Coyote. Chocolate. Avocado. Axolotl. You may not know it, but you might be speaking the language of the Aztecs.
Once the lingua franca of the Aztec Empire (1400-1600), Nahuatl (pronounced NAA-waat) is now the second most-spoken language in Mexico after Spanish. It is spoken natively in 16 Mexican states and has around 1.5 million speakers—and, for U-M students, it’s taught at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) in a small but lively program.
U-M is one of a small number of universities in the country to offer a Nahuatl program—one of several Indigenous language programs at LSA. LACS partners with the Zacatecas Institute for Teaching and Research in Ethnology (IDIEZ)—a Mexican nonprofit—to connect LSA students with native speakers of Nahuatl.
Indigenous language study has not always been a part of LSA’s diverse curriculum, but Gavin Arnall, director of LACS, stresses its ongoing importance. While Nahuatl is not a language indigenous to what is now known as the state of Michigan, its study and promotion furthers the goals of Native American and Indigenous studies: namely, sharing that Indigenous communities in the Americas are not only alive but thriving, even after centuries of forced displacement and assimilation.
Arnall, an associate professor of romance languages and literatures and of comparative literature, encourages students to “remain open to the shift in perspective that happens any time you really learn a new language: that moment when what was once familiar suddenly appears different, and when something different suddenly becomes familiar.” Properly recognizing and teaching the university’s Indigenous history is an enormous task, but one way he suggests that students can participate is to learn an Indigenous language like Nahuatl.
Carlos Cerecedo Cruz, an instructor from IDIEZ who teaches U-M classes virtually from his office in the Mexican state of Veracruz, is part of a third- or fourth-generation wave of migrants from his hometown of Tecomate to the city of Zacatecas. As young adults, he and his peers moved to larger urban centers within Veracruz to pursue opportunities in higher education, due to the fact that his pueblo only offered up to a high-school level.
In the city, Cerecedo Cruz began learning to teach Nahuatl by reverse-engineering his native knowledge of the language and taking formal courses as a student. “It’s one thing to speak the language, but we don’t know the grammatical structures,” he says. Through IDIEZ, he has taught at several institutions in the United States.
At LSA, students come to Nahuatl for reasons as diverse as Mexico itself. Some have Mexican heritage, while others encounter the region through relevant fields of study like anthropology, history, or Spanish language. For Luis Barcenas, an undergraduate student in mechanical engineering, learning Nahuatl is a way to honor his immigrant parents’ struggle to adapt to U.S. culture. “I’d like to put in an effort to learn more about a neighboring culture,” he says.
Daniel Morales, a Ph.D. student in linguistics, was first inspired to study Nahuatl by his parents. They were activists in the Chicano Movement in the 1970s, which focused in part on reclaiming Indigenous Mexican identities as a reaction to centuries of colonialism. “Growing up, I was always reminded by my mother that being Mexican means you are part Spaniard and part Indigenous,” he says.
Just as vital to language study, Cerecedo Cruz believes, is the incorporation of modern Nahua culture. Traditions older than Mexico’s colonial past continue in the present day, changing and growing in accordance with the community. Cerecedo Cruz often concentrates on the hyperlocal, using examples from the state of Veracruz to illustrate larger cultural phenomena.
A perfect example is the Day of the Dead. People of Mexican descent, both in the republic and the diaspora, often celebrate Día de Muertos by visiting the burial sites of family members. The celebration often ends there. But in Cerecedo Cruz’s community, Nahua rituals are much more intensive. “I teach my students each stage of the process, how it starts and ends, the adornment of the altars,” he explains. “The element of culture is the most important part of the course.”
While early modern examples of Nahuatl exist in the written record, Cerecedo Cruz also highlights contemporary literature, often written in regional dialects, in his classes: The students read a play about the day-to-day life of a Nahua person coming back from school outside of his community and reconciling his Indigenous identity with his European-style education.
These works, along with regular dialogue between students and instructor, make an impact beyond the classroom. Cerecedo Cruz sometimes tells his students about how he and his peers were mistreated for speaking a single Nahuatl word instead of its Spanish equivalent. Decades of discrimination around Indigeneity and language still reverberate today: “Simply because we belong to an Indigenous community, wear traditional clothing, speak our native language, and have a certain skin color, we are marginalized in different sectors of society,” he explains.
Derek Cebrián Ocampo, a doctoral student in the Department of Classical Studies, believes that learning Nahuatl is a political statement because engaging with the living community requires acknowledging its importance. “Someone can learn a language on their own using books or Duolingo,” he says. “But to really get into it, you need to speak to other people—learn the culture behind the language, why it works the way it does.”
To him, the program represents more than an esoteric passion for language. As more and more people show interest in Indigenous language and histories, our understanding of the world only grows greater.
“At this moment,” he says, “Nahuatl is revitalizing.”
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| Release Date: | 05/19/2026 |
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| Tags: | LSA |
