Meet the Mayan club

If you’ve ever wondered where countless Blair students disappear to with big smiles on Friday during lunch, chances are they’re hanging out at the Mayan Language and Culture Club. As cultural clubs expand across Blair, like Lideres Latinos and We The East club, the Mayan club is a space where students explore identity, history, and community. 

Many of the roughly 30 Mayan languages spoken across Latin America face endangerment or extinction, but languages like K'iche', Yucatec, and Mam still have hundreds of thousands of speakers. Most of Blair’s Guatemalan students come from the departments of Quetzaltenango and Huehuetenango, where people primarily speak Mam, also known as Toj Qyol.

Blair English Language Development (ELD) teachers Carlos Landau and Debra Andler started the club two years ago, called “Club Maya” by most members. It’s a space where students at Blair come together to celebrate and learn about Mayan culture. Landau’s goal was to unite Blair Mayan speakers and provide them with a safe space to speak in their native language. “Part of the idea was to give the students a space to feel comfortable speaking their language, and try to find ways to encourage them to preserve the language,” Landau explains. “I started the club out of recognition of the large demographic of students of Mayan heritage at Blair, primarily in the interest of preserving the language.”  

According to Landau, a large point of attraction to this club are the various field trips and activities. Whether it’s meeting a famous Mayan singer like Sarah Kuruchich or visiting museums, they’re commonly enjoyed. “We saw a concert by Guatemalan Mayan singer Sarah Kuruchic, and we got to meet her personally,” Landau said. “We also did a field trip to the American Film Institute to see a documentary called Borderland that was about the immigrant experience, and one of the protagonists of the movie was himself, an indigenous Mayan from Guatemala.”  

Junior Selvin Vail is the leader and representative of the Mayan club and also a fluent speaker of Mam. Vail feels that his native language is a core part of his character. “I speak Mayan Mam fluently because it is my first language and part of my identity,” Vail said. “I learned Spanish when I was six or seven years old in school, and now I feel very proud to be able to share my native language with others.” 

The Mayan club is a safe space for Vail where he’s made many connections with his peers. He enjoys many aspects of the community in the club, like learning from each other and helping one another. “It’s an awesome environment where we work together, share experiences, learn from each other, and support each other as a community… We plan cultural activities, practice dances, prepare presentations, and work on projects that represent Mayan culture. We also participated in many events and received visits from other people.” Vail explains. Another cool way the Mayan club helps bring Mayans of Blair together is a meet and greet about Mayan culture. 

Another tenet of Club Maya is sharing Mayan languages with the wider Blair community. Senior Nate Viechnicki, a non-Mayan member of the club, has slowly been learning Mam from his peers in the club. “Mam is what most of my friends in the club speak, and it's a very difficult language, but I'm so glad to be able to learn from them and be able to pick up even a small amount of words and phrases in the language,” Viechnicki says.

The Mayan Club serves as a community for both Mayans and non-Mayans, and is up and coming as a powerful cultural club at Blair.