Mixtecos losing their native tongue in a foreign land

This story shows how quickly immigrants lose their native languages and learn English. DP

BY LOUIS MEDINA, Californian staff writer
Bakersfield.com: Basilio Guzman said he has sometimes wished there were a category other than "Hispanic" to define him ethnically -- even though the 22-year-old is Mexican.

And although illiteracy, poverty and back-breaking farm work have been the norm for his family and his people for generations, the east Bakersfield resident is a trilingual high school graduate who has a steady full-time job at the Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream plant on District Boulevard in southwest Bakersfield.

Guzman owns a laptop computer, a digital video camera, and a car with a sound system, DVD player and three video screens.

His is the success story of an assimilated immigrant who had already assimilated once to the dominant culture of Mexico before coming to the United States.

Guzman is Mixteco, a member of an indigenous people from the Mexican state of Oaxaca who are traditionally subsistence farmers who speak their own language, also called Mixteco.

"It was the first language I learned," Guzman said. Then came Spanish when he started school in Mexico, and finally English when he immigrated to Bakersfield at age 8 with parents Avelino and Margarita, older sister Catalina, and younger brothers Alfredo, Luis and Javier.
Be sure to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.