The Other Mexicans

By Katya Cengel, National Geographic

On a dusty highway in California’s Central Valley, a black Chevy truck heads toward bright fields of grapes dotting the barren brown earth. It is a warm June day, and the truck’s windows are cracked open to get a little air. Out wafts a rap song: Spanish rhymes interspersed with the occasional English phrase —”hell yes.” Toward the middle of the song a third language beats its way in.

“That is Mixteco,” says the driver, Miguel Villegas.

Mixteco is Villegas’s native language. It is the only language he spoke fluently when he came to the United States sixteen years ago at the age of seven. The trilingual rap song is his own creation and he takes to heart its Spanish language refrain: “Mixteco is a language, not a dialect. It’s the gold that I treasure.”

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[Image courtesy National Geographic]

 

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