Marcos E. Becerra (April 25, 1870
– January 7, 1940) was a prolific Mexican writer, poet, and
politician who produced pioneering
historical,
linguistic,
philological, and
ethnographic studies relating to his country's
pre-Columbian and
early colonial past.
He held important
posts in the Mexican Federal
Government as well as in the state governments of Tabasco and
Chiapas
. He was a distinguished member of the
Mexican Academy of History.
Biography
Marcos
Enrique Becerra was born in Teapa
, Tabasco
, to Camilo
Becerra y Ballinas, a
native of San Cristóbal de las Casas
, Chiapas, and Luisa
Sánchez Formento. Becerra completed his early schooling in
his hometown. In 1900, by way of independent study, he received a
teaching degree from the
Instituto
Juárez of
San Juan
Bautista. During his youth he worked as a
bookbinder,
scribe, store
clerk,
theatre prompter, and, eventually,
teacher. One of his very first published works,
Guia del
lenguaje usual para hablar con propiedad, pureza y corrección,
dates from this period (1901) and is based on his
autodidactic studies of the
Spanish language.
Fame of his remarkable erudition spread quickly and he was
encouraged to run in forthcoming elections for
Federal Deputy for the State of Tabasco,
succeeding in his first attempt.
During the final years of the Porfiriato he held the federal post of
Director General of Secondary Education of the Secretariat of
Public Education
. At the XVII
International Congress of
Americanists, celebrated in Mexico City in September 1910,
Becerra presented an important historical paper on
Hernán Cortés's 1524-25 expedition
to
Las Hibueras. The next year,
he returned to Tabasco to serve in Governor
Manuel Mestre Ghigliazza's
administration as
Secretary
General of Government and as Director of Public Education;
consequent to the assassination of President
Francisco I. Madero in February 1913 both Ghigliazza
and Becerra resigned their posts in protest.
In 1914,
Becerra moved to Tuxtla Gutiérrez
(the Chiapas state capital), where he would labor
as an educator and occupy the same post of Director of Public
Education for ten years; during which time he successfully
reorganized the state's educational system, founded a school of
commerce as well as the Internado Indígena de San Cristóbal (the
San Cristóbal Indian Boarding School), which was a model of its
kind. In 1921, while still in Tuxtla, he published an
important
lexicographical work titled
La nueva gramática castellana, which, like all his
published writings, was the fruit of autodidactic erudition. In
1932, appeared what remains one of his best known scholarly works,
Nombres geográficos indígenas de Chiapas, a study of
Mayan place
names. To these followed sundry studies, published as
monographs or articles, on the languages and
traditions of the
Ch'ol,
Mangue,
Nahua,
Yucatec Maya, and
Zoque.
In 1954, occurred the
posthumous publication
of Becerra's monumental 800 page
Rectificaciones y adiciones al
Diccionario de la
Real Academia Española: a work which encompasses thousands
of words and definitions, is rich in
indigenous etymologies and grounded in
lexicographical
authorities.
Marcos E. Becerra, during the last ten years of his life, was a
numerary member of the Mexican Academy of
History and held
seat 21.
He was
married twice and was twice a widower, He died, following a long
illness, in Mexico
City
on January 7, 1940.
See also
Published works
(List not comprehensive)
- Guia del lenguaje usual para hablar con propiedad, pureza i
corrección, 1901.
- Musa breve; sonetos, 1907.
- Nombres geograficos del estado de Tabasco de la Republica
Mexicana; origen lingüístico, estructura original y significación
de los nombres de lugares de Tabasco que no corresponden á la
lengua castellana, 1909.
- Verdadero concepto de nuestra guerra de independencia,
1910.
- Itinerario de Hernan Cortés en Tabasco; determinación de
los lugares que tocó el conquistador don Hernando Cortés a su paso
por Tabasco, en su expedición a Hibueras, en 1524-1525,
1910.
- Los nombres del Palenque
,
1911.
- La papaya orejona (Pileus pentaphyllus), 1921.
- La nueva gramática castellana. Cursos graduados
para el estudio de la lengua castellana en las escuelas secundarias
de la república, mexicana, 1921.
- Que quiere decir el nombre de Chiapas? (Estudio
etimológico i geroglífico), 1922.
- Origen y significado del nombre de Yucatán, 1923.
- Palavicini desde alla abajo, 1924.
- Breve noticia sobre la lengua e indios tsoques,
1925.
- El huacalxochitl de Hernández en un petroglifo,
1925.
- Vocabulario de la lengua Chol, 1927.
- Nombres geográficos indígenas del estado de Chiapas.
Catálogo alfabético, etimológico, geográfico, histórica i
mitológica, de todos los nombres de lugar (poblaciones, parajes,
comarcas, regiones, alturas, valles, rios, arroyos, lagunas,
esteros, etc.) que estan en las lenguas nahoa, soque, chiapaneca,
sotsil, sendal, chaneabal, mame, chol, maya i quiché,
1930.
- El antiguo calendario chiapaneco; estudio comparativo entre
este i los calendarios precoloniales maya, quiché i nahoa,
1933.
- Crónica de Nueva España (Francisco Cervantes de
Salazar; Francisco del Paso y Troncoso; Federico Goméz de
Orozco; Marcos E. Becerra [editor]), 1914-1936.
- La planta llamada quapaque o paque (correa guapaque, n.
gen., n. sp.; trib. Dalbergiae. fam.
Fabaceae), 1936.
- En defensa del idioma maya (polémica), 1937.
- Juegos precoloniales, 1945.
- Rectificaciones y adiciones al Diccionario de la Real
Academia española, 1954.
Bibliography
- (English) MacCurdy, George
Grant, “Seventeenth International Congress of Americanists
Second Session - City of Mexico“, American Anthropologist, New
Series, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1910), pp. 600-605.
- (Spanish) García Mora, Carlos, La Antropología en México:
panorama histórico. Mexico, D.F.: Instituto
Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1987-1988.
- (Spanish) Navarrete, Carlos, Los primeros antropólogos
chiapanecos: 1. Alberto Culebro, 2. Marcos
E. Becerra. Mexico: Secretaría de Educación y
Cultura, Gobierno del Estado de Chiapas, 1986.
- (Spanish) Santamaría,
Francisco J., et al., Bibliografía general de Tabasco.
Mexico:
Secretaría de
Relaciones Exteriores
, Gobierno del Estado de Tabasco, 1930.
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