Oaxaca court orders bilingual street signage to protect indigenous languages

In Oaxaca, Mexico, official street and public signage remains exclusively in Spanish despite the state having the highest indigenous population in the country. Approximately 1.2 million people, or three in ten residents, speak an indigenous language, and over 65% of the population identifies as indigenous.

Although the General Law of Linguistic Rights of Indigenous Peoples mandates bilingual signage in municipalities where at least 20% of the population speaks an indigenous language, the law is systematically ignored. This omission has led to legal action, with a district court in Salina Cruz recently ordering the Municipality of Juchitán de Zaragoza and the National Institute of Indigenous Languages (Inali) to implement official nomenclature in both Zapotec and Spanish.

The ruling follows an injunction filed by María Lubia Santiago Villalobos, who argued that the absence of her native language in the urban environment violates linguistic preservation rights and contributes to cultural displacement. Legal experts from the organization Indigenous Strategic Litigation (LEI) noted that this case marks a shift from discussing language preservation solely in classrooms to addressing its necessity in daily public life.