Américo Mendoza–Mori, an interdisciplinary scholar trained in literary, linguistic and cultural studies who teaches in Harvard’s Committee on Ethnicity, Migration and Rights, discusses his plans to promote Quechua, as well as Latinx studies at Harvard. He talks about two of his popular courses “Indigeneity and Latinidad” and a course that looks at Latinx representation in the media and arts. That’s something very familiar to him, he observes, since he was a cultural consultant on Dora and the Lost City of Gold.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Americo Mendoza-Mori teaches at Harvard University's Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights, focusing on indigenous and US Latinx Studies. He's promoting the study of Quechua at Harvard.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Welcome.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
Hello. Welcome. Thank you so much for the invitation and the opportunity to talk today.
June Carolyn Erlick:
You designed the Quechua program at the University of Pennsylvania and are promoting the study of the language at Harvard. Why should people learn Quechua? Why does it matter?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
Well, thank you for that question. One approach to seeing the relevance of learning Quechua or learning indigenous languages, as somebody who's doing in research in Latin America, is because it provides an additional channel to understand the complexity and diversity of the region. But even for people who are not focusing their studies in Latin America, it also is another channel to understand that indigenous communities are not a thing of the past, which for a while that was the usual approach, like mostly thinking of ancient civilizations, the Incas, the Aztecs. But right now, in contemporary issues such as climate change, or territorial disputes, or the recognition of different traditions of knowledge, learning about Quechua is one of the many ways to appreciate their contemporary contributions.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Who speaks Quechua today anyway, and where?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
Yeah. Well, another thing is that when people think about Quechua, it might sound... which is true... it's an endangered language by UNESCO. But at the same time, is the most spoken indigenous language family in the Americas. When people hear languages such as maybe Swedish or Danish in Europe, maybe the people who hear about those languages, they might say, "Oh, I don't speak that language, but I know that language is widely spoken and that there is an infrastructure for the speakers, like hospitals, schools, institutions." But that doesn't come necessarily automatically when talking about Quechua, even though Quechua has more speakers than both Swedish and Danish. So then that could bring us a question to why then, despite its number of speakers, we don't know much about Quechua? Not knowing about Quechua is, again, going back to the initial idea is because of the existence of a colonial legacy where it's not just about the numbers, but unfortunately about the importance of the culture and ultimately the speakers.
June Carolyn Erlick:
But who speaks Quechua today and where is it spoken?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
Aha. It is spoken in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, the south of Columbia, the north of Chile and the north of Argentina. But there are also communities in the diaspora, for instance in the United States, in Italy, in Spain. And in the United States particularly, there are important communities in Washington, DC, South Florida, the Miami area, New York City and in Los Angeles, in California.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Tell us a bit about your own background. Are you a native Quechua speaker or did you learn it? How?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
I am from Peru. And growing up in Peru, even Spanish speakers, we do incorporate a lot of words in Quechua. In our own variety of Spanish, we use a lot of words in Quechua. And I didn't grow up speaking Quechua, but when I started learning Quechua, I was surprised of the amount of words that we use in Peruvian Spanish. That's another invitation let's say for people who are from the Andean region, even if they don't automatically can notice or let's say realize how embedded Quechua is in the way we speak Spanish, it's then an invitation to embrace and appreciate the use of the language.
June Carolyn Erlick:
What motivated you? Are you from a community where a lot of Quechua is spoken? What made you want to learn Quechua?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
There were two main reasons. One is that as an undergrad in college, I was studying literature. And back in the day, the notion of literature was mostly or only what was published in a book. And we can say that maybe nowadays that perception has changed. We are in a more interdisciplinary moment. But in that particular moment, just considering only things that were published in books was leaving out a lot of the traditions and knowledge of Peruvian or Andean literature. So in college, I was very interested in oral traditions and I started learning Quechua there.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
But another aspect is that my family is from other parts of Peru. I attended college in Lima, but I was born in another city called Ica. And my mom is from a city in the Amazon called Tarapoto. She's not a Quechua speaker, but in that region there is a variety of Quechua and people use a lot of Quechua words in their everyday interactions. So whenever I would be in touch or visit family, I also learned a lot about local Quechua in that region.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Interesting.
