Across the Central Coast, we have a large and growing Mixteco population. It is a Mexican indigenous community that has its own language, and that’s a barrier the San Luis Obispo County Public Health Department is hoping to address through a partnership with the organization Herencia Indigena.
“Mixteco is not Spanish. Mixteco is its own language,” explained Irebid Gilbert, the executive director of Herencia Indigena. “It has many different ways that it can be spoken.”
There are at least 81 variations. According to the organization Herencia Indigena, most Mixtecos in our region are from the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca. Most of them work in the agricultural industry.
Herencia Indigena has been offering Mixteco Cultural Awareness Trainings since 2019.
“We have trained social workers, techs. We have trained police officers,” Gilbert said.
The organization had 17,582 interpretation appointments in 2022 with a big focus on health services.
“These trainings are really an effort to try to bring the provider into the world of our indigenous community. Not just to find out about our history, our language, our background, traditions and norms, but how do those things influence the way that we think and the way that we make medical decisions,” Gilbert explained.
About a year ago, Herencia Indigena partnered with the SLO County Public Health Department.
“To acknowledge that there is another language aside from Spanish from those coming from Mexico,” said Demetrio Morales-Salazar, the SLO County Public Health Multilingual Outreach Coordinator.
SLO County Public Health has had around eight trainings so far, and they have four more to go. The sessions have been open to other county agencies and non-profits too.
“We are in collaboration with Herencia Indigena, but we're far from being there to get this community to be comfortable and to reach out, especially to a government entity,” Morales-Salazar said.
There is still a lot of fear in this community and building a relationship takes time.
“Definitely, language barrier. We're seeing housing is an issue, lack of transportation is an issue,” Gilbert said.
“One of the outreach that we've done is general education trainings to the local community, informing them of what services and programs we have within San Luis Obispo County Public Health,” Morales-Salazar said.
Another approach is through videos like Voces Saludables, translated as "healthy voices," which offers information in Mixteco.
It helps to have workers with a Mixteco background to bridge that gap. Growing up, Morales-Salazar helped his parents with translations and now he is giving back to the greater community.
“To the kids growing up speaking Mixteco, you know, be proud of it. Be happy that their parents are teaching them how to speak that because it is an indigenous language,” Morales-Salazar said.
Gilbert is optimistic about the barriers first-generation Mixtecos are breaking.
“The experience my parents went through, that they lived is completely different,” Gilbert said. “I think their children, the children of all of these folks that came here as first generation, they're standing up and voicing those concerns and letting that be known, and our providers are listening.”
SLO County Public Health is working on pushing out health videos in Mixteco once a month on their social media platforms. To view the full Voces Saludables video, click here.
