#StoriesThatInspire. Meet 10 activists who use digital media to strengthen and promote Mayan languages in México.

Meeting of activists in Oaxaca. June 2024 / Photo: Julio César López Gómez. Used with permission.
Learn about the inspiring story of one of the grantees selected for the 2024 Mayan Language Digital Activism Fellowship organized by Rising Voices. In this personal essay, the author shares about his experience in activism and the project through which he seeks to promote his native language within his community and online.
I am Manuel de Jesús Pérez Pérez, originally from Paraje Yibeljoj, in the municipality of Chenalhó, Chiapas, Mexico. I currently live in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, a multicultural city where different cultures and languages coexist, including Spanish, Tzotzil and Tzeltal. My mother tongue is Bats’i k’op or Tzotzil.
I work on strengthening my language because I consider it a treasure that holds history, wisdom and knowledge of the world and the universe. Therefore, the personal project I have committed to involves creating materials so that the children of my community can learn their language, through games and digital media, since many of them identify themselves as Tzotzil but no longer speak their language.
My foray into digital activism for Mayan languages began in 2004, when due to work necessity I joined a working group for teaching Tzotzil to preschool and primary school children. However, at that time there were no teaching materials for Indigenous languages, so I started designing coloring materials in Tzotzil and later worked on creating some songs using electronic instruments.
In 2013 I had the opportunity to present the teaching material I had developed in a more interactive and animated way, which was published on a website for the general public to access. During that time I was also able to create simple games and videos to learn phrases, names of fruits, household objects, greetings, among others. This material was only available for one year, since that was the duration of the project.
My interest in taking action in support of my language has also led me to work on audiovisual materials that allow me to address the oral tradition of the Tzotzil people. That is how in 2018 I worked on the short film titled Yalan Bek'et and later created a web app called Jchantik to learn Tzotzil.
Preserving the Tzotzil worldview through video games
Currently, as part of the 2024 Mayan Languages Digital Activism Program, I am working on the creation of a video game “ALO 2.0” that recovers stories from the oral tradition of the Tzotzil people. It will be a platform game where there are two characters: a girl and a boy, who will face evil entities that harm humanity. In the story, the characters will be created based on the worldview of the Tzotzil people. For example, the boy's name is K’ox, which means “small,” and he will later become the sun, and his mother, the moon. Below is a video of the story of K’ox.
The girl's name is Maruch (María). This character was first created by the first bilingual teachers who used puppet theater to entertain children, where they addressed funny topics in Tzotzil with the purpose of teaching and making their audience laugh. There, the teachers had called her Petul Xun. Here, Maruch is a tribute to these first bilingual teachers who made an effort to maintain the use of the Tzotzil language.
One of the evil entities that Maruch and K'ox will face is Yalan Bek'et (fleshy meat), which sheds its flesh to become a skeleton, flies and scares people causing very serious illnesses and even death. K'ox and Maruch will have powers that they will gather along the way thanks to the help of basic foods from the Tzotzil people, such as tortillas, beans, pozole, peppers and other local vegetables. These powers will allow them to confront and defeat the bad guys. The support of Rising Voices will allow me to work on a demo and develop the first levels of the game, but my intention is to be able to continue and develop more characters and levels.
This project will be a collaborative work in which Tzotzil students from the Catishtic elementary school, in the municipality of San Juan Chamula, Chiapas, will participate and will help build some parts of the video game. The purpose of this project is for children to learn about the worldview of the Tzotzil people and to realize their values and wisdom, because for a long time the only thing they have been told is that the Indigenous people are ignorant.
The use of digital tools to transmit knowledge
In my experience with digital activism I have also encountered some challenges. The financial issue is one of them, since this type of project requires equipment, licenses and even transportation costs. In addition, many schools lack computer equipment and the technology necessary for children and young people to begin learning about digital media and create activities that would allow them to strengthen their culture.

Webapp workshop for the creation of educational materials for language teaching. Meeting of activists in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. Manuel de Jesús Pérez Pérez, used with permission.
With this project, I would like educational institutions to see that it is possible to develop materials for teaching and learning Indigenous languages, to promote this type of work and develop their own tools. In addition, I want more children from Indigenous communities to take into account the knowledge of their ancestors, the wisdom of their communities and to understand that each culture is different and important.
One aspect that seems fundamental to me is that children see technology as a way of transmitting their knowledge, without losing their origin or identity. I am interested in encouraging more children, parents and teachers to recognize the importance of language and the opportunity to use technology to learn new things and tools that will be useful to them in the future. The life of Indigenous communities is changing and we must appropriate the new technological and digital tools but without losing our language and values.