June Carolyn Erlick:
So you were the Andean cultural consultant for the film Dora and the Lost City of Gold. What can you tell us about that experience?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
Yeah. One of the things that I found necessary about, let's say, doing research on Quechua or teaching Quechua, as you mentioned, when I was coordinating the Quechua program at the University of Pennsylvania, was that because of its endangered status and especially not just the status of the language but the discrimination against the speakers, it is important to make Quechua more approachable for different audiences. For instance, in academia, a student, they don't have to necessarily identify as French to take a French literature class or a French film class, right? Or nobody would question why this person is learning French. But learning Quechua always comes with a follow-up question, like why? Right? So in that sense, normalizing the use of the language in different venues is one way to promote and give more exposure to the language. So working for that movie was one of those ways to use the language in a Hollywood movie that people watch across the world. But also particularly in Peru, people really enjoyed, and we got amazing feedback from people because many of them Quechua speakers, they would go and watch the movie and identify the language.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
I do have friends in the city of Cusco, for example, where I used to live as well. And they would tell me that they would go to the theater, watch the Dora movie that has dialogues in Quechua, and they were able to identify the words and see their culture celebrated, not just for the Peruvian audience, but across the world.
June Carolyn Erlick:
So what do you think that film did for Latinx identity?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
So I would say there are different levels because the main actor, Isabela Merced Moner, the person who was cast as Dora the Explorer, she is Peruvian American. So even though she was not casted because of that... And just a little bit of context, Dora is this cartoon character from Nickelodeon in the early 2000s who always had a task of figuring out something, or discovering, exploring a challenge. And she was very smart. And at the end, she's able to figure out things. And now in this movie, she's a teenager in a live-action setting. And then you have Isabela Merced who is a Peruvian American and is proud of her heritage, but she's also from the United States and is offering a more, let's say, hemispherical understanding of Latinidad. And also from a way that celebrates [inaudible 00:09:05] at some point. And in some interviews, Isabela Merced even said that she would also call her family because she had some side of her family that speaks Quechua, so that was an opportunity to bond with that side of the family to celebrate that aspect.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
So I would say that for the Latinx community, one of the goals of that movie was to say, indigeneity is also part of the conversation. And through that movie, not just through this specific movie, but this movie can contribute to generate contemporary references and context that people can look and relate to.
June Carolyn Erlick:
One of the things that really fascinated me in reading about you is that Dora is not the only cultural icon you've recently discussed. I found an article in the New York Times regarding urban Andean music specifically called rap Andino or Inca trap as representing Quechua speakers as integral to their country's future. Can you tell us a bit about this music and what its reception has been outside of Peru? And do you sing it?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
Following up with this idea that indigenous cultures and therefore their cultural productions are just not a thing of the past, then we do have movies like Dora and the Lost City of Gold that highlight Quechua knowledge, for example the use of the knowledge based on like the stars. The same way as the West has their own constellations, in the Andeans, there is a Llama constellation and snake or [Quechua 00:10:47] in Quechua constellations. Things that even as somebody who went to K-12, like elementary, middle school in Peru, I wasn't taught that. I had to learn that while in college. So having a movie that... Of course, it's not a documentary, but still has the opportunity to display that. It's an opportunity to challenge that perception of a rigid or just a thing of the past.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
The same we could say about music. Of course, there is traditional Andean music and it's beautiful. And I would say that's a very important part of Andean identity. At the same time, there are movements by young millennials, zillenials that are also saying, "We want to do other either pop or rap or trap rhythms that connect with new generations." These are generations that are creating content in social media in Quechua. And it's also, again, a way to reclaim the language because many of these musicians were born in urban spaces, such as Ranata Flores, who was born in the city of Ayacucho. And she herself is not a Quechua speaker because there was a period of violence in Peru where Quechua speakers were targeted. So it's also an opportunity to have those difficult conversations. But now the youth are willing to reclaim their language of their parents or grandparents.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
