Culture
The Indigenous Voice of Mexico City
Slowly, native culture seems to be emerging from the shadows.
Fifty-five indigenous languages are spoken in Mexico City today, yet this population remains largely invisible.
Though Mexico City’s celebrated National Museum of Anthropology is dedicated to native Mesoamerican culture, living indigenous culture is banished to its margins. Even the most basic institutions of communal identity are absent in the city. There is not so much as a single community center in Mexico City for its 785,000 indigenous inhabitants. “I would like to build a Wixáritari temple,” says Hilario López Bautista, a Wixáritari artisan from the mountains of the state of Jalisco. “How can it be that all these foreign religions have temples and we who are from here don’t have a single church?”