The Ancestral Cry in Every Beat
The story of Juan Santiago Téllez is an epic tale of resistance and redemption. As a child, his own parents, in a heartbreaking act of love and fear, forbade him to speak Totonaco. It was a shield forged with the tears of generations, a protection against the cruel discrimination that has persecuted the native peoples of Mexico for centuries. But in the heart of that young man, now known as Juan Sant, a flame of defiance burned. “I wanted to break with that,” he declares, his voice charged with a passion that resonates like a war drum. From the town of El Terrero, in Pantepec, Puebla, this modern bard transforms pain into art, marginalization into powerful verses. “I transform discrimination into art so that our people continue speaking Totonac,” he proclaims, turning each stanza into an act of stubborn rebellion against extinction.
A Battle Against Imposed Silence
Today, Juan Sant stands with unwavering pride. Totonaco, a language that vibrates in the states of Puebla and Veracruz with its approximately 250,000 speakers, is now its weapon and its banner. Although it is recognized as a national language, the artist accuses a glaring absence of genuine official policies to preserve it. Their music, therefore, is not simple entertainment; It is an act of bravery in the face of state apathy. He began his journey in rap in 2004, but the crucial turn, the moment of enlightenment, came years later when he decided to intertwine the words of his ancestors with the urgent beats of the present. “I decided to rap because I love my culture,” he confesses, feeling the weight of a sacred mission. “The same people who listen to me, the people of my community, put on my shoulders the commitment to revitalize these native languages that are increasingly spoken less.”
Mexico, a territory of overwhelming linguistic wealth, is home to 68 indigenous languages considered national, placing it among the ten nations with the greatest linguistic diversity in the world. Seven million people speak a vernacular language, and more than 25 million recognize themselves as indigenous. The giants are Nahuatl, with 1.6 million speakers, and Mayan, with 860,000. However, this vastness is under constant threat. Nicolás Hernández, music producer and anthropologist with the soul of a cultural warrior, says that the initiatives to safeguard them are squalid, insufficient. “In some government institutions, projects are being carried out that try to rescue and revitalize native languages. However, these strategies are not very well adapted or do not reach the beneficiaries,” he criticizes with the lucidity of someone fighting an uphill battle.
Black Mind’s Musical Trench
More than a decade ago, Hernández founded Mente Negra, a music production company that has become a beacon of hope for indigenous artists. This visionary has collaborated with 20 native rappers and has produced six albums in Totonaco, Mazatec, Mixe, Mazahua, Nahuatl and Mayan. His work is titanic: he provides musical accompaniment, records songs and videos, and faces a market that looks with disdain on what it classifies as a minority. “We face large distributors, which makes it difficult to spread original rap. As an independent project, sometimes we have to do 10 or 15 times more activities,” he explains, revealing a struggle where self-management is the only way. Each artist, each member, contributes their own in an act of collective faith to generate content that challenges oblivion.
But music, with its overwhelming power, makes its way. Hernández witnesses a profound cultural transformation within the communities. “The incorporation of non-traditional music in the towns has been very widely accepted,” he observes. Adults and young people embrace these new formats that, far from eroding, revitalize. This monumental effort was also immortalized in the book Musical Creation in Native Languages, a chronicle of this crusade to preserve the sound identity of Mexico.
The Protest Rap That Makes the City Tremble
On a cloudy August morning, the heart of Mexico City witnessed an epic duel. Juan Sant and his colleague Gilberto Navor, a titan of rap in mazahua, met at the Monument to the Revolution. Inspired by the movement that was born in the Bronx and Harlem, these modern champions adapted the genre to become their war song. Navor, whose language is spoken by some 136,000 people, channels his rage into incendiary protest rap. “I touch on issues of racism, classism, discrimination, lack of opportunities,” he declares, his voice an echo of the frustration of millions. “About how indigenous musicians are not taken into account very much, because we do not have the opportunities to appear on the radio, television… That is the protest I make in my rap.”
While they were rapping, the curious approached, their faces expressing eloquent amazement, unable to decipher the words but hypnotized by the force of the message. Many, including foreigners, were unaware that they were facing living, vibrant languages, which millions of Mexicans speak even within that same megalopolis. For Navor, the road has been full of obstacles. “As Mazahuas, we do not have musical materials, because our culture is not very musical,” he explains, highlighting the innovation of his proposal. He has encountered the wall of rejection due to his lyrics full of necessary rebellion, but he does not give in. Each verse is one more step in the fight to be heard, to exist, to not allow their voices to fade into silence.
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