Center for Latin American Studies Hosts Annual Nahuatl Language & Culture Program

This summer, the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS), in collaboration with the Mexican NGO, Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas (IDIEZ), once again hosted the Utah Nahuatl Language & Culture Program, the premiere intensive Nahuatl language program in the U.S. Over a period of six weeks, 21students from 14 different universities gathered on campus to learn about Older and Modern Nahua language and culture. Alejandro Quin, director of CLAS, says, “We offer the most comprehensive and nationally-recognized Nahuatl language program in the United States, which is an incredible opportunity for students and scholars from all over the country to engage in deep study and learn from expert Nahua teachers.”

Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec empire, is currently spoken by more than 1.5 million Nahua people and is one of 68 living indigenous languages officially recognized by the Mexican government. The University of Utah is one of the few institutions in the U.S. that regularly teaches beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels of both Older and Modern Nahuatl. Undergraduates can complete their BA language requirement in Nahuatl or choose a major or minor in Latin American Studies with Nahuatl as their language. Graduate students pursuing a master’s or graduate certificate in Latin American Studies can also choose Nahuatl as a focus language.  

The U’s program is the only in the country that boasts an on-campus Nahuatl language instructor, Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz, who is a native speaker and a PhD candidate at the University of Warsaw. During fall and spring semesters, University of Utah students attend in-person with some students joining through distance learning from partnering institutions, Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) and the University of California, Berkeley.  Students studying the language are eligible to apply for prestigious Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships. These federally funded awards are administered by the U.S. Department of Education, and many of the students attending the program over the years have been recipients.

Open to students, faculty, community members, and any member of the public over 18 years of age, the summer intensive program includes daily classroom and small group instruction at the beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. Students also receive regular tutoring, presentations from visiting scholars and experts, and experience cultural activities such as music, embroidery, dance, theater and maize planting ceremonies. Chase Smith, who participated in the program in both 2024 and 2025, says “I also enjoyed the cultural activity that I chose, embroidery, which provided important lessons not only in an artistic practice itself but also about the broader cultural and social significance of this art form.”

Language and Libraries

For many students, an essential part of the program is the extensive collection of Mesoamerican texts and realia in Special Collections at the J. Willard Marriott Library. The collection began in the 1970s thanks to anthropology professor Charles Dibble, who had his own collection, now donated to the library, and encouraged the library to invest in building a collection of Mesoamerican works. Each semester, rare books librarian Lyuba Basin introduces students in the Nahuatl classes to this collection. “I really focus on the materiality of the book as a physical object, and what that can tell us about the culture, the time, the politics, the economy,” Basin says. “Even if we can’t access it though language, we can access it through material culture. Once students get a sense of that, and think, for example, about paper - the production of paper, the cost of paper - they can see it now in everything else.”

On a clear, sunny day, she walked me through several of the same items she highlights for students. Many of these items are facsimiles, such as the Florentine Codex (recently reprinted), which have been painstakingly copied from the original volumes in order to give scholars around the world increased access to this knowledge. Some are modern books written in Nahuatl from fine art presses. But a few are originals, such as the two-volume 16th century Advertencias, which has been restored. The second volume is kept separately from its original vellum binding – now so fragile that opening it would crack the cover.

Seated at a small round table in Basin’s office, a giddy feeling of awe rises in me with each book she takes out of its protective casing. The three-volume heft of the Florentine Codex facsimile, the tiny and fragile Nahuatl-Spanish dictionary, and the modern Nahuatl fine press books all evoke the thrill of catching a rare telescopic glimpse down the unbroken, evolving intellectual tradition that outstrips the mere couple of centuries of United States history to which I am more accustomed.

Then Basin pulls out a tiny box and opens it to reveal something swathed in bubble wrap – a stone bark beater, an 8th century artifact that was used to beat the pulp of wild fig trees to make amatl bark paper upon which most surviving Nahuatl original texts are written. She places the stone in my hand – no bigger than my palm – and I instinctively wrap my hand around it, my fingers settling into the same grooves around the edges that the tool’s original maker and users would have felt over 1,600 years ago. The materiality of this tool suddenly feels like too much; much to my surprise, I am crying in Lyuba’s office.

Basin smiles. Apparently it’s not an uncommon reaction.

Linking Past, Present, and Future

The realia is a potent link between the history of the Nahua and the modern Nahuatl taught and spoken in the program here on campus. But what draws students and scholars to such a seemingly niche language?

Rebecca Horn, a recently retired professor of history, was director of the Center for Latin American Studies and instrumental in bringing the summer Nahuatl program to the College of Humanities from Yale University in 2018. Aside from the pragmatic reasons to study languages – the ability to live and work internationally, the necessity of cultural competencies in the ever more globally networked society in which we live – Horn points to a primary drive that pushes her and many of the students. “You cannot truly understand another country, another culture, without understanding the language.” Implicit in language is a worldview that is inaccessible by other means.

This drive is also reflected in the program’s decolonial ethos and passionate instructors. The program centers Nahua speakers as they become scholars, resisting extractive academic practices that were often common in the past. According to instructor Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz, "My greatest satisfactions include following the students as they progress from simple language learning to actual participation the culture, and seeing the advanced students engage in complex discussions and deliver public talks completely in Nahuatl," says de la Cruz Cruz.

The CLAS which hosts the Nahuatl program is a designated National Resource Center by the U.S. Department of Education, a prestigious competitive recognition that acknowledges their excellence in language and area studies serving national interests. Part of the work to maintain that designation involves partnering with SLCC to offer Nahuatl (among other things), bringing the learning opportunity to their students and making them eligible to apply for the FLAS fellowships after completing one semester.

Brisa S. Zavala, a program and Latin American Studies alumna, lays out the transformative pathway she experienced as a student of Nahuatl: “With languages – any language – it changes the way you view the world. I think it starts out very basic: how things are named, how grammar is structured…when you start interacting more with the culture and people you learn about their cosmovision. You don’t have to adopt that perspective, but it gives you a different way of understanding.”

Keeping a language alive amounts to the continued development of a constellation of knowledge that does not exist anywhere else in the world. This allows both its native and new speakers to use the language's unique perspectives to work on solutions to the problems that face us all as human beings.

Students can learn more about the U’s Nahuatl programs at https://languages.utah.edu/undergraduate/languages-offered/nahuatl.php or reach out to summernahuatl@utah.edu about the summer intensive program.