Inside a Boyle Heights mini mall, Ülëw Coffee & Juice is a place where customers can get a taste of Guatemala.
The Mayan Mocha on the menu features Guate espresso and Peruvian cacao. Colorful patterns on pillows and tablecloths pay homage to Mayan textiles. A barrilete — a festive kite honoring the dead — hangs prominently on a wall near an altar embellished with small Guatemalan toy buses, a Mayan calendar and other trinkets.
It’s also where customers can learn a little K’iche’, a Mayan language spoken by more than a million people in Guatemala, and the country’s second-most spoken language after Spanish.
At Ülëw, postcards with words in K’iche’ welcome customers into the cafe. “MALTIOX!,” which means ‘thank you,’ and “PURO UTZ!,” which translates to ‘good vibes,’ are posted on the cafe’s entrance. A K’iche’ grammar book is available in the cafe’s bookshelf.
Jefri Lindo, who is fluent in K’iche’, uses Ülëw’s Instagram account to teach thousands of followers how to pronounce common phrases. His work is part of a broader effort to reclaim an Indigenous language that, once spoken by ruling lineages, is now often stigmatized in both Guatemala and the United States.
“We’re hard workers. We’re amazing people. We’re smart people. We have so much knowledge that our grandparents, our ancestors have passed down,” said Lindo, 25, who also acknowledged a level of shame in speaking the language.
K’iche’ is often cast aside in a push to learn Spanish and English, languages that are seen as giving you “greater value,” Lindo said. “I thought, ‘How can I make Indigenous people, our language, something cool? Something like, ‘I speak it. I’m proud of this.’”
Lindo, who hails from the small Guatemalan village of Xecoja, has experienced shame and discrimination for speaking K’iche’ in both his native country and in the U.S. K’iche’ is primarily spoken in Guatemala’s central highlands.
As early as 6 years old, he remembers transitioning from K’iche’ to Spanish in the classroom. His first memory of being discriminated against for speaking K’iche’ stems from the family moving to the bigger town of Chichicastenango. “This kid speaks ‘different,’” Lindo remembers hearing.
“There was this view of people that spoke a native language as [being] less than,” Lindo said.
In the U.S., it was no different.
Some fellow Guatemalans he’d encounter, with similar backgrounds, would deny fully understanding or speaking the language. Lindo sympathized. “This is a trauma that our great grandparents, our grandparents, went through and they pass it down … then slowly [the language] is erased,” he said.
LA is home to the largest Guatemalan community outside Guatemala, with more than 157,000 Guatemalans in the city and 286,000 in the county.
At Ülëw, it’s not uncommon for Lindo to come across younger customers who yearn to speak their parents’ K’iche.’ They tell him: “I want to go back to my roots. I want to learn the language they used to speak.”
Lindo, who works with his brother and uncle, is proud to say that much of Ülëw’s staff speak K’iche,’ including his partner Michaela Zholovnik, who knows Russian and Spanish as well. Along with newer employees, who are from the same region as Lindo, the staff discuss coffee and other restaurant business in K’iche’.
Eventually, Lindo envisions producing videos in K’iche’ explaining how to taste coffee flavors. “I think that is our role, to empower through art, through food, through conversations,” Lindo said.
Lindo’s mother, Rosa Gonzalez Salvador, made sure to speak K’iche’ at home in Guatemala, especially as her children began learning Spanish at school. “There was always something in me that wanted to maintain this legacy,” said Gonzalez Salvador, who came to the U.S. in 2014.
She remembers her husband worrying that “people will look at us” because she speaks her native tongue in this country.
Gonzalez Salvador, who is a co-owner of Chapmayan Coffee in Pico Rivera, said many people in Boyle Heights and LA speak K’iche.’ She hears it in her apartment complex, on the streets and at parent meetings at their children’s schools. She has also volunteered at Clinica Romero and at the Guatemalan Consulate to help translate for people who speak K’iche’.
“I’ve always told people, ‘Let’s not be embarrassed. This is ours and it’s a blessing being here. Let’s appreciate the culture here, and the language, but let’s keep what’s ours,” Gonzalez Salvador said.
“My children are now trilingual. That’s a joy for me, because I never lost hope,” she added.
Juan Gonzalez, an Alhambra resident who grew up in Guatemala, felt a sense of pride visiting Ülëw for the first time recently. He was immediately drawn to the K’iche’ grammar book at the cafe.
“This might be the first time in my life that I actually run into a book that teaches me about the grammar of K’iche’,” said Gonzalez, 45.
Gonzalez was exposed to Mayan culture in Guatemala City, where he grew up, but K’iche’ is not something he learned. “I only speak Spanish. That’s all they teach you in school,” he said.
“It’s always been kind of like, you live in a country where you only understand half the story because you don’t speak the Mayan languages,” said Gonzalez, who also grew up in Boyle Heights.
Ülëw, he said, “is so bold in terms of our Guatemalan culture, our Mayan culture.”
“I love that about it,” Gonzalez said.
