0:01

Had and spoke audio

0:03

collective. Nina

0:08

Pazuky grew up in Southern California. She

0:10

studied Spanish at high school. Figured it

0:13

would be a useful language to learn in a part of the U.S. where

0:16

there are so many Spanish speakers. In

0:19

her 20s, she moved away from California, but

0:22

she still goes back regularly to see family

0:24

and friends. And over

0:26

the years, she's become more aware

0:28

of Mexicans and Central Americans in

0:30

California who don't speak Spanish.

0:33

At least not as their first language. Like

0:36

the people Nina went to see a few

0:38

years ago at a radio station 50

0:41

miles up the coast from L.A. I

0:43

was listening to this NPR thing where

0:45

it's like Sounds of Los Angeles

0:47

and I was like, hey, we should do a Sounds of

0:50

Oxnard. This is Carlos

0:52

Jimenez. He helped launch a

0:54

brand new community radio station in Oxnard,

0:56

California, radio in Dejina. All

1:00

of the DJs are volunteers, and

1:02

many of them speak indigenous Mexican

1:04

languages. One DJ, Jesus

1:06

Noyola, has a show called El Profe

1:09

y La Poecia, the

1:11

professor and the poetry. Jesus ended up

1:13

recording the dishwashing machines at his job. He said

1:15

he wanted to record it, he ran to his

1:17

car, got the record, and

1:20

turned it on and was recording the sound. But

1:23

I think it's the experience of a lot

1:25

of immigrants, a lot of people who work

1:27

multiple jobs. Behind

1:30

the distracting sounds of the kitchen, he says,

1:33

is a lot of stress. So

1:39

that's what Oxnard sounds became for

1:41

us. From

1:56

Quiet Juice and the Linguistic Society of

1:58

America, this is Subtitling. stories

2:00

about languages and the people

2:02

who speak them. I'm Patrick

2:05

Cox and in this episode

2:07

the story about how these

2:09

indigenous Mexican languages, Miztec, Tricky,

2:11

Zapotec and others, how these

2:13

languages have become common in

2:15

parts of California and

2:17

how that has given rise to a

2:19

small industry of interpreters who

2:22

help the people who speak these

2:24

languages live their lives. I

2:36

recently visited Natividad Hospital in Salinas,

2:38

California on the Central Coast. Folks

2:41

from Salinas like to remind you that

2:43

their valley is quote, be salad bowl

2:46

of the world. Not that

2:48

you can forget. Everywhere you

2:50

look, everywhere. There's fields growing

2:53

lettuce, strawberries, broccoli, fields and

2:55

fields even Natividad the hospital

2:57

is surrounded by fields. Where

3:00

are we going? We're

3:02

going to IMIU, maternal infant

3:04

unit. Okay.

3:08

So are you going to be

3:10

interpreting? Yeah, probably me or Sergio.

3:14

Israel Jesus is 20 years old.

3:16

He's a medical interpreter at Natividad.

3:19

His co-workers, the other interpreters, they

3:21

call Israel el Bebe. And

3:24

despite his very adult, crisp blue blazer

3:26

and his dress shoes, they're very nice.

3:29

He does have this kind of baby

3:31

face, the sweet toothy grin. He has

3:33

dimples. Fittingly today, el

3:36

Bebe is interpreting for two new

3:38

parents and their baby daughter. Israel

3:41

is trilingual. He speaks English, Spanish and

3:43

Trichy. That's

3:55

what you were hearing right there. It's a native

3:57

Mexican language spoken in parts of the world.

4:00

rural mountainous state of Oaxaca.

4:03

Nifriqui is a tonal language, a

4:05

pre-Columbian language. It's about as

4:07

related Spanish as, I don't know, say

4:09

English is to Mandarin, and

4:11

it's one of a number of indigenous

4:14

Mexican languages that are being spoken here

4:16

in California. Israel

4:22

is soft-spoken. He mumbles a

4:24

bit. It's a trait I've been told

4:26

that many Nifriqui people share.