The same happens with another hiphop artist called Liberato Kani. He was born in Peru's capital in Lima, and he decided to reclaim the language of his family as well. And by doing that, again, that's a positive message both for Quechua speakers that they can see their language and heritage show at different spaces, not restricted to just one particular genre, but also for young people who don't speak the language and they might feel even ashamed because of like, "Oh, I would like to be this part of my identity, but I don't speak the language." But then it's a reminder that there was a reason why this happened, this violence that happened. And therefore, now there's this other opportunity to do that.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
I actually really like it, regarding the question about music, I actually created for my students a Spotify playlist of music in Quechua. So if anyone wants to hear, the name is Runasimipi: Musica en Quechua. That's the name of the playlist. Runasimipi literally means in Quechua actually, because Runasimi is the name of Quechua in Quechua.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Do you sing, Americo?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
Oh, well, not professionally. Just because I like music.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Could you give us just a little bit of a song?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
Ooh, let me see. I'm going to recall this song from Liberato Kani. He is this Quechua rapper and he says... And my apologies to Liberato because I am not a professional singer. But he's rapping and he says [Quechua 00:14:02]. So he is basically saying here that now here [Quechua 00:14:23] like here in these places, I am walking, and that I'm singing, and that I am speaking. And that I'm leaving my place, my house. This song, this hip hop rap is both in Quechua and Spanish.
June Carolyn Erlick:
You're the co-founder of the Quechua Alliance, could you tell us a bit about that group and when it plans to meet next?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
Yes, I do research on Quechua and I think that's one way to contribute, collaborate to these conversation of seeing Quechua as a contemporary issue or indigenous issues in general at large as a contemporary issue. But we are also aware that sometimes that not might be accessible to different audiences. And I think there's a responsibility to create eight or generate or facilitate spaces where we can learn from Quechua speakers and from different ages, regardless of formal credentials that sometimes academic spaces require. So the Quechua Alliance is this community annual gathering, where we invite Quechua speakers, Quechua students or people who just want to reclaim or explore their Andean identity. And of course, just anyone who wants to participate. People don't have to necessarily identify as Andean, or Peruvian, or Ecuadorian, or Bolivian to join, but not like an academic conference. But it's more a gathering where there is a display of initiatives in the language.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
For example, we do have usually a moment of, we call it a Quechua innovation fair. It's kind of like a science fair moment where people get to know new projects related to the language from documentaries, for example. We have short films that are showed in Quechua or a new publication, somebody need a new dictionary. Or there are, in the United States, organizations that teach Quechua. So they come and share an activity that they've been using to teach the language. It could be a game, or an activity, or a song they create. That's what the Quechua Alliance do. And we always incorporate music as well, because that's another way on how communities build up. And we also like to... Let's say for this podcast is for an academic audience. I would like to say that we see dancing as part of... In academia, people call an indigenous knowledge system, because music tells stories and is again a way where the community empower themselves.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
And we also give awards, we recognize people from the community every year that we have hosted the Quechua Alliance. We have given an award to people who have been working, promoting Quechua in the United States. We mostly work in the U.S. with the U.S. community, because we also acknowledge there's people who have been doing this at their own house. For example, in 2018, we gave the award to Elva Ambia, who she's a lady from both Huancavelica and Apurimac. And she has been living for 50 years in Brooklyn, New York. And one day after she retired, she was like, I would like to go to check on my public library if there are any books in my language in Quechua. And she found out that there was none. And then she decided, well, no, then I should bring books and actually I should teach the language.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
And then she started a Quechua community, which is now called the Quechua Collective of New York, where she teaches classes. She organizes cultural nights and which can go from playing bingo in Quechua to having a cooking gathering. So we also understand that academia has those platforms and we should also use them to recognize that work. So Quechua Alliance is this event that encompasses different activities and happens once a year.
