How Yucatán Is Trying to Bridge the Gap Between Speaking and Writing Maya
In Mexico, the Maya language has approximately 800,000 speakers, most of whom live in Tabasco, Chiapas, and the Yucatán Peninsula. This makes Maya the country’s second-most spoken Indigenous language, only after Nahuatl. However, only 1% of these speakers can read and write in Maya proficiently. This gap between oral and written use presents a structural challenge to the language’s long-term survival.
In Yucatán, where roughly 500,000 Maya speakers live, literacy rates in Maya are near zero. According to Fidencio Briceño Chel, Director of Museums and Historical Heritage at Yucatán’s Secretariat of Culture, the situation is most difficult in coastal areas, where socioeconomic pressures accelerate language loss.
Causes of the Literacy Gap
The low literacy rate in Maya is not a natural development. It results from decades of educational policies that prioritized Spanish. Bilingual education programs, when they existed, were often designed as transitional steps toward Spanish rather than efforts to develop full literacy in Maya. As a result, generations of Maya speakers were educated primarily in Spanish.
The scarcity of written materials in Maya has reinforced this pattern. Without textbooks, literature, or instructional resources, new generations have few opportunities to learn to read and write in their ancestral language.
It is important to keep in mind that indigenous languages in Mexico are often met with discrimination. This prejudice stems from a complex web of historical, social, and economic factors that continue to marginalize indigenous communities.
While in antiquity, the written form of Maya was written using a complex system made up of phonetic symbols and iconographs, over the past few hundred years, transliteration to a Latinized script has been the norm. However, in recent years, there have been significant efforts by epigraphers and linguists to return the written Mayan language to its epigraphic roots.
“Part of the difficulty with introducing the Maya language into school curricula is the need to create a consensus on what to teach and how to teach it. Since Maya is, in fact, a family of languages, this gets complicated fast. Add to that the fact that even within the Yucatec-Maya (or Peninsular) language, there is regional variation—standardisation results in a flattening of sorts, which can make students feel that teachers are telling them the way they speak Maya at home is wrong, which is counterproductive, to say the least,” says Zac Lindsey, an archaeologist, educator and student of Yucatec Maya.
Roughly half a million people speak Yucatec Maya, also known as Peninsular Maya, but new data suggests that as few as 1%are proficient in reading and writing the language.Photo: Carlos Rosado van der Gracht / Yucatán Magazine
In recent years, public spaces have begun offering signage in Maya in an effort to legitimize its use in everyday life.Photo: Carlos Rosado van der Gracht / Yucatán Magazine
Poets such as María Elisa Chaverrea Chim are spearheading a movement to create original literary works in the Maya language, hoping this will help increase interest in literacy among Indigenous communities in Yucatán.Photo: Carlos Rosado van der Gracht / Yucatán Magazine
Making Maya Language Instruction Mandatory
In December 2019, Yucatán’s state congress approved reforms making Maya language instruction mandatory in all basic education schools. Implementation has been gradual. Currently, 12,400 students receive instruction in Maya across early childhood centers, preschools, and primary schools. An additional program, Ko’one’ex kanik maaya (“Let’s learn Maya”), operates in 99 general primary schools, introducing children to Maya vocabulary, reading, and writing.
Authorities acknowledge that current coverage is insufficient, particularly in rural areas where bilingual education is not yet consolidated. Teacher training, curriculum development, and infrastructure remain ongoing challenges.
In 2024, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and TeachUNITED began a partnership with Yucatán’s Secretary of Education to support over 400,000 students in Maya communities. The initiative focuses on increasing the number of effective teachers and promoting instruction in Maya.
The goal, as stated by Yucatán authorities, is to move Maya from a primarily oral language to one that is also used in academic and literary contexts. Whether this goal is achievable depends on sustained funding, adequate teacher training, and consistent implementation of existing policies.
There are also a handful of educators, including the archaeologist and epigrapher Eduardo Puga, who offer workshops to teach people of all ages and backgrounds about reading and writing Maya using the language’s original epigraphic script.
Senior Editor Carlos Rosado van der Gracht, PhD, is a journalist, photographer, and expedition leader. Born in Mérida, Carlos holds degrees from universities in Mexico, Canada, and Norway. Most recently, he earned a doctorate in Heritage Studies in 2026.
