By Juana Adcock

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Hubert Matiúwàa (born 1986 in Guerrero, Mexico) is a poet writing in the Mè’phàà language. He has received numerous awards including the 2017 PLIA (Indigenous Literatures of America Prize). He is the author of over ten books, including Xtámbaa/Piel de Tierra (2016), Tsína rí nàyaxà/Cicatriz que te mira (2017), and Mañuwìín/Cordel torcido (2018). His most recent work is El cómo del filosofar de la gente piel (2023), a philosophical investigation into the cultural significance of skin and scars in his culture.

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Juana Adcock (JA): In recent times, in Europe and also during my last trip to India, I have seen many conversations with authors on the importance of visibilising literature in minoritized languages. What is the situation in Mexico and how did you make the decision to write in Me’phàà? How do you see the future of literature in indigenous languages, and what would be necessary for these to continue to flourish in the best possible way?

Hubert Matiúwàa (HM): I started writing after I travelled to Sutiava, Nicaragua, where the Mè’phàà peoples settled, in addition to settling in Guerrero in southern Mexico. In Nicaragua, I saw that although the culture lived on, the language had died. When I returned to Mexico I observed a similar situation was beginning to happen in some of the places where Mè’phàà is still spoken. I decided to write in Mè’phàà because I see my language dying little by little.

The literature in indigenous languages that we know is a literature made from a structure of making poetry within the hegemonic cultures and languages – with our own sensibilities, true, but still it is within a structure that is alien to our culture’s own way of making poetry.

I feel it is important to look towards other writings and their poetics which are present in each culture and are fundamental for the spirit or life force of the community. If we began to make this kind of poetry, our culture would become a lot stronger and it would help prevent the loss of rituals that are hugely important in maintaining equilibrium with the whole. However, the poetry we make from within this hegemonic structure does establish a point of dialogue and it is necessary in the struggle for life. It is necessary to write in every way possible.

JA: You are a bilingual author that self-translates into Spanish, and your translation of the book Jaguar Comissioner, which you wrote not long ago won the prestigious Bellas Artes translation award. This is the first time that this award has been given to a translator who is also the author of the work, and awards for self-translations are not something we see often. What was it like for you to receive the award in that context?

HM: I am very pleased to have won the Bellas Artes Margarita Michelena Literary Translation Award for the book Túngaa Indìí/Comisario Jaguar/ Jaguar Commissioner, published by Gusanos de la Memoria in collaboration with Oralibrura and Ediciones Delirio.  To be xàbò tsí nagùwijngáa (translators) is something we should all learn how to do. A person who translates is in dialogue between two worlds, and dialogue is the basis of respect towards difference.

In Mè’phàà culture, when we speak of having a dialogue we say nò’ne dxàkuun ló’, which comes from the words dxàá (festivity), àkùùn (deity or life spirit). Therefore, when there is dialogue, there it’s a celebration of our life spirit manifested in the word. This award represents for me the openness in recognising that indigenous language writers are the translators of our own words, making words in the skin of two worlds.

Being in a condition of a minoritized culture, racialization, exclusion, invisibilization and the violence of extermination that we suffer within our indigenous cultures, leads us to translate our own thoughts to be in dialogue with hegemonic culture.

The work of a translator is not restricted to translating from one language to another. On the contrary, translating means to be a bridge between two worlds, a connection and the heart of dialogue. To translate is an endeavour that humanizes—it makes us more sensitive and conscious of the respect that should exist between cultures, however different they may seem.

We writers in indigenous languages are translators of our words. Our role is to birth words while living in the skin of two worlds, which is a kind of labour that we do not value and is not valued. In publications, the role of the translator is not taken into account, rendering invisible the political significance of a translation in an indigenous language. A translator is not just the person who translates from one language to the other, but also the one who translates thought.

For example, when someone does not know how to speak for himself, he needs a translator, someone to bring out the words for dialogue. In ritual practice, the palabrero or wordsmith is there to translate the emotions of the people; the wordsmith is the intermediary between the divine and the human, and this dialogue is done through poetry. Poetry is the language of dialogue par excellence. Translation has always existed in cultures, and each language is a world that has its own symbolisms incarnated in the subject that is speaking.

JA: In your book First Rain, which we published here in the UK, the figure of the grandmother is especially important, and I am curious about the way she transmits her knowledge to you. How did you decide to write about her?

HM: It was not a conscious decision to write about my grandmother, it simply happened. After her death, poetry arrived to heal the wound of abscence. In my culture, our elders are the ones who tell us stories and transmit knowledge from one generation to the next. The voice of my grandmother in my poetry became the collective voice of many eras and of everyone; it’s the voice that tells stories, gives advice, speaks of the world vision of my people: she is the voice of the mother tongue.

JA: Your latest book draws on your very extensive research on the philosophy of the skin in Me’phàà culture. Why the skin? And how did you arrive at conceptualizing this aspect of your culture? What kind of sources did you research? Are there codexes in the Me’phaa language, or which are the most ancient written records?

