Mazatec love poem

Mazatec de Huautla de Jiménez (Enna, Highland Mazatec, Mazateco del Centro, Mazateco de la Sierra), is an Otomanguean language, from the Oaxaca state in Mexico, spoken by 50,000 people. It is one of the 16 variants of the Mazatec language, which for all of them is spoken by 200,000 people. It should be noted that these 16 languages are not all mutually intelligible. A specificity of Mazatec is that this tonal language in the mountains is whistled.

The Mazatecs (Mazatecs) are Native Americans who live in the northern region of Oxaca in Mexico. They were organized according to the rules of the extended family with patrilocal residence. They lived mainly from agriculture (corn, squash, beans), cultivating land that was communal or private. Their society included a strict political hierarchy, counteracted by the type of land occupation (villages, camps, residential sites), itself depending on the socio-economic distribution of people. Upper society (people of reason) held most of the wealth, the peasants occupying a very secondary place. Before the arrival of Catholicism, animism was very present in Mazatec society.