“El empleo de las gramáticas misioneras y otras fuentes en la primera clasificación de las lenguas de México” [“The Use of Missionary Grammars and Other Sources in the First Classification of Languages in Mexico”]

This paper is an approach to the first qualitative and quantitative analysis of Amerindian languages in Mexico by Manuel Orozco y Berra (1864), whose expectations were in line with contemporary ethnographical research. We describe how Orozco y Berra built his corpus, as well as his constant references to the hypotheses in American and European comparative studies including Mexican languages. The work done by Orozco y Berra involved the assessment of modern comparative research and the critical review of colonial historical and grammatical sources. It was aimed at a more certain reconstruction of the movements in space and time of the peoples speaking the languages in the sources and at the establishment of a genealogy: families, languages, dialects.Enlightenment ideas like progress or civilisation informed Orozco y Berra’s work, both hisresearch and results, enabling him to reconcile his interpretation of the aboriginal peoples’ levels of civilisation with their languages’ structural features and vitality.