Every second and fourth Saturday of the month, locals gather at the Greenfield branch of the Monterey County Free Libraries to take a class that no other library in the county offers.

The class, taught by Amadeo Lopez, is not your ordinary class; it is a language class for people who are interested in learning Triqui.

Lopez was born in Oaxaca, a state in Mexico, and his first language was Triqui Baja. His parents and his village spoke it ,and when he was about five-years-old he learned Spanish.

He learned to read and write in Spanish while in school, and as he grew up these were the languages he knew.

When he came to Greenfield to live with his father and family, his stepbrothers started to teach him more English. He started Greenfield High School and took English there.

His fascination with English started in his hometown. His aunt owned a Spanish to English dictionary and he went through it to teach himself.

To learn how to read and write in English, he would take a new word and write it, covering a full page with the word in English and in Spanish. He would have full pages that read, “casa, house.”

When he had that down, he would move on to the next word.

In learning English, he discovered that that some Triqui don’t know their own language. Children born here and in Mexico have lost the ties to the language and the culture.

“Many students in the class don’t know our language, some are embarrassed of their own people,” said Lopez. “It’s our language, it’s our culture. It’s something valuable.”



For the complete article see the 02-24-2010 issue.

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