Demographic Profile

When modern linguistic and ethnographic studies began in Chiapas, in the late 19650s and early 1960s, a vision shared by almost all researchers held that language, territory, culture, and identity in Indian Chiapas were roughly coextensive: a Zinacantec, for example, was a person who spoke the local Zinacantec dialect of Tzotzil, who lived in the geographic confines of the township of Zinacantán, who participated in the central institutions of Zinacantec society (the system of religious offices, for example, or the practice of typical Zinacantec occupations such as milpa farming, transport, flower cultivation and selling), and who dressed in distinctive hand woven Zinacantec clothes.  This same vision persists today in institutionalized and bureaucratic ideas about etnias or “ethnic groups,” usually construed on linguistic grounds.  On such a view it is largely the unifying power of a “language: which gives its corresponding “ethnic group” its supposed identity and cohesion.  We may begin to deconstruct this traditional model with a series of observations.  First, a map of the modern day locales where speakers of different Indian languages are reported to live shows that such speakers are not limited to townships “traditionally” considered to be “Indian.”  In fact, in the case of Tzotzil, now the most widely spoken Indian language in Chiapas with officially almost 300 thousand speakers of five years of age or older in Mexico, of whom around 291 thousand live in the state of Chiapas, the four Chiapas townships with the largest absolute numbers of Tzotzil speakers include three traditionally “Indian” communities, Chamula, Zinacantán, and Chenalhó, but in second place is the central ladino or non-Indian town of San Cristóbal de las Casas.  Figure 1 shows the absolute number of Tzotzil speakers in the townships traditionally thought of as “Tzotzil communities,” and all those other townships with comparable or greater numbers of Tzotzil speakers; non “Indian” communities on the resulting list includes not only San Cristóbal but also the state capital, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, as well as two other communities normally thought of as non-Indian towns: Ocotzocuautla and Teopisca. 

Fig. 1. Municipios with the largest numbers of Tzotzil speakers, 2000. (Source: INEGI.)

Figures 2 and 3 show comparable population distributions for Tseltal and Chol, with total official populations of speakers 5 years of age and older at around 280 thousand for Tseltal, and over 140 thousand for Chol.  In the case of Tseltal, in addition to such “traditionally” Tseltal communities as Cancuc, Tenejapa, Oxchuc, Cancuc, and Chilón, the greatest number of speakers are spread across the immense municipio of Ocosingo, and once again, a large number of speakers (mostly bilingual, according to the census) live in San Cristóbal.  There are also large proportions of speakers of Tseltal in communities ordinarily thought of as Tzotzil townships—Pantelhó, Huistán, and Venustiano Carranza, for example—and in others normally thought of as Chol townships, such as Palenque and Tila (where the Tzeltal community of Petalcingo is administratively located).

Fig. 2.  Municipios with large numbers of Tseltal speakers, 2000. (Source, INEGI.)

The centers of large populations of Chol speakers continue to be the “traditional” townships of Tila, Salto de Agua, Palenque, and Tumbalá, although there appear significant pockets of Chol speakers in Ocosingo, Huitiupán, and Yajalón. 

Fig. 3.  Municipios with large numbers of Chol speakers, 2000. (Source, INEGI.)

Two obvious conclusions can be drawn from the census statistics: (1) an important proportion of the Tzotzil, Tseltal, and Chol “ethnic groups” now lives in townships traditionally considered “not Indian”; and (2) there are many communities (or at least political entities at the level of municipio or township) where more than one Indian language is spoken by significant numbers of people.  Specifically, there are communities with a large number of speakers of both Tzotzil and Tseltal, and others with significant populations of speakers of both Tseltal and Chol.