Language Justice, Indigenous Resistance, and NYC Workers Rights
Courtesy of Kichwa Hatari
In the Winter 2017, seven workers walked into a worker center in Queens, fed up with their employer who hadn’t paid them for yet another week of work. The workers had self-organized a work-stop. Walking out of their job site in the middle of the day brought construction to a standstill. Displays of unity and action are seldom seen by day laborers who often pride themselves on independence. However, there was one thing that workers had been utilizing beautifully to communicate with each other day’s leading up to the walk-out: language. The workers, Guatemalan, had been organizing themselves for days on the job site in their native language, Kaqchikel, until finally orchestrating the work-stop, a classic tactic in labor organizing. I start with this story because it is a story that is rarely recounted. Today, walkouts are generally associated with large-scale organizing campaigns, and indigenous languages with museum culture or, at best, paraded folklore. It is imperative that I begin by acknowledging that the history of indigenous resistance on this land (today known as New York City) is not new—it is a struggle that has been led by the Lenapehoking people since the 1500s up until today. Today, as always, the people of Abya Yala continue to cross artificial borders and defy what it means to be “immigrant” and what it means to resist capitalism and patriarchal systems of governing from its belly, New York City.
Indigenous populations from Latin America, like the Kaqchikel, have made this city their home and brought with them a long history of grassroots organizing and alternative models of collective resistance. This history of resistance is very much visible through today, from the Zapatista uprisings in the 1990’s to the indigenous uprisings in Ecuador in 2019. In New York City, the legacy of these movements live in the indigenous diaspora and are made notable through the work of groups like Kichwa Hatari, Red de Pueblos Transnacionales, Mano a Mano, Endangered Language Alliance, the Garifuna Coalition, Casa Yurumein, Quechua Collective, MASA, Alcal Latin Radio, and Rebeldia Radio, to name a few. Many of these groups, and many more not mentioned, do not fit into the traditional framework of not-for-profit work in the City. So just as it would be right to challenge City agencies and institutions for ignoring the realities and distinctions of Latin American indigenous communities in New York City, we must also challenge the role that nonprofits play in homogenizing and erasing our identities through imposed banners of Latinidad and Hispanidad.
In 2018, I had the opportunity to organize a joint outreach effort between my organization, NYCOSH, and the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP). While flyering and talking with Bronx day laborers about their rights it became apparent that many of the workers we were talking to were Kichwa speakers. Outreach was made easier when I’d bring up the work of Kichwa Hatari, a Kichwa radio program I co-host from the Bronx, or Radio El Tambo Stereo, it’s hosting station. It was obvious that workers were surprised to see their language and community acknowledged in the context of labor protections. For DCWP, witnessing this became the first step in acknowledging a blind-spot of their agency when it came to reaching indigenous language-speaking workers. Weeks later ideas began to float about what translating City resources in indigenous languages would look like.
Groups bringing visibility to their communities in New York City (particularly the K’iche’, Mixteco, Kichwa, Garifuna, and Nahuatl), ultimately became the point of reference for thinking about materials translation, usability, and accessibility. Kichwa Hatari and Alcal Latin Radio, for example, are two radio programs that have utilized the richness of oral storytelling in Kichwa and K’iche’ tradition to reach their communities abroad. Oral language, until today, remains one of the most important vehicles for transferring knowledge in indigenous communities and, ultimately, represents a society with a distinct form of communication than that of Western modes. Reflecting on the effectiveness of these orally-dominated forms of communication in indigenous communities, and the subsequent limited literacy in these same communities, is how DCWP was ultimately advocated by community activists, including myself, to translate, for the very first time, the New York City Workers Bill of Rights in indigenous languages, orally.
The oral translation of the NYC Workers Bill of Rights into K’iche, Mixteco, Kichwa, Garifuna, and Nahuatl represents a huge step for the recognition of Latin American indigenous populations in New York City. However, these five languages are among the many indigenous languages spoken in New York City by communities from South, Central, and North America (Abya Yala). The DCWP should be heralded for being the first agency in the City to take on this endeavor by investing significant funds in this resource. At the roundtable “Language Justice and NYC Workers Rights,” hosted by CUNY Grad Center on January 31st, 2020, two more agencies, the NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and the NYC Commission on Human Rights, announced plans to launch resources of their own in these five indigenous languages in 2020.
While it is important to celebrate the launch of these important resources, we must not forget about the path forward and what we, as indigenous communities, should hold as values in future collaborations:
1) that as these materials roll-out they remain fully accessible and relevant to the communities they aim to reach;
2) that this work stays centered on the needs and demands of indigenous populations, recognizing that organizations have long been organizing with these communities before the City ever started to take notice;
3) recognizing that the translation of City resources continues to simply mirror a system that was never meant to represent us or our understanding of the world;
4) that symbolic representation can only go so far—we need real representation of indigenous peoples in City agencies.
Furthermore, any representation should go hand-in-hand with the recognition of the autonomous nature of our communities, and the alternative ways of existing that are harnessed within them and that extend beyond language spaces.
For workers, like the Kaqchikel workers who walked out of their Brooklyn job-site, there is a lot more we as a society must do. While City agencies and community organizations do their part in creating more accessible resources, we must also question what we are doing to harness the traditional teachings and bodies of knowledge that indigenous communities bring. These bodies of knowledge are what have kept our communities resisting 500+ years later and what will continue to nourish future intersectional practices of resistance, from New York City and beyond.
To access the oral translations of the NYC Workers’ Bill of Rights, click here.
Charlie Uruchima is a native New Yorker of Kichwa-Ecuadorian descent. His current passion for community organizing and the Quechua language lies in his own Kichwa lineage and long work with undocumented immigrant communities in New York City. As a graduate student at NYU, Charlie helped organize Quechua-related events in New York City, including the first Quichwa Film Showcase in the United States. Blending his passions for Quechua, community organizing, media, and research, in July 2014, Charlie co-founded Kichwa Hatari, the first Kichwa radio project in the United States.
Charlie has also worked extensively with grassroots organizations over the years, such as Democracy Now, New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE), and Brandworkers, and consulted for the Smithsonian Museum of American Indian in D.C. Currently, Charlie is a Program Coordinator at the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH). At NYCOSH, Charlie coordinates the Manhattan Justice for Workers Collaborative which aims to increase crime reporting for victims of wage theft and negligent health and safety practices. His current research interests and grassroots advocacy work lie in the intersection of labor, migration, language, media, and indigeneity.