June Carolyn Erlick:
And what happened during the pandemic?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
Well, during the pandemic, in 2020, we hosted a virtual event and that was a great opportunity to invite people from across the hemisphere because we mostly have been doing this event for the U.S. community just for logistic reasons. But now that we were able to do it online, first we were like how is this going to work? Because a lot of the content, the dancing, the interaction, those moments where people are running to each other are key for this community event. But we were able to learn then from initiatives of Quechua in Buenos Aires, or Quechua in Madrid, Quechua in Madrid, Quechua in Ecuador. So it's been a nice experience, but we're hoping to go back to in-person gathering soon as well.
June Carolyn Erlick:
You hope to host the meeting at Harvard?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
Yes, that's one of the goals and we're happy that there's an openness for different organizations, including DRCLAS, to find a way to make it visible because that's another thing, it's a collaboration between academic spaces and the community. And the more we hear and learn from the community, the more as institutions we can engage with contemporary conversations.
June Carolyn Erlick:
You're teaching a seminar on indigeneity in Latinidad. Could you tell us a bit about that course?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
Yes. So this course is part of EMR, Ethnicity, Migration, Rights, where I work. We are trying to develop curricula for Latinx studies and also global indigeneity. In my case, because of the research I do, in connection with Latinx studies as well. So this seminar is a way to provide let's say an approach to indigenous migrant communities in the United States. Because the same way as, let's say, without being a researcher, I could tell that there's an Irish community in Boston or there's an Italian community in New York, right? But can we say where is the Maya community in the United States or where is the Quechua community in the United States? We need more conversations about that as well. So this class is aiming to do two things. First, to provide an intro to different traditions of indigenous knowledge. And that's what we, in the curricula and the syllabus, we incorporate works from different indigenous scholars from Bolivia, from the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, from the Maori, because we are also understand that indigeneity as a concept right now is a global collaboration.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
And then after doing that, we are focusing on to learn about the specific communities in the United States. For example, there is one, the Zapotec community in the West Coast of the United States. They have coined a particular name, they call it Oaxacalifornia. So learning about Oaxacalifornia, learning about Mayan communities in Florida, or learning about Quechua speakers in the New York City area and also learning and how many of those practices are rooted in traditions of knowledge. Or for example, many people from Mexican descent, they grew up around Aztec dances. So we are also exploring many practices that are part of the Latinx identity, but we don't necessarily see them as connected with indigenous traditions.
June Carolyn Erlick:
You're also teaching another course that involves a lot of culture. Could you tell us about that?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
So this semester I am teaching a class on Latinx representation in media, film and pop culture. It's basically a way to analyze how in the United States, consumer citizenship shapes a lot of our conversations of identity. And by saying consumer citizenship, maybe for the U.S. audience, this is a very common concept, but is this notion that everything that we consume through media, with our purchases or what we don't consume, right? People do boycott for example, it all influence the political and social environment. And therefore, if we understand that then media platforms are part of those dynamics, then there's the need of reclaiming more diversity within media, or gaining spaces or narratives about the representation of Latinidad. There has been a legacy of stereotypes, mostly of them negative, about Latinos, Latinx in the United States as either dangerous or submissive.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
And therefore, the class is hoping to first provide a historical context on how Latinidad that has been portrayed in movies and shows. And we're including also pop culture because social media now is one of the most important channels where people get their information. And then learning how there are different agents who are trying to get more agency or diversify the industry.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Can you give us a couple of examples of this diversification?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
Sure.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
For example, in the early 20th century, just having let's say Spanish language newspapers was something groundbreaking because newspapers need ads. So the existence of a newspaper showed that there was a good amount of businesses that they were willing to have a publication. And therefore, they were creating a sense of community. And in places like Los Angeles, for example, the newspapers were this spaces where people were able to share their business, but also their cultural activities and even their political organizations when they were dealing with discrimination or even eviction from spaces. And at every single moment of history, people had some degree of agency, regardless of the context. For example, in that case, it was quite limited specific for let's say a neighborhood or space.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