4:29

Several years ago, you'd never have

4:31

found a tricky interpreter like Israel

4:34

roaming the hospital's corridors. In

4:36

fact, you would have been lucky to find a

4:38

certified Spanish language interpreter at

4:41

Natividad. This was a problem,

4:43

a problem that became clear

4:45

to Linda Ford when she became the

4:48

CEO of the Hospital Foundation nearly a

4:50

decade ago. I first went

4:52

into the emergency department and asked one

4:54

of the doctors, is

4:56

there anything you need here in this emergency

4:58

department? And he was so frustrated and

5:00

just said, oh my goodness, I can't talk

5:02

to my patients. I cannot talk to my

5:05

patients. Linda found that it wasn't just communicating

5:07

Spanish that was an issue. Four

5:09

of the most commonly spoken languages of

5:12

patients coming to the hospital were

5:14

native Mexican languages. And within those

5:16

four native Mexican languages, there were

5:19

dozens of variants. And

5:21

it was just amazing because I thought,

5:23

well, I'll just hire indigenous interpreters, so

5:25

let me find an agency that can

5:27

provide interpreters. And I Googled

5:29

indigenous languages to try to find interpreters

5:32

and nothing came up on the Google.

5:34

Maybe they were interpreters in Australia,

5:38

but nothing else. So what Linda thought would

5:40

be just a minor problem to fix turned

5:43

into something much, much bigger.

5:51

Two of the patients that Natividad doctors couldn't

5:53

talk to were Israel's parents

5:56

in 2010, long before

5:59

he was an intern. interpreter. His mom

6:01

brought his baby sister to the

6:03

hospital. She was sick with a fever. His

6:06

mom, who only speaks trache and a little

6:08

bit of Spanish, went to the

6:10

emergency room, unable to

6:12

communicate just how sick her daughter was.

6:15

They were in the hospital like

6:17

around eight hours waiting. And

6:20

the baby had a fever and

6:23

really high fever. And then at

6:25

that time, the doctors didn't know

6:27

what to do. And

6:29

then they put a tube on it and

6:31

a cable. And one of the tubes they

6:33

put in the mouth caused her in her

6:36

heart. The cable crossed

6:38

her heart and his little sister

6:40

died. And all

6:43

of this occurred while Israel's mom had

6:45

little grasp of what was going

6:47

on. So that's why, for my

6:49

little sister, that's why he gave a... interpreter.

6:52

For his sister, he said. That

6:54

is why he became an interpreter. Of

7:04

course, it would be years before Linda Ford would

7:06

meet Israel. And in those initial

7:08

years when she was trying to figure out how

7:10

do I deal with this problem, how do I

7:12

bridge the gap between doctors and

7:15

their patients, her search led

7:17

her to Victor Sosa. I

7:19

remember the first month I was here,

7:21

I did 300 interpretations just myself. And

7:24

that was it. That was the

7:26

whole department. You're like running around the hospital. Victor

7:29

is a certified Spanish language medical

7:31

and court interpreter. And when he

7:33

came to Natividad six years ago,

7:35

he began developing a program to

7:37

train Spanish speaking staff members around

7:40

the hospital to aid in interpretation.

7:43

And in setting up the

7:45

Spanish interpreting program, he discovered

7:47

something incredible. There were already

7:49

indigenous language interpreters at the

7:51

hospital. Just no

7:53

one saw them that way. And

8:00

then Angelica came along. She

8:02

had been here for years working in the field and

8:05

she had helped a lot of individuals.

