Keeping her ancestral language alive

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Born to parents from the small Colombian village of Palenque de San Basilio, Estilita Maria Cassiani Obeso never dreamed she would one day earn a doctorate and become a faculty member in a United States university, let alone be the first from her village to do so.

Though circuitous in its route, Cassiani Obeso’s journey brought her to Penn State, where she earned her doctorate in Spanish and linguistics in 2022 — a degree that led her to a teaching track position at Northwestern University and a platform from which she could work to keep her village’s ancestral language alive.

Settled in 1619 by escaped enslaved Africans, Palenque de San Basilio — or simply “Palenque” — is the first free African town in the Americas. Declared a “Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity” by UNESCO in 2005, the village has a population of approximately 3,500 people, the majority of whom speak Spanish as their first language and Palenquero — a Creole language that evolved from the village’s earliest settlers — as their second language. The language is spoken by very few people, Cassiani Obeso said, adding that there are younger speakers who are enthusiastic to learn it. She did not learn Palenquero until she was an adult.

“My parents experienced discrimination in Barranquilla [a large, coastal city in Colombia where the family moved for work and school] because there were very few people there who spoke Palenquero,” she said, adding that the color of their skin was also cause for discrimination. “People would laugh at them when they would speak Palenquero — or even when they spoke Spanish because we have a different accent, so my parents didn’t encourage me to learn the language. But I was a very curious child, and I would ask my father how to say different words.”

Cassiani Obeso said her parents, and especially her mother, provided the inspiration for everything she has accomplished since.

“Back home in Palenque, women are the most important element in our culture,” she explained. “Women are the ones who take care of the household, take care of the kids. They work as hard as men in the farms in Palenque, and they also sell their own products.

“I grew up seeing my mother wake up very, very early to prepare ‘cocadas,’ a traditional candy, using a wood stove. She would put the candies in a heavy pot on her head and sell them in the street. My mother said, ‘I want you to go to university because I don’t want you to be like me.’”

Cassiani Obeso’s father worked at the port of Barranquilla as a cleaner and a driver, often foregoing food and water during the day to bring it home to the family. He also encouraged Cassiani Obeso and her siblings to study.

“Every step I make is in dedication to my parents because I know how hard they worked for us.”

After attending school in Barranquilla, Cassiani Obeso earned her undergraduate degree in Spanish and literature at Colombia’s Universidad del Atlántico, where she developed an interest in working with the Creole language of her ancestors and how it was being taught in the schools. Cassiani Obeso was then accepted into the Martin Luther King Jr. Fellowship Program, a partnership between the Centro Cultural Colombo Americano and the American Embassy, which provides scholarships to outstanding Afro-Colombian and indigenous university students to learn English and receive leadership training.

“The program opened my eyes,” she said. “We would receive leadership training and practice English, and famous people would come from the U.S. to give us talks, hope, and motivation to keep going. After that, I knew I wanted to do post-graduate education in the U.S. By seeing all those famous people who were also Black or Indigenous, I remember thinking, ‘I could be one of them.’”

A weeklong summer program through the MLK fellowship brought Cassiani Obeso to the U.S. for the first time in 2013. The group visited museums, listened to talks, and received more training in English.

“It was amazing,” Cassiani Obeso recalled.

Upon returning to Colombia, she learned of an associate professor at Bucknell University, Hiram Smith, who needed a Palenque speaker to transcribe interviews for his research. Smith, who also earned his doctorate in Spanish at Penn State, took Cassiani Obeso under his wing; the opportunity turned into a two-year teaching assistantship and Cassiani Obeso’s first extended exposure to the Northeast.

“The two years at Bucknell were not easy at all,” Cassiani Obeso admitted. “It was the first time I saw snow, and it was my first time immersed in a very different educational context and culture, but I learned so much from Dr. Smith. I still use the corpus of Palenquero interviews I created when I worked with him.”

At Smith’s urging, Cassiani Obeso visited Penn State and met John Lipski, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Spanish and Linguistics, who had taken students to Palenque and whose research focuses in part on African influences on Spanish and Portuguese, and pidgin and Creole studies.

“Estilita comes from the most humble background you can imagine,” Lipski said. “Yet she managed to get an undergraduate degree in Colombia, followed by a fellowship from the MLK Foundation, to come to the U.S. to practice English.”

Lipski noted that Cassiani Obeso overcame many obstacles to earn her master’s degree and her doctorate. “She fought steadfastly all the way to the top,” he said. “She is a serious researcher and a great teacher, and her students love her. Her dissertation presentation was on Zoom, and there must have been more than a 100 people there, including family and others from Palenque, who managed to sign in. It was a pioneering event, the most amazing dissertation I have ever seen. It’s been a life-changing experience for me to work alongside somebody who achieved so much against all odds.”

Soon after graduating from Penn State, Cassiani Obeso was offered a faculty position at Northwestern University, where she teaches Spanish and continues her research on her ancestral language.

“My research focuses on the use of Creole by a new generation,” Cassiani Obeso said. “Palenquero is a Creole language, so my research compares its uses by other speakers, and I am reporting changes in the language. I am also helping teachers at schools in Palenque find better ways to teach Palenquero.”

“Everyone in Palenque knows Estilita, and they are very proud of her because she is a role model,” Lipski said. “She is the first woman from her village to earn a Ph.D., and we are hoping more will come along. Estilita’s findings are going to have actual and practical applications for bringing the language back to life. It has come full circle from where people were ashamed to speak the language. Now, they are actually proud of it and want to learn it.”

“I bring my language everywhere I go,” Cassiani Obeso concluded. “I am trying to keep my heritage language alive because it is in danger of being extinct. I am so grateful for the support I had from my professors and my friends in the Latino community in State College and in San Basilio de Palenque.

“And now my parents are happy when I speak Palenquero with them.”