If we think of Hollywood, we were recently talking about Yma Sumac, this Peruvian actress who made several movies with Paramount Pictures in the '50s. And she also was a very famous singer. And until now, she's the only Peruvian that has a star in the Hall of Fame in Hollywood. But at the same time, her maneuvering was limited. She was mostly asked to perform as an exotic person, like either Polynesian or Inca princess. But at the same time, we think of within that range how much agency people had. And now, to contemporary spaces, we also have Latinx own media, or Latinx own channels, or let's say movies that are written or directed by Latinx individuals as well. Where back in the day, they had to navigate more a structure. They were just only, let's say, temporary [inaudible 00:25:56] or didn't have much of a say.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
And that's why we are finishing this class with a new movie that came in a few months ago called Encanto that came in late 2021. So we're going from these all the way stereotypes from the media to spaces where we have different Latinx people involved in the production. And of course, that also comes with challenges. But yes, we're going from the beginnings to Encanto, this Disney movie from 2021.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Speaking of challenges, what's next for you?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
One of the things I used to do at my previous job was teaching Quechua and facilitating initiatives on the language, because it's not just about teaching the language, but also then inviting more indigenous scholars or people who work on that field, so we can have a community, a vibrant community of students and scholars. So next semester on fall 2022, I'm hoping to teach a seminar on Quechua language revitalization and frame this within the conversation of global indigeneity. So it can be a chance to both learn the language because it will have a language learning component, but the other part of the class will be about language reclamation and global indigenous issues.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
That will allows us to have conversations about, for example, the role of indigenous groups at United Nations or the currently UN Decade of Indigenous Languages that is focusing on policy making, or raising awareness, or let's say making sure that indigenous language speakers have full citizenship or full rights within their own countries or when they are migrating. For example in the United States, there are many indigenous language speakers from Central America that speak Maya Kʼiche, Kaqchikel, or we also have Nahuatl speakers from Mexico, and so on.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
That's the class that I'm hoping to teach next semester, but that we also hope that we can organize events and activities because we also understand that not everybody might be able to take the class. But we want to make this part of the academic experience of the students. By visiting some of the student organizations, I've been learning that there is an increasing interest in indigenous languages and indigenous cultures. Some of the students told me that they have been taking advantage of the opportunities at Harvard, for example, from DRCLAS, from the Center for Latin American Studies, to use stipends to learn an indigenous language. And some of them didn't know about that opportunity and now they want to sign up. So I think that it is not just a class, but it's how we can create a network at the university, so people can see this as a viable pathway of a study and learning.
June Carolyn Erlick:
That's great.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you would like to add here?
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
I would like to mention that at EMR, we also have the Latinx studies working group. And from there, we are also hoping to host events and kind of be this a space where students or other faculty can reach out to promote or raise awareness more on Latinx studies. We would like to have a better sense of the people at the university that are working on Latinx studies and not necessarily from... I mean, of course social science and humanities, but also from STEM or medicine, because the more holistic approach we can get, then a more solid community as well.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
Last semester, for example, I taught a seminar on COVID inequality and the Latinx community. And for that seminar, we invited a faculty from the med school who work on Latinx population. And I think they would love to be more involved. We hope to collaborate, to have more spaces so people can get together. And I think everybody's doing their part, right? I mean, we're glad that DRCLAS is always hosting activities as well. And through the Latinx studies working group, we want to do that focusing on do a Latinx initiatives.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Thank you very much.
June Carolyn Erlick:
You've been listening to Americo Mendoza-Mori. He teaches at Harvard University's Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights, focusing on indigenous and U.S. Latinx Studies. He's also promoting the study of Quechua at Harvard.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Thank you for coming.
Americo Mendoza-Mori:
Thank you very much.