8:08

She's a very strong woman. You'll meet her. Strong

8:12

is an understatement for Angelica

8:14

Ycido. For 20 years

8:16

Angelica, who speaks Spanish and

8:19

another Mexican language called Nístico,

8:22

she's been making the rounds in the

8:24

hospital and the courts and the jails

8:27

all over Salinas Valley, informally interpreting

8:29

for anyone in her community that

8:31

needed help. She would

8:33

provide interpretation on

8:36

the spot, come in from

8:38

the field, sometimes

8:40

out in the field, and

8:42

take some calls. I

8:44

interpret where I worked in the field, she told

8:46

me. I

8:50

put the telephone beneath the bandana that was

8:53

covering my face and I keep

8:55

working like it was nothing. I'd

8:57

never sit, walking, interpreting while

8:59

I was doing everything like washing the

9:01

lettuce, cutting the lettuce, or the broccoli,

9:03

or whatever it was, all

9:06

the while interpreting and working in

9:08

the field. Victor

9:16

and Linda realized they had this

9:18

great untapped resource right

9:20

there in the hospital. All these bilingual

9:22

and trilingual folks like Angelica, already

9:25

informally interpreting for their relatives and their

9:28

friends, what if they

9:30

could hire and train them? But

9:33

they needed the money to do that and the

9:35

obvious place to go... to the

9:37

field. Huge

9:49

in Toronto, you go to any restaurant in Toronto

9:51

and you ask them, who's Rapinna your

9:54

broccoli Rob you got? If you

9:56

hate broccoli, you have John D'Arrigo's family

9:58

to blame. there on a

10:00

tour and I just you know they knew

10:02

who I was. You go are

10:04

you kidding? There's only one broccoli

10:06

broth. That's Andy Boy. That's

10:09

what the chef told me. John's

10:11

father is Andy Boy

10:13

and his grandfather, an Italian immigrant,

10:16

is often credited with introducing broccoli to

10:18

the United States in the 1920s.

10:21

He missed those little green trees from back

10:24

home and he asked his relatives back in

10:26

southern Italy to send him some seeds and

10:29

so they did and now John runs the family

10:31

farm. Yeah

10:34

it's a giant refrigerator. We try to keep

10:36

this around 33 degrees and by farm

10:38

that is putting it mildly and then

10:40

we keep track of everything all

10:42

by computers. See that little

10:44

barcode over there? It

10:46

is a multi-million dollar business with

10:49

thousands of acres across the Salinas

10:51

Valley. You know we do

10:53

head lettuce, cauliflower, all the broccolis, all

10:55

the other stuff but just romaine hearts.

10:57

We'll cut a million heads a day

10:59

every day, every single day a million

11:01

heads. My

11:04

days of growing up in the fields speaking

11:06

strictly Spanish, that's all there was

11:09

that I knew about anyway, to

11:12

today, incredible difference

11:14

in different types

11:18

of people coming across. These

11:21

indigenous Indian tribes from deep

11:23

in Mexico, South America, I

11:27

don't believe those existed back decades

11:30

ago. They weren't

11:32

in the fields. To me it was just your

11:34

regular Mexican agriculture

11:36

bracero worker and now

11:39

you have the Oaxacan and

11:41

all these indigenous tribes, these

11:43

languages that nobody knows how

11:45

to speak because you've heard they're pre-Columbian,

11:47

three to four thousand years old, there's

11:49

no Latin root. They're working

11:52

in the strawberry industry a lot, you

11:54

know, they tend to be shorter

11:56

of stature so that would make it

11:58

easier to harvest. a

12:01

crop that grows lower to the ground. Not

12:03

only has it gotten more difficult

12:05

to communicate with farm workers, according

12:07

to Durego, since 9-11,

12:09

tougher immigration policy has caused a

12:12

slowdown of migrant labor coming from

12:14

south of the border. And

12:16

his workforce, he says, has been shrinking over

12:18

the last decade. This is

12:20

every company all over the United

12:23

States. You go to Georgia, the

12:25

Vidalia onions, up in the apple country, up

12:27

in Washington. Everybody's leaving perfectly

12:29

good produce, either in the

12:31

trees or on the ground, and it's going to waste because

12:33

we can't harvest it. We do not

12:35

have the labor. And so I'm

12:38

short 30-40% every day. I'm

12:41

short hundreds of people every single

12:43

day. I have machines, half

12:45

of them are empty. I can't

12:47

get the workers. These two pressures, the

12:49

increased shortage of farm labor and

12:51

the increasing inability to communicate with

12:53

the farm workers, prompted

12:56

Durego to do something about it and to reach out to

12:58

the big farm families in the

13:00

valley to address these problems. Together

13:02

they formed the Agriculture

13:04

Leadership Council. It's a mouthful.

