Lengua Materna

Lengua Materna  is a 5 Day-long celebration of linguistics as a means to exploring Multicultural Literacy identity and the confluent visions of a lifelong advocacy for equity and diversity. This collective art piece was created by polylingual participants. Each student carved a clay piece of the whole work of art (18 ft. of diameter and 2 in. thick) depicting the legacy of their mother tongue to the next generations. One centrally displayed clay piece (inspired by the Sun Stone of the Mexica, circa 900 BC), is a carving of an open mouth with a bifid tongue. The two-part tongue is symbolic of Español (or any other mother tongue) and English, and the call of languages towards the power, responsibility, and destiny of multilingual participants.

The central piece is surrounded by 7 concentric circumferences including the center, each one depicting a thematic aspect of the participants’ legacies.

The legacy themes of the circumferences from the center towards the periphery are: education, institutions, advocacy, culture and activism. These themes are inspired by El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán (Spiritual Plan of Aztlan), a revolutionary youth manifesto advocating self-determination for Mexican Americans, which was adopted by the First National Chicano Liberation Youth Conference in March 1969.