Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas

The Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (National Indigenous Languages Institute, better known by its acronym INALI) is a Mexican federal public agency, created 13 March 2003 by the enactment of the Ley General de Derechos Lingüísticos de los Pueblos Indígenas (General Law of Indigenous Peoples' Linguistic Rights) by the administration of President Vicente Fox Quesada.

It is a decentralized agency of the Federal Public Administration, attached to the Secretariat of Public Education (Secretaría de Educación Pública, or SEP). Its supreme organ is the National Council, of which the Secretary of Public Education serves as president, with a Director General in charge of its day-to-day activities.

INALI works to promote and protect the use of Mexico's indigenous languages, which it divides into 68 living "linguistic groups" and hundreds of "linguistic varieties". While many of the "groups" have traditionally been considered single languages, INALI recommends that the "varieties" be considered as separate languages in all matters of justice, education, health, and civil administration or information. One of INALI's main tasks is to prevent the disappearance and extinction of indigenous languages that have survived from pre-Hispanic times.

References

INALI [Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas] (14 January, 2008). "Catálogo de las lenguas indígenas nacionales: Variantes lingüísticas de México con sus autodenominaciones y referencias geoestadísticas" (PDF online facsimile). Diario Oficial de la Federación (México, D.F.: Imprenta del Gobierno Federal, SEGOB) 652 (9): pp.22–78 (first section),1–96 (second section),1–112 (third section). OCLC 46461036. http://www.inali.gob.mx/pdf/CLIN_completo.pdf.  (Spanish)

Pellicer, Dora; Bábara Cifuentes, and Carmen Herrera (2006). "Legislating diversity in twenty-first century Mexico". In Margarita G. Hidalgo (ed.). Mexican Indigenous Languages at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century. Contributions to the Sociology of Language, no. 91. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 127–168. ISBN 978-3-11-018597-3. OCLC 62090844. 

External links

• Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas official website (Spanish)
• INALI’s Catalogue of Indigenous Languages