13:07

All these other companies are finally realizing that,

13:09

man, a huge portion of my

13:11

workforce does speak these languages, and I

13:14

better figure out how to communicate with

13:16

them. They've all bought in

13:18

to taking care of the workers they

13:20

do have because we're not getting any

13:22

more. So how

13:25

can I endear my workers to

13:27

me? I don't want them

13:29

to go work for that guy over there and

13:31

my competitor over there because now we're

13:33

in a bidding war on

13:36

wages, working conditions, benefits,

13:38

because we're all fighting for the

13:40

same worker. Okay,

13:47

so let's not beat about the bush. These

13:49

farm workers are not rolling in dough over

13:51

this fight that Durego is talking about to

13:53

keep them. Wages are

13:55

modest at best. But

13:57

farmers from around the valley gave Linda and the the

14:00

Tivi Dad Foundation the seed money

14:02

to start an indigenous interpreting program

14:04

at the hospital. These

14:07

folks, they want the same health care I

14:09

want for my family. Let's

14:11

help them. Let's take care of our workers

14:14

and their families so they want to stay here,

14:16

work for us, and know that we care about

14:18

them. But

14:21

how did these groups of

14:23

Native Mexicans, many from deep in

14:26

the south of Mexico, many of whom

14:28

don't even speak Spanish? How

14:30

did they come to

14:32

be working in the fields in California and

14:34

be the patient seeking care at places

14:36

like the Tivi Dad Hospital? This

14:40

issue turned out to be a defining

14:42

moment for our nation.

14:44

This familiar voice is President Clinton

14:47

at the signing of the North American Free

14:49

Trade Agreement in 1993. In a few moments, I

14:53

will sign the North American Free

14:55

Trade Act into law. NAFTA

14:58

will tear down trade barriers between our

15:00

three nations. It will create

15:02

the world's largest trade zone and

15:04

create 200,000 jobs in this

15:07

country by 1995 alone.

15:09

NAFTA went into effect in January of 1994. And for

15:11

the last two

15:14

decades, the US, Canada, and Mexico

15:16

have been trading freely without tariffs.

15:19

But NAFTA continues to be the

15:21

subject of scrutiny. So these years

15:23

later, what has NAFTA brought? The trade

15:26

agreement that is now two decades

15:28

old and still the subject of debate.

15:30

But the impact on agriculture has

15:32

been wide ranging and not always so

15:34

positive, especially for small scale farmers. Under

15:37

NAFTA, Mexico could no longer tax things

15:39

like US corn. And the

15:42

US couldn't tax Mexican corn by

15:44

definition free trade. Except

15:47

the agreement didn't make it illegal

15:49

to subsidize goods. So

15:51

corn is one product that the US

15:53

has heavily subsidized in the years

15:55

following the trade agreement. And while the

15:57

US can afford corn,

16:00

Mexico cannot. And

16:03

this has affected the native populations

16:05

of Mexico enormously, says Seth

16:07

Holmes. He's the author of the book

16:10

Fresh Fruit Broken Bodies. The native people

16:12

I know from southern Mexico have felt

16:14

like since the time the

16:16

North American Free Trade Agreement was signed,

16:18

it's been less and less

16:20

possible for them as corn growers that

16:23

it's not possible for them to make

16:25

a living anymore, working on their own

16:27

farms. Also from the mid-1990s,

16:29

a huge number of farmers moved in

16:32

over looking for work. Seth, who in

16:34

addition to being an author is also

16:36

a doctor and an anthropologist, he

16:39

lived and worked alongside tricky farm

16:41

workers in Oaxaca documenting their

16:43

experiences for almost two years.

16:46

And he saw firsthand how heavily

16:49

subsidized American corn squeezed Mexican farmers

16:51

out of business, especially

16:54

indigenous farmers. Every family

16:56

I know in the villages where I

16:58

was had at least one person in

17:00

the US at any given time. Every

17:03

family in order for that family to

17:05

survive. Someone needed to be far away

17:07

from the family working in the city

17:09

body book. So the question was

17:12

never, is someone going to

17:14

go? The question was always, who's going to go? This

17:23

episode of subtitle is about immigrants

17:26

in the United States, which seems

17:28

like a good opportunity to recommend

17:31

a podcast that's all about immigrants

17:33

and the people around them. That

17:35

podcast is called Immigrantly. Hosts

17:38

Sadia Khan is an immigrant

17:40

herself, so her conversations with

17:42

immigrantly guests are rooted in

17:44

her experience. The conversations are

17:46

complex, they're challenging and they're

17:49

often messy, but

17:51

they're never boring. And the guests?

