Miss Nora, as she was known, believed that a people have a right to their language. “Losing it means no longer being people,” she claimed until her death in 2001. The fight to save the Rama language had to come from within the community itself. Among the close to 2,000 Rama Indians, English is the vernacular. Until a few years ago, they looked down on their native “tiger language,” which they considered a useless dialect suitable only for animals because of its large lexicon of onomatopeias—words made of sounds that imitate nature.

“We’ve now achieved Miss Nora’s dream,” says Colette Grinevald, a French linguist living on the charming tropical island of Rama Cay. “There’s a complete Rama grammar book and a 5,000-word dictionary that will be posted on the Internet shortly. And even more importantly, we are starting to teach the language to children and adults to guarantee that it survives.”

Reliving the past. Recovering the language, crafts or other traditions of indigenous peoples is a major activity under the IDB Cultural Center’s Program for Cultural Development in Latin America and the Caribbean. In the case of the Rama Indians and their language, the Bank provided support for a series of documentaries produced by a Nicaraguan television program called Esta Semana (“This Week”), hosted by reporter Carlos F. Chamorro. The stories document the success this practically unknown community has had in preserving its language and culture.

Some 250 kilometers from San José, Costa Rica, Boruca communities had over time lost their language, their traditional crafts, their age-old building techniques, and other customs. Their environmentally friendly huts have been reintroduced, and are must better adapted than modern homes to the highland climate, cold at night and hot during the day. Street and road signs with colonial names have been replaced with new ones better reflecting the true history of their ancestors. The Cultural Center program has financed the task of compiling original place names and a historical lexicon of the indigenous brunca language. This information will eventually be used to update local maps and road signs.   

Along borders between countries or in areas that attract workers from other regions, the IDB program often focuses on the cultural rapprochement of ethnic groups separated by history or on recovering the history of migrant ethnic groups. Along the highland border region between Ecuador and Colombia, the IDB program supported activities for the indigenous Pasto people who live on both sides of the border. Oral history passed on by the elders inspired young people to organize art, drama and dance workshops.

The Colombian region of Urabá in the province of Antioquia was settled by migrants who came to mine precious gems and other exports. The large banana plantations and small farms attracted Afro-Colombian and Chilapa laborers, along with residents of the Córdoba province flatlands including descendants of the indigenous zenú people from the San Andrés de Sotavento reserve. The IDB program supports an initiative undertaken five years ago to recover the cultural memory of these communities, and to revive artistic techniques and crafts that help build identity and ensure stability among their descendants.

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