Parents, or better, mothers determine whether the first words of a Chiapanecan child will be in a vernacular language or Spanish. Census microdata for 1970 and 1990 show a sharp increase in the proportion of children with a native language speaking parent (Figure 2). In 1970 children whose parents were monolingual in Spanish ("MspnFspn" in the figure) accounted for 75% of all youngsters aged 6-14 in the state. This fraction fell to 68% in 1990. While total numbers of monolinguals of Spanish-speaking children grew from 238 to 445 thousand, the rate of change was lower than for almost any other group and half that for children whose mother's tongue was a vernacular ("MverFver" and "MverFbli" in the figure). The number of children with at least one parent who spoke the vernacular rose from 81,000 in 1970 to 207,000 in 1990, or 250% in two decades. Bilingual parents ("MbilFbil") surpassed even this impressive feat. Their children accounted for 9% of the total in 1970, rising to 11% in 1990.

Slowest growth occurred for offspring where both parents spoke only a vernacular language. The relative share for this group declined by one point to 8% in 1990, although total numbers increased from 28.8 thousand to 49.5. This decline is explained by hree factors--marriage, reproduction, and language change. First, the marriage market places monolinguals at a competitive disadvantage. They are increasingly less likely to find like-speaking mates (recall that the search is not for an "Indian" mate but for someone from the same language group or even local dialect; Bravo Ahuja 1992), and when they do, bilingualism is prized as a trait in a mate, even by monolinguals. Second, monolinguals who marry find their reproduction constrained by higher infant and child mortality than is the case for other groups. Finally, even monolingual adults are becoming bilingual, as the cohort data in Figure 1 panels C and D show. Then too, consider that the entire discussion is relative. The growth rate for offspring of monolingual native language speakers was 75% in just two decades, or 2.75 percent per annum. The increase for children of monolingual native language speakers may be considered "slow" only in comparison to other groups in Chiapas because at this rate the population doubles every twenty-five years--unless the children of monolinguals become bilingual or abandon the mother tongue entirely.

Rather than demographics, the great fear of would-be defenders of native languages is linguistic conflict, leading to the destruction of native cultures. For many, the classroom is the principal battle ground and teachers the enemy, because "Spanish only" has long been the rule in Mexican schools (Aguirre Beltrán 1973, 1983). The outlook for native languages is made worse by the fact that in the 1970s schooling finally took off in Mexico, thanks to enormous increases in the federal budget for primary schooling (Varese 1983). In Chiapas, school attendance rates soared 250% in two decades for children aged 6-14 of parents who spoke a vernacular, from 24% in 1970 to 61% in 1990. At the beginning of the period only one of every four children of speakers of native languages attended school. From the mid-1970s this ratio began to rise steadily, such that by 1990 more than three of every five went to school (Figure 3).

Children who remain monolingual in a native language have two things in common: their mothers are monolingual and they have never been to school. This is as true in 1990 (panel C) as it was in 1970 (panel A). As recently as 1990, even when the father was bilingual, if the mother was monolingual in the native language and the child did not go to school, 85% were likewise monolingual, down from 90% in 1970. The principal difference is that until 1970 school attendance was uncommon for children of parents who spoke only a vernacular (panel A vs. panel B), while in 1990 the rate of school attendance for these children exceeds sixty-percent (panel C vs. panel D). Likewise, if in 1970 many children who spoke a native language were monolinguals, two decades later they constitute a diminishing minority--in relative terms. On the one hand, bilingual mothers make up a much larger fraction of mothers who speak a native language, and on the other, school attendance continues to be more common for their children.

Bilingualism is rapidly becoming a reality in Chiapas, and as Figure 1 and 3 show, education is the principal mechanism for change.⁶ It is important to recognize that schooling does not inevitably lead to monolingualism in Spanish. The children of bilingual parents are at highest risk, but the risk is quite similar whether their children go to school or not. Some one in four become monolingual Spanish speakers, regardless of school attendance. This figure has remained relatively steady over two decades, both for those who do not attend school (25 and 23% for 1970 and 1990, respectively) as well as for those who do (17 and 26%--see middle column in each panel of Figure 3). Researchers have been slow to recognize that language loss occurs whether the child goes to school or not (Coronado Suzan 1992). However, where either parent speaks only Spanish, the child will almost certainly do so as well. In this case, it should not be surprising that this rule holds whether the child attends school or not.

Language has been a "constant theme in the ideological debate over cultural identity" in Mexico (King 1994:2). Critics of Mexican educational policy argue that national education has been conceived as a means to "castellanizar" or Hispanize the Mexican population (Varese 1983; Aguirre Beltrán 1973, 1983). The belief that learning Spanish will integrate indígenas socially and economically has fueled language policy since the inception of national education programs in the 1920s. According to Heath, "unification through a national school system was the supreme goal of the Ministry of Public Education" (Heath 1972:87). In the past, unification has been a euphemism for homogenization (Aguirre Beltrán 1973; Modiano 1972; Nahmad 1982). Jose Vasconcelos, the renowned philosopher and one-time Minister of Education (1920-1924), articulated the real meaning of unification to Mexican educators in the following terms: "The policy of educating the Indian ... according to separate standards of any sort, is not only absurd among us, but it would be fatal" (quoted in Heath 1972:63).

In the 1960s bilingual education began to be considered an alternative to what many saw as a long history of failed attempts to extend education to Mexico's native peoples. In 1964 a program was begun using bilingual teachers and cultural promoters in schools for speakers of native languages. In 1971 the Dirección General de Educación Extraescolar en el Medio Indígena (DGEEMI) was created, the first Mexican institution to offer "bilingual-bicultural" education. Under DGEEMI, all teachers were indigenous and hence, familiar with the culture (Mack Drake 1978). DGEEMI policies were based on the proposition that native language speakers needed to know Spanish, but should not have to give up their native language to do so. The programs were bilingual--Spanish and the native language were used for instruction until Spanish gradually replaced the use of the native language in the classroom--and bicultural--children were taught that their own culture as well as other cultures had value (Mayer 1982). In 1981, the Secretary of Public Education declared that, "bilingual education signifies understanding and handling of reading and writing as well as the structure of both languages: their own and Spanish. ... The bicultural aspect implies taking into account the mother culture (philosophy, values and Indian objectives) of the students in educational planning not only in the content, but in the psycho-pedagogical methods as well" (Coronado Suzan 1992:54).

While there is a genuine desire by many teachers and educational policy makers to recognize native indigenous languages and cultures as legitimate, the ultimate impact of educational policy is difficult to assay. Some experts argue that bilingual-bicultural education does not yet exist in Mexico (Coronado Suzan 1992), others that schools remain focussed on homogenization (Freedson 1995), and still others that many native peoples oppose bilingual education in favor of Spanish-only instruction (Patthey-Chavez 1994). At least one scholar advocates monolingual instruction using only the vernacular languages (Haviland 1982).

The demographic data for 1990 suggest that in the coming generation bilingualism is the only road remaining for native languages. Whether that road will prove to be a dead-end or an expressway to renewed linguistic vitality will depend to a great extent on what happens in the classroom. Official policy supports linguistic and cultural diversity, but whether it will have an impact in the classroom is uncertain. Hidalgo (1994:203) offers hope that "[r]eversing language shift is indeed possible, even in countries that may have harmed their mother tongues more than Mexico has."