Zenzontepec love poem

Zenzontepec is an oto-mango language, from the Zapotec group and more precisely one of the six variants of the Chatino (Tsá'jnyä) (Western Highland, Eastern Highland, Nopala, Tataltepec, Zacatepec and Zenzontepec). Of the six dialects, it is certainly the least intelligible with the others, because the Chatino group which speak it is very isolated. All the Chatino languages are spoken in the Oaxaca region in Mexico (50,000 people), and for the Zenzontepec, it's more precisely beside Santa Cruz Zenzontepec by about 9,000 people.

The Chatinos who live in the southeast of Oaxaca state in Mexico, before separating, had important links with the Zapotecs. When the Spanish arrived, they were under the Mixtecs domination. Today, many of them continue to live in fairly traditional ways, making the places where they live prized by tourism. For many, they remain breeders and cultivators (coffee, beans and of course corn), it is also necessary to cite the cochineals that they produced, from the Spanish time, to get the carmine pigment.