A Tzotzil Grammar

ethno-linguistic research conducted in that region and the dozens of investigators that

have surrounded and invaded the indigenous communities of the highlands, there is very

little useful and accessible material related to problems of interest to the subject of those

scientific investigations‹that is to say, the indigenous people themselves.

The lack of a practical grammar for Tzotzil, mother tongue of more than one-hundred

thousand people in Chiapas, written in Spanish, is at once a symptom and a cause of the

scorn and ignorance with which this indigenous language is viewed by many

investigators and bureaucrats. The pedagogical and linguistic materials currently in

existence are almost all of foreign origin (as are the few non-indigenous individuals that

have more than a merchant's mastery of Tzotzil).