HM: When I started to write El cómo del filosofar de la gente piel (which can be read online in Spanish here ) and to think about the philosophical concepts within the Mè’phàà language, the word “skin” kept appearing again and again, and it caught my attention, like a puzzle that starts putting itself together of its own accord.

Historically, the skin is very important in my culture, which can be seen in the rituals linked to it, and this continues to be present till this day in our everyday speech. Everything that ‘is’, what we ‘do’, and what we ‘carry’, becomes skin. In other words, the skin is like the heart of all that exists. Skin is molded according to the shape of what it contains and what it cares for.

Understanding the skin as the ethical horizon means that we must be in reciprocity with our territory, to protect it so that it in turn protects us. The skin is the being that looks after us all in the world. No matter the species, we all have skin. Faced with the difficult times in which we live, with the relentlessness of war, climate change, and the death of cultures and their languages, it is fundamental to go back to the old teaching of assuming ourselves as the skin of the world, so we may look after it.

In terms of writing, there is the codex of Azoyú, which relates the history of Mè’phàà and other cultures that are established in the Mountain region of the state of Guerrero, but it’s important to remember that there are many forms of writing, which do not necessarily have to be the ones we are familiar with.

Each culture develops its own concept of making memory or writing in time. As for us, we call it tsína’ (scar), and it is written in the ritual ceremonies, in the stories that are transmitted from one generation to the next; written in our everyday speech. Everything that leaves a mark on the skin, we call tsí­na’ (scar): the wound that heals, but never closes—skin’s memory.

JA: How did you decide to found the Gusanos de la Memoria collective, and what are some of the current plans and projects?

HM: The Mountain region of Guerrero is constantly affected by violence, racism, economic marginalization and cultural exclusion, as well as the loss of indigenous languages, which have been replaced by Spanish. Often, the lack of educational opportunities means that children’s creative potential is undervalued. Our culture’s wisdom is being lost, along with the intergenerational transmission of knowledge, memories and stories that speak of the origin, ethics and life of this territory.

We decided to found our collective Gusanos de la Memoria in order to counteract these processes. We work with the children and young people of the Mè’phàà (Tlapaneco), Na Savi (Mixteco) and Nahua communities, facilitating workshops on creative writing, philosophy, photography, video, and other arts, based on indigenous thought and mother tongues. The collective also carries out audiovisual recording and archiving of the region’s oral history and creative endeavours in the native languages of our territories.

Our region has seen widespread injustice and the violation of human rights, but it has also become synonymous with indigenous resistance. In this context, creating safe spaces where children and young people can express their feelings through multiple artistic disciplines is a way of demonstrating to the State and its institutions that it is also possible for communities to self-manage their own material and immaterial assets, as well as their own diverse cultural knowledge and languages. Preserving, bolstering and transmitting the knowledge of our indigenous communities is also a form of resistance.

After many years working within our communities, we are now building an Artist Residency project, aiming to create a bridge between artists and intellectuals, and the communities of the Mountain region of Guerrero, and strengthen our conception of what art is. The “Gusanos de la Memoria” Artist Residency House will be a place to host creators and researchers in different disciplines, who will be able to work with the local communities and teach workshops and exchange knowledge in literature, music, photography, painting, theater, philosophy, history, among other subjects, as well as topics related to identity, language and writing in indigenous languages.

JA: Thank you, Hubert, for taking the time to answer these questions.

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To find out more and support the work of Gusanos de la Memoria, you can visit their GoFundMe page.

Don’t miss the event at Strathclyde University on 21^st of March, with all proceeds going to Gusanos de la Memoria, which will be accessible both in person and online.

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More on Hubert Matiúwàa (by Juana Adcock): Hubert is one of the most distinctive and urgent voices currently working in Mexican poetry. For him, choosing to write in the Mè’phàà language is an act of political resistance: ‘We need to tell the story of the time we are living in, to bear witness and create knowledge for those who are to come.’

Nestled in the mountains of Guerrero, one of the most violent states in Mexico, his people live under the constant threat of drug-related and military violence, people trafficking, and land dispossession from foreign mining companies.

He writes to expose, from the perspective of his culture’s world view, the violent reality of his place of origin, which reflects the rampant inequality of the entire country. ‘In Mexico we are 68 indigenous nations and it is unjust for us to be excluded,’ he says. ‘In the mountain regions there is no access to health or education. You don’t get taught to read your own language. These are the conditions that exclude our indigenous peoples.’

Translating his work has been fascinating and challenging process, because words have a completely different weight in English, with radically different, inbuilt sets of relationships of power, possession, and affect, which reveal a patriarchal-capitalist universe that is completely at odds with that of indigenous cultures. As Hubert explains: ‘Mè’hpàà people say ‘we’ even when referring to others. There is no distinction. Part of the richness of our indigenous peoples is that instead of excluding, we integrate.’

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