17:53

Well, you can hear Sadia speak

17:55

with Grammy winning singer Aru Jafar

17:58

and with author of the acclaimed. book

18:00

the kite runner Khalid Husseini

18:03

and there are comedians Hari

18:06

Kondabolu and Aparna Nancila. You

18:09

can find all of these people talking

18:11

about their immigrant experiences and

18:13

the lives of the people around

18:15

them. Immigrantly, listen and subscribe wherever

18:17

you're listening to this. Israel,

18:22

the tricky interpreter, was 11

18:24

years old when he came to the US. He

18:27

crossed the border with his sister. His

18:30

mom and dad had already been in the US

18:32

for about two years working to make enough money

18:34

to pay for the coyotes to bring the kids

18:36

across. In Israel, when he came

18:38

to the US, he struggled. In

18:41

school, with limited Spanish and no

18:43

English, the first years, he

18:45

says, were like a blur. And

18:48

it was really hard for me to

18:50

understand the teacher, to communicate with the

18:52

kids sometimes. And speaking tricky, felt

18:55

like a burden, a mark against

18:57

him even in school. So when

19:00

I was in high school, one of the kids came by

19:02

to me and they said, Israel,

19:04

who are you in school? Don't

19:06

come to school no more, man. You'll

19:08

be working as your parents, they work in the field.

19:12

I think I'm smarter than you. I talk about

19:14

that. And then he said, I

19:16

don't think so. You're going to be working the field as

19:18

your parents. Finally,

19:21

when he said that to me, I

19:24

got mad. Then I

19:26

feel myself down. Then I said, why

19:29

I'm from there? Why am

19:33

I from Oaxaca? Why do I

19:35

have to be from there? During

19:38

the summers, Israel did work in the fields. And

19:41

that high school kid's words continued to

19:43

haunt him. Five

19:57

years ago with money from farmers from the

19:59

Valley. Linda and Victor set up a

20:01

paid internship program at the hospital to

20:04

recruit and train indigenous interpreters. Indigenous

20:07

interpreters plus. When

20:09

they started hiring and training interns, many

20:11

folks like Angelica and Israel worked in the

20:14

fields. They realized that it

20:16

wasn't merely going to be about

20:18

teaching interpreting protocols. Many

20:21

of these languages didn't have words for

20:23

diseases or medical procedures or

20:26

equipment. One of our doctors conversing

20:28

with a Sapo-Tec patient was trying

20:30

to figure out how they would

20:33

describe tuberculosis. The

20:36

Sapo-Tec individual said that it was something

20:38

similar to like the devil is strangling

20:40

my neck. Is it

20:42

okay for the interpreter to describe it as

20:44

you have the devil is strangling your neck

20:46

disease? And while translating medical

20:49

terminology was one challenge, translating

20:51

a different cultural view of

20:54

medicine proved to be

20:56

another almost bigger challenge. One

20:58

of our interpreters was a patient here

21:00

at one time and

21:02

the physicians and the lab techs kept

21:04

taking her blood and I'd

21:06

go say, how are you feeling today?

21:08

And she would say, how could I be

21:11

feeling better? They're taking all my blood.

21:13

So I'm feeling worse and worse and worse.

21:15

She actually had sepsis, Linda, but

21:17

she couldn't understand where her blood was going

21:20

and it scared her. It's like I'm

21:22

getting weaker and weaker and where is this

21:24

blood going? So having no concept about blood

21:26

going to a lab and why it goes

21:29

to the lab, what does that indicate, what

21:31

is pathology? That whole

21:33

piece of context is missing. And

21:36

it dawned on Linda. It wasn't enough

21:38

just to train interpreters. She

21:40

had to train doctors and nurses and

21:42

the entire medical staff. They

21:45

too have to be trained to

21:47

understand what the context is not.

21:50

And they say, I'm going to the lab. Well, what's the

21:52

lab? They have no idea what a lab is. to

22:00

teach the staff and the doctors and

22:03

change medical culture. Says Sebastian Marchewski. He's

22:05

a third year resident at New David

22:07

Ad. There's a culture here

22:09

of questioning whether we need interpreters

22:12

or not. In some cases. Within

22:14

physicians. Within physicians and nursing staff. Really so you'll get

22:16

into conversations with people like we don't need an interpreter.

22:18

Exactly. You know a woman may come in and speak

22:21

a little bit of Spanish

22:25

or at least be able to answer some

22:27

simple questions. And then they think

22:29

oh we don't need an interpreter. We have the information we

22:31

need. But I've noticed that when we do get an interpreter,

22:33

even if they speak a little Spanish, it's

22:36

not their primary language in a lot of cases. And so when we do

22:38

get an interpreter, as

22:40

soon as they enter the room, sometimes I see them

22:42

just relax. It's almost as if they're an ally in

22:44

the room. Somebody that's familiar who will understand them on

22:46

many levels, not just their language. And

22:48

so over time I've developed a lower threshold to try

22:51

and get an interpreter. And

22:53

incorporate them sometimes more than just the

22:55

language. Getting them to elicit

22:58

what their understanding is of a certain

23:00

condition or a process or procedure. Four

23:10

years ago, Israel was at the mall trying on

23:13

shoes. And this woman started talking to

23:15

him. She said hey

23:17

good morning. Then she said do

23:19

you speak English? And I said yeah I

23:21

do speak English. I asked them

23:23

do you speak another language? Yes I do.

23:27

Which one is it? It's tricky. This

23:44

from the kid questioned why he had to be

23:47

from Oaxaca. He did the internship program. It wasn't

23:49

easy. There were a lot of medical words he

23:51

didn't know. Intriguey,

23:54

like C-section. So He

23:56

had to ask the only person who

23:58

might know them, his mom. And

24:01

I ask Mom had he said his

24:03

words, how do you say Cetacean? Decades

24:05

and and six family To me An

24:07

answer Dagger nine digits at the good

24:10

hours. And a few months

24:12

ago, Israel ran into that high school bully,

24:14

remember the one who told him that he

24:16

would be working in the field with

24:18

his parents? I

24:20

ran into Can and a half the waiting. Room

24:23

the summer with the sushi shoes.

24:26

Israel. As

24:28

as as were. On

24:31

us about that. yeah I dealt with

24:34

says you know they love and every

24:36

saw that was nowhere does in it

24:38

he. Never thought that he or work

24:40

at Natividad Hospital and he never thought

24:42

that Sneaky would be the reason why.

24:45

He. Was a many people he knows now

24:47

people who speak Spanish and English. They

24:49

often ask him how you get a

24:51

job at the hospital. Where the need

24:53

just and existing rules, Spanish and

24:56

English and indigenous sounds there was.

24:58

I wish I could be. A

25:03

hearse, And from a hot

25:06

that he says that with is a. Toothy,

25:08

Grin and from Osaka

25:10

I'm really proud and

25:12

more. Than

25:15

allowances as important here.

25:19

Israel. Recently started community college.

25:22

He wants to be a civil

25:24

engineer and indigenous interrupting Plus now

25:27

offers interpreting services for organizations all

25:29

over the United States. Sector.

25:31

Is now working with several folks

25:34

to create an official indigenous interpreting

25:36

curriculum that they held the palace

25:38

early next year and. Train more

25:40

interpreters, Okay

26:06

for the final segment. As please

26:08

excuse my very very bad for

26:10

a chart as a week later

26:12

on a cold later. Hadn't

26:16

the fog? Two

26:18

hundred and fifty miles south of

26:20

Silliness is Oxnard. It's another agricultural

26:22

hub of California. Driving down the

26:24

one on one Palms feel the

26:26

strawberries and kale and now pumpkins

26:29

this time of year. If you

26:31

want to hear what Oxnard sounds

26:33

like to see in the dial,

26:35

To Ninety four point loss women

26:37

have such as a miniseries folks

26:39

of the a Oxnard and Brazilian

26:41

fisherman underwent schools are you could

26:43

proceed because he couldn't I'm I

26:45

think the station came into being

26:48

to start of a bleeding need

26:50

is. Again, this is Carlos he

26:52

menace to help start or audio

26:54

in Vienna. It's a small face

26:56

and really more like a windowless

26:59

Rooms are studio in the offices

27:01

of the mystical indigenous community. Organizing

27:03

project Lehman Fucking on Monday London

27:05

on them, even though the other

27:07

than that selling them that he

27:09

had a bunch of people in

27:11

the indigenous community who have absolutely

27:13

zero sources of information in their

27:15

language from any of the local

27:17

radio stations here. And on

27:19

top of all that, Oxnard

27:21

has hundreds of undiscovered bands,

27:24

says Carlos. When.

27:28

You drive around are smart Friday

27:30

Saturday Sunday there's a lot of these

27:33

like and going from venue to venue

27:35

which are restaurants most through and that's

27:37

where a lot of the bands do

27:40

place but outside of that this type

27:42

of this community please at licensing it

27:44

as baptisms, backyard parties that they're sort

27:47

of venue and so within the community

27:49

people know about them but outside of

27:51

that does not a mediated network for

27:54

them outside of what what may

27:56

be the Face bookstore their You Tube

27:58

channel. And. radio in

28:00

Dichina started broadcasting them over the internet

28:02

about a year and a half ago.

28:05

DJs started playing some of these local groups,

28:08

bands like this one that you're hearing now. They're

28:10

called grouposin control. They play

28:13

a type of music from Oaxaca called

28:15

Cilena. From

28:20

what I've heard from the community, it has its

28:22

origins in Chile. This music made its way north

28:25

to the rural parts of Oaxaca.

28:28

What happened was it was brought over

28:30

to Mexico by Chilean sailors in

28:32

the 19th century who brought

28:34

the music and the dance

28:36

style with them. These are

28:38

long songs. These are eight to

28:41

twelve, maybe more low-length

28:43

songs and you're not

28:45

just standing listening to these songs.

28:47

You're dancing all eight, twelve minutes.

28:49

So you're out there doing something

28:52

with your body. From

28:54

my experience, it's this really particular dance where

28:56

it's sort of a two-step and

28:59

you just jam into the beat and

29:01

then you don't touch. You

29:03

rarely touch. From

29:06

what I've noticed, you're just sort of watching everybody else.

29:08

You don't even look at your partner in the

29:11

face? You very rarely are looking at your partner.

29:13

You're dancing with somebody but you're

29:15

not looking at each other. You're sort

29:17

of perusing everybody else. For me, I'm

29:20

trying to see how everybody else is dancing so I blend

29:22

in and I don't stand out. But

29:25

beyond that, I mean, the music

29:27

when this song goes on, let's say they're

29:29

playing ranchettas and raltenas or whatever, you have

29:32

five-time people but the moment that they play a

29:34

chilena, everybody

29:37

is on the dance floor. Everybody. So

29:43

basically, it kind of sounds like

29:46

Oaxacan jam-bad music. You

29:48

know, with the dance that goes along with it. And

29:51

since getting airtime, these small unknown

29:54

bands like Guroopos in control have

29:56

blown up. So

30:02

much so that a local Spanish

30:04

radio station recently started featuring a

30:06

weekly show of chilenas music. It's

30:08

wonderful. You guys have to have

30:10

a record label then. This is

30:12

the next thing. We're

30:15

not out here today. Radio Indijina doesn't just

30:17

play music. Programming ranges

30:20

all over the place from shows like

30:22

Jesus Noyola's show about poetry to

30:24

a program on relationships and women's

30:26

health to a man who talks

30:29

about the traditions from his village back in

30:31

Oaxaca or the show by

30:33

the CJI Met named Jorge. Jorge's

30:39

show is called La Lucha

30:41

Social, the social fight, where

30:43

Jorge discusses workers' rights. I

30:45

want to reach the people, he says. And

30:57

Radio Indijina is reaching people

31:00

since the station began broadcasting

31:02

in languages like Misteco and

31:04

Zapoteco, Triki, these indigenous

31:06

Mexican languages. The

31:08

station DJs have heard from listeners

31:11

tuning in all over California. If

31:13

you can just imagine you yourself as a

31:15

person who's left their home to go to

31:17

another country, no signs, no

31:20

radio, no TV, no nothing is in

31:22

your language and then all of a

31:24

sudden there's this group of people who

31:26

are broadcasting in your language that your mom

31:28

spoke, that your brother spoke, that your family

31:31

spoke and you get to hear it, there's

31:34

no words. And I think the

31:37

calls that we got were that emotion.

31:39

Thank you. Thank you for doing

31:42

this. Thank you. to

32:00

everyone who shared their stories and their

32:02

languages with me in Oxnard and in

32:04

Salinas. And I would

32:06

say thank you, Niseko, but I

32:08

don't want to insult any Niseko

32:11

speakers with my very sad attempt.

32:13

It is very hard language. Hit

32:16

us up on Twitter at

32:19

Lingopod. I'm at Porzuki. That's

32:21

P-O-R-Z-U-C-K-I. And as

32:24

always, thanks so much for listening.

32:33

Had and Spoke. Audio

32:36

Collective.