Maria Velasco Vasquez
February 21, 2021
The Conversatorios and I
The Ticha Conversatorios (described in Lopez/July 2020 and García Guzmán/15 August 2020) were an opportunity for me to learn and contribute to discussions on the importance of the Zapotec language and history. My grandfather, who spoke Mixe, Yalalag Zapotec, and Chinanteco inspired my interest in languages from the time I was a young child. I never imagined myself to be talking about Zapotec language in the company of participants who were able to speak and write in Zapotec!
My parents were aware that I was attending the Conversatorios and they loved the content we were learning about, but they were also shocked to learn that such a space existed. Here I present a snapshot of my life in Oaxacalifornia, and some thoughts on growing up in a Zapotec speaking household in a neighborhood in Los Angeles called Koreatown.
Resources and references
Ticha: advancing community-engaged digital scholarship Blog Series. This is the tenth in a series of blog posts by participants in the 2019 ACLS Digital Extension Grant project “Ticha: advancing community-engaged digital scholarship” (PI Lillehaugen). It was originally published on the Global SL Blog with Campus Compact at https://compact.org/news/building-a-virtual-zapotec-community-a-perspective-from-koreatown-los-angeles. The entire series of 14 posts, published between February 2020 and September 2021 are republished on Ticha’s blog and linked below:
Post 1: Long awaited beginnings, Lillehaugen
Post 2: Indigenous Voices in Pedagogical Materials: Zapotec Number Systems and Indigenous Epistemologies, Flores-Marcial
Post 3: Undergraduate Uncertainties: Joining Ticha and Rethinking Plans, Kawan-Hemler
Post 4 (Zapotec ver.): Ryien xtenën ra ni nanën steiby quën ra dizh ni mnity, F. Lopez
Post 4: Recovering knowledge through forgotten words, F. Lopez
Post 5: Social Media and Zapotec Language, Kadlecek
Post 6: 2020 Conversatorios on Colonial Zapotec, Guzmán
Post 7: Increasing Access to Knowledge through TEI encoding, Park
Post 8: Lowering Barriers to Access by Raising Understanding, Zarafonetis
Post 9: OaxaCalifornia Virtual Life: Reproducing Zapotec Culture and Language, J. Lopez
Post 10: Building a Virtual Zapotec Community: A Perspective from Koreatown, Los Angeles, Vasquez
Post 11: The Collaborative Creation of Open Educational Materials as a Pedagogical Practice and Act of Resistance, Lillehaugen
Post 12: Lessons from Caseiyneën Saën: Creativity, Resilience, and Collaborative Scholarship, Plumb
Post 13: Estudiantes Indígenas, Multilingües y Virtuales, Molina
Post 14: Rethinking Accessibility through a Summer Internship in Computational Linguistics, Gihlstorf
Credits and contributors
Published: February 21, 2021
Author: Maria Velasco Vasquez
Reformatted by: Dahlia Le Tourneau
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, the Ticha team can be reached at tichaproject@gmail.com.