4 A municipio is an administrative political unity. Its closest equivalent in the US is the county.

5 Although the children from these two schools were less shy than their counterparts from other indigenous educational centers, we did find a group of girls from the San Isidro school who were extraordinarily timid. They would hide behind their shawls and refuse to talk to the researchers and even, at times, to the teachers. When asked about the girls’ behavior, the principal of the school attributed it to their age group. Since they were becoming teenagers, their behavior was expected to change and become more reserved; however, we also observed another group of sixth-graders from the Uringuitiro school, who were much more participative in the classroom and less shy. We attributed this difference to their teacher’s less traditional interactional style and better rapport with his female students.

6 Pronominal address systems are not the same in all Spanish-speaking countries. The second person singular pronoun can be realized as tú or vos. Initially, vos functioned as the pronoun of respect and power, but eventually it extended to familiar situations, thus competing with tú. To solve this problem, vuestra merced (usted) started to be used in asymmetrical situations. In Spain, Mexico, and Lima vos and tú did not merge, and tú took over as the pronoun of familiarity (see Fontanella de Weinberg 1999). In most other Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas, such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, the paradigms for vos and tú remained separated; however, even though tú and vos separated in the nineteenth century in Mexico, the use of vos in the southern part of Mexico (which is the most isolated, with a larger indigenous population) is still active.

7 See, for example, the work of the National Council for the Prevention of Discrimination in Mexico at http://www.conapred.org.mx/.

8 During the visit to the market, a filming crew recorded some of the students’ commercial exchanges. Because the children were familiar with the presence of cameras in their classroom and around the school, I do not think they had any negative effects on the students’ behavior and use of Spanish.

9 Locher and Bousfield (2008) point out that, in fact, most research on pragmatics has been carried out in the area of linguistic politeness, while impoliteness phenomena have been largely ignored.

10 For an extensive review of the functions that ideology plays in the reproduction of the status quo see van Dijk 2003a.

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