Nahuatl Nations

Nahuatl Nations is a linguistic ethnography that explores the political relations between those Indigenous communities of Mexico that speak the Nahuatl language and the Mexican Nation that claims it as an important national symbol. Author Magnus Pharao Hansen studies how this relation has been shaped by history and how it plays out today in Indigenous Nahua towns, regions, and educational institutions, and in the Mexican diaspora. He argues that Indigenous languages are likely to remain vital as long as they used as languages of political community, and they also protect the community's sovereignty by functioning as a barrier that restricts access to the participation for outsiders. Semiotic sovereignty therefore becomes a key concept for understanding how Indigenous communities can maintain both their political and linguistic vitality. While the Mexican Nation seeks to expropriate Indigenous semiotic resources in order to improve its brand on an international marketplace, Indigenous communities may employ them in resistance to state domination.

Magnus Pharao Hansen is a linguistic anthropologist and Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen, with a Ph.D. in Linguistic Anthropology from Brown University. He studies the social, historical and geographical variation of Nahuatl, and its cultural contexts and political implications, as well as the linguistic histories